Nisan comments on Absence of Evidence Is Evidence of Absence - Less Wrong

54 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 12 August 2007 08:34PM

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Comment author: Nisan 25 November 2010 05:52:34PM *  5 points [-]

Welcome to Less Wrong!

A belief is useless unless it makes predictions. Making Beliefs Pay Rent gives a couple examples of "beliefs" that are useless because they don't make any predictions.

A belief from which you can derive any prediction is just as useless. Your Strength as a Rationalist and the beginning of A Technical Explanation of Technical Explanation give examples of people trying too hard to make their beliefs explain their observations; they fail to discover that their beliefs are incorrect.