bigjeff5 comments on Conservation of Expected Evidence - Less Wrong

68 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 13 August 2007 03:55PM

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Comment author: bigjeff5 29 January 2011 03:02:39AM 6 points [-]

Here's the curious thing: if you pick the morning bet, then almost surely there will be times in the morning when you would prefer to switch to the afternoon bet.

You either have a new interval, or new information suggesting the probability density for the interval has changed.

Conservation of Expected Evidence does not mean Ignorance of Observed Evidence.

This is just a restatement of the black swan problem, and it's a non-issue. If evidence does not exist yet it does not exist yet. It doesn't cast doubt on your methods of reasoning, nor does it allow you make a baseless guess of what might come in the future.