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iDante comments on Rationality Quotes March 2013 - Less Wrong
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From a great book
Hm... I'm sure the author means well by that statement, but I don't know if you can really talk about predictions for long without using the vocabulary of belief and truth.
Well, you can calculate expected values without asserting that the probabilities used in your calculations correspond to either subjective belief or some objective truth. You can just do the maths and note that when you do it a certain way, your predictions are more useful.
I think it's fair to say that humans doing this will form beliefs about the correspondence between their model and "real life".
Right, try tabooing "prediction."
The only way I can think of to completely divest the practice of predicting from any talk of truth and belief, is to consider it as a wholly mechanical procedure for producing betting odds. (On the understanding that the agent placing bets just does so unthinkingly & doesn't worry themselves with questions like "what if this event does not come to pass?" which end up requiring truth/belief vocabulary.)
Otherwise, the whole point of predictions is to form beliefs about what will be true in the future... avoiding that vocabulary is a huge pain, in contrast with the advantage (avoiding a few, mostly sophomoric, philosophical objections to truth).