DanielLC comments on Knowing About Biases Can Hurt People - Less Wrong

70 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 04 April 2007 06:01PM

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Comment author: Michael_Rooney 06 April 2007 08:35:39PM 0 points [-]

Eliezer, I agree that exactly even balances of evidence are rare. However, I would think suspending judgment to be rational in many situations where the balance of evidence is not exactly even. For example, if I roll a die, it would hardly be rational to believe "it will not come up 5 or 6", despite the balance of evidence being in favor of such a belief. If you are willing to make >50% the threshold of rational belief, you will hold numerous false and contradictory beliefs.

Also, I have some doubt about your claim that when "there is no evidence in favor of a complicated proposed belief, it is almost always correct to reject it". If you proposed a complicated belief of 20th century physics (say, Bell's theorem) to Archimedes, he would be right to say he has no evidence in its favor. Nonetheless, it would not be correct for Archimedes to conclude that Bell's theorem is therefore false.

Perhaps I am misunderstanding you.

Comment author: DanielLC 27 December 2009 07:04:34AM 2 points [-]

If you gave him almost anything else that complex, it actually would be false. Once something gets even moderately complex, there is a huge number of other things that complex.

Technically, he should figure that there's just a one in 10^somethingorother chance that it's true, but you can't remember all 10^somethingorother things that are that unlikely, so you're best off to reject it.