Nick_Tarleton comments on No One Knows Stuff - Less Wrong

7 Post author: talisman 12 May 2009 05:11AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (46)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: MichaelHoward 12 May 2009 12:59:08PM *  1 point [-]

'strong evidence is the sort of evidence we couldn't possibly find if the hypothesis were false'.

-blink-

If you mean this, please elaborate. If not, please change the wording before you confuse the living daylights out of some poor newcomer.

Edit: I'm not nitpicking him for infinite certainty. I acknowledge it's reasonable informally to tell me a ticket I'm thinking of buying couldn't possibly win the lottery. That's not what I mean. I mean even finding some overwhelmingly strong evidence doesn't necessarily mean the hypothesis is overwhelmingly likely to be true. If the comment's misleading then given it's subject it seems worth pointing out!

Example: Say you're randomly chosen to take a test with a false positive rate of 1% for a cancer that occurs in 0.1% of the population, and it returns positive. That's strong evidence for the hypothesis that you have that cancer, but the hypothesis is probably false.

Comment author: Nick_Tarleton 12 May 2009 03:48:25PM 4 points [-]

Strongly seconded. Generally, it seems to me that Eliezer frequently seriously confuses people by mixing literal statements with hyperbole like this or "shut up and do the impossible". I definitely see the merit of the greater emotional impact, but I hope there's some way to get it without putting off the unusually literal-minded (which I expect most people who will get anything out of OB or The Book are).