Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Doublethink (Choosing to be Biased) - Less Wrong

33 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 14 September 2007 08:05PM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 15 September 2007 03:53:25AM 4 points [-]

While it is true that you couldn't know the detailed consequences of being biased, you could make a rational judgment under uncertainty, given what you do know.

Yes, but for it to be a rational judgment under uncertainty, you would have to take into account the unknown unknowns, some of which may be Black Swans (where rare events accounts for a significant fraction of the total weight), plus such well-known biases as overconfidence and optimism. Think of all that worrying you'll have to do... maybe you should just relax...

My own life experience suggests that any black box should be assumed to contain a Black Swan. (Or to be precise, a substantial probability of such, rather than probability 1.0.)