= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
CCC comments on Absolute Authority - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (72)
This is supposed to be an argument against giving anything an 100% probability. I do agree with the concept, but this particular argument seems wrong. It's based on Conservation of Expected Evidence (if the "technical reasons of probability theory" refer to something else, let me know). However, the Bayes rule doesn't just imply that "having a chance of changing your mind" -> "you are not 100% certain", it also gives us bounds on what posteriors we can have. If we evaluate a 5% chance to changing our minds on something, that would seem to imply that we cannot put a >95% in our original claim.
So, the reason I reject this is as follows:
EY lays out possible evidence for 2+2=3 here. Imagine you believe at 50% level that someone will cause you to view that evidence tomorrow. Hypnosis, or some other method. Applying Bayes rule like EY seems to be applying it here, you should evaluate right now at most a 50% chance that 2+2=4. I think the rational thing to do in that situation (where putting the earplugs together does in fact show 2+2 equaling 4), is to believe that 2+2=4, with around the same much confidence as you do now. Therefore, there is something wrong with this line of reasoning.
If anyone can point to what I'm doing wrong, or thinks that in the situation I outlined, the rational thing to do is to evaluate a 50% or lower chance of 2+2=4, I'd like to hear about it.
Why do you think that is the correct thing to do in that situation?
Here, in this real situation, yes you should trust your current counting abilities. But if you believe with 50% confidence that, within 24 hours, someone will be able to convince you that your ability to count is fundamentally compromised, you also don't place a high level of confidence on your ability to count things correctly - no more than 50%, in fact.
"I can count correctly" and "[someone can demonstrate to me that] I'm counting incorrectly" are mutually exclusive hypotheses. Your confidence in the two ought not to add up to more than 1.
Not entirely. It is possible that someone may be able to provide a convincing demonstration of an untrue fact; either due to deliberate deception, or due to an extremely unlikely series of coincidences, or due to the person giving the demonstration genuinely but incorrectly thinking that what they are demonstrating is true.
So, there is some small possibility that I am counting correctly and someone can demonstrate to me that I am not counting correctly. The size of this possibility depends, among other things, on how easily I can be persuaded.