Gunnar_Zarncke comments on Self-Congratulatory Rationalism - Less Wrong

51 Post author: ChrisHallquist 01 March 2014 08:52AM

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Comment author: Wei_Dai 01 March 2014 09:21:52AM *  39 points [-]

So sharing evidence the normal way shouldn't be necessary. Asking someone "what's the evidence for that?" implicitly says, "I don't trust your rationality enough to take your word for it."

I disagree with this, and explained why in Probability Space & Aumann Agreement . To quote the relevant parts:

There are some papers that describe ways to achieve agreement in other ways, such as iterative exchange of posterior probabilities. But in such methods, the agents aren't just moving closer to each other's beliefs. Rather, they go through convoluted chains of deduction to infer what information the other agent must have observed, given his declarations, and then update on that new information. (The process is similar to the one needed to solve the second riddle on this page.) The two agents essentially still have to communicate I(w) and J(w) to each other, except they do so by exchanging posterior probabilities and making logical inferences from them.

Is this realistic for human rationalist wannabes? It seems wildly implausible to me that two humans can communicate all of the information they have that is relevant to the truth of some statement just by repeatedly exchanging degrees of belief about it, except in very simple situations. You need to know the other agent's information partition exactly in order to narrow down which element of the information partition he is in from his probability declaration, and he needs to know that you know so that he can deduce what inference you're making, in order to continue to the next step, and so on. One error in this process and the whole thing falls apart. It seems much easier to just tell each other what information the two of you have directly.

In other words, when I say "what's the evidence for that?", it's not that I don't trust your rationality (although of course I don't trust your rationality either), but I just can't deduce what evidence you must have observed from your probability declaration alone even if you were fully rational.

Comment author: Gunnar_Zarncke 01 March 2014 09:54:14PM -1 points [-]

Yes. But it entirely depends on how the request for supportive references is phrased.

Good:

Interesting point. I'm not entirely clear how you arrived at that position. I'd like to look up some detail questions on that. Could you provide references I might look at?

Bad:

That argument makes no sense. What references do you have to support such a ridiculous claim?

The neutral

What's the evidence for that?

leaves the interpretation of the attitude to the reader/addressee and is bound to be misinterpreted (people misinterpreting tone or meaning of email).

Comment author: ChrisHallquist 02 March 2014 11:02:42PM 0 points [-]

Saying

Interesting point. I'm not entirely clear how you arrived at that position. I'd like to look up some detail questions on that. Could you provide references I might look at?

sort of implies you're updating towards the other's position. If you not only disagree but are totally unswayed by hearing the other person's opinion, it becomes polite but empty verbiage (not that polite but empty verbiage is always a bad thing).

Comment author: Gunnar_Zarncke 02 March 2014 11:09:07PM -2 points [-]

But shouldn't you always update toward the others position? And if the argument isn't convincing you can truthfully tell so that you updated only slightly.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 02 March 2014 11:30:33PM 6 points [-]

But shouldn't you always update toward the others position?

That's not how Aumann's theorem works. For example, if Alice mildly believe X and Bob strongly believes X, it may be that Alice has weak evidence for X, and Bob has much stronger independent evidence for X. Thus, after exchanging evidence they'll both believe X even more strongly than Bob did initially.

Comment author: palladias 04 March 2014 03:14:00AM 9 points [-]

Yup!

One related use case is when everyone in a meeting prefers policy X to policy Y, although each are a little concerned about one possible problem. Going around the room and asking everyone how likely they think X is to succeed produces estimates of 80%, so, having achieved consensus, they adopt X.

But, if people had mentioned their particular reservations, they would have noticed they were all different, and that, once they'd been acknowledged, Y was preferred.

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 03 March 2014 01:21:16PM 4 points [-]

Even if they both equally strongly believe X, it makes sense for them to talk whether they both used the same evidence or different evidence.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 14 April 2014 02:26:49AM 2 points [-]
Comment author: Gunnar_Zarncke 03 March 2014 07:36:32AM 0 points [-]

Of course.

I agree that

"Interesting point. I'm not entirely clear how you arrived at that position. I'd like to look up some detail questions on that. Could you provide references I might look at?"

doesn't make clear that the other holds another position and that the reply may just address the validity of the evidence.

But even then shouldn't you see it at least as weak evidence and thus believe X at least a bit more strongly?