JDM comments on What Evidence Filtered Evidence? - Less Wrong

43 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 29 September 2007 11:10PM

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Comment author: JDM 09 June 2013 02:45:00AM *  0 points [-]

It is very possible I don't understand this properly, but assuming you have knowledge of what strength of evidence is possible, could you start at 0.5 and consider strong arguments (relative to possible strength) as increasing the possibility and weak arguments as decreasing the possibility instead? With each piece of evidence you could increase the point at which weak arguments are viewed as having a positive effect, so numerous weak arguments could still add up to a decently high probability of the box containing the diamond.

For example, if arguments are rated in strength from 0 to 1, and most arguments would not be stronger than .5, my approach would be as follows for each piece of evidence:

Piece 1: Probability += (strength-.25)

Piece 2: probability += (strength-.22)

Piece 3: probability += (strength-.20)

etc.

I am of course oversimplifying the math, and looking at how you are approaching stoppage, perhaps this isn't actually effectively much different from your approach. But this approach is more intuitive to me than considering stopping a separate event on its own. If he is struck by lightning, as mentioned several times throughout this discussion, it is hard to view this in the same light as if he had stopped on his own as an independent event, but I am not sure the difference is enough that the probability of the diamond being in the box should be substantially different in the two cases.

Can someone clear up what issues there are with my approach? It makes more sense to me and if it is wrong, I would like to know where.