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JGWeissman comments on Making Beliefs Pay Rent (in Anticipated Experiences) - Less Wrong
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But why do beliefs need to pay rent in anticipated experiences? Why can’t they pay rent in utility?
If some average Joe believes he’s smart and beautiful, and that gives him utility, is that necessarily a bad thing? Joe approaches a girl in a bar, dips his sweaty fingers in her iced drink, cracks a piece of ice in his teeth, pulls it out of his mouth, shoves it in her face for demonstration, and says, “Now that I’d broken the ice—”
She thinks: “What a butt-ugly idiot!” and gets the hell away from him.
Joe goes on happily believing that he’s smart and beautiful.
For myself, the answer is obvious: my beliefs are means to an end, not ends in themselves. They’re utility producers only insofar as they help me accomplish utility-producing operations. If I were to buy stock believing that its price would go up, I better hope my belief paid its rent in correct anticipation, or else it goes out the door.
But for Joe? If he has utility-pumping beliefs, then why not? It’s not like he would get any smarter or prettier by figuring out he’s been a butt-ugly idiot this whole time.
In this example, Joe's belief that he's smart and beautiful does pay rent in anticipated experience. He anticipates a favorable reaction if he approaches a girl with his gimmick and pickup line. As it happens, his innaccurate beliefs are paying rent in inaccurate anticipated experiences, and he goes wrong epistemically by not noticing that his actual experience differs from his anticipated experience and he should update his beliefs accordingly.
The virtue of making beliefs pay rent in anticipated experience protects you from forming incoherent beleifs, maps not corresponding to any territory. Joe's beliefs are coherent, correspond to a part of the territory, and are persistantly wrong.
If my tenants paid rent with a piece of paper that said "moneeez" on it, I wouldn't call it paying rent.
In your view, don't all beliefs pay rent in some anticipated experience, no matter how bad that rent is?
No, for an example of beliefs that don't pay rent in any anticipated experience, see the first 3 paragraphs of this article:
Two people have semantically different beliefs.
Both beliefs lead them to anticipate the same experience.
EDIT: In other words, two people might think they have different beliefs, but when it comes to anticipated experiences, they have similar enough beliefs about the properties of sound waves and the properties of falling trees and recorders and etc etc that they anticipate the same experience.
Taboo "semantically".
See also the example of The Dragon in the Garage, as discussed in the followup article.
Taboo'ed. See edit.
Although I have a bone to pick with the whole "belief in belief" business, right now I'll concede that people actually do carry beliefs around that don't lead to anticipated experiences. Wulky Wilkinsen being a "post-utopian" (as interpreted from my current state of knowing 0 about Wulky Wilkinsen and post-utopians) is a belief that doesn't pay any rent at all, not even a paper that says "moneeez."
Or they pay you with forged bills. You think you'll be able to deposit them at the bank and spend them to buy stuff, but what actually happens is the bank freezes your account and the teller at the store calls the police on you.