Nornagest comments on Avoiding Your Belief's Real Weak Points - Less Wrong

49 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 05 October 2007 01:59AM

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Comment author: Nornagest 07 February 2013 01:21:05AM 1 point [-]

Because Bayes says you should update when presented with contrary evidence. Because Bayes doens't say you can sweep evidence under the carpet. Because Confirmation Bias is bad

The fact of an otherwise unexceptional objection is only evidence against an idea when you get more objections than you'd expect an arbitrary true idea in its reference class to get. Ideas touching on political or identity issues, for example, can be expected to garner a certain proportion of objections merely from tribal effects, with no particular implications for truth value.

The content of objections is a different matter and pretty much has to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Parsing content carries costs, however, and so there are situations when it's not going to be worth your time -- as for example when it comes from a source with a known history of trolling or poor-quality reasoning, or with known-bad axioms.