JonahSinick comments on Many Weak Arguments vs. One Relatively Strong Argument - Less Wrong

20 Post author: JonahSinick 04 June 2013 03:32AM

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

Comments (86)

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

Comment author: JonahSinick 06 June 2013 02:19:04AM *  1 point [-]

Probability theory doesn't "intrinsically favor" MWA over ORSA. Both have their uses, their limits, and their "gotchas" when applied to bounded rationality. If MWA is in some important sense "reliably better" than ORSA, I'd need stronger evidence/argument than is provided in this post.

  • It's true that both MWA and ORSA break down badly in certain, non overlapping, contexts.
  • I currently believe that MWA generally produces better predictive models about the human world than ORSA does. The context of the human world is a special one, and I would expect ORSA to systematically be better in some natural (not necessarily mathematical) contexts.
  • I believe that ORSA does outperform MWA in certain situations involving the human world (c.f. the remarks in my other comment about bubbles).