Cyan2 comments on Explainers Shoot High. Aim Low! - Less Wrong

40 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 24 October 2007 01:13AM

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Comment author: Cyan2 24 October 2007 06:17:05PM 1 point [-]

Constant,

I can't speak for other Bayesians, but I prefer to use the idea of Bayesian probabilities encode "states of information" as opposed to "degrees of belief". To me, overcoming bias means making sure your beliefs reflect the actual information available to you, so I prefer to use a phrase which directs attention to that information immediately. This isn't my idea; it's one of the key ideas put forward by E. T. Jaynes. To get a sense of how this works in a geometric problem similar to the Buffon needle problem, I recommend Jaynes's paper The Well-Posed Problem.