poke comments on Absolute Authority - Less Wrong

44 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 08 January 2008 03:33AM

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Comment author: poke 09 January 2008 12:49:47AM 1 point [-]

I think Ian makes an important point: people give their ability to imagine something the same weight as evidence. The most gratuitous example of this, relevant here because it's the impetus for inductive probabilism, is the so-called "problem of induction." Say we have two laws concerning the future evolution of some system, call them L1 and L2, such that at some future time t L2(t) gives a result that is defined only as being NOT the result given by L1(t). L1 is based on observation. L2 represents my ability to imagine that my observations will fail to hold at some future time t. The problem of induction is a result of giving MORE weight to L2 than L1.