Caledonian2 comments on Beautiful Probability - Less Wrong

34 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 14 January 2008 07:19AM

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Comment author: Caledonian2 14 January 2008 02:12:28PM 3 points [-]

Are you telling me the first person's argument carries the exact same weight as the second?

Yes. It's the arguments that matter.

Now, if we know that one person was trying to support a thesis and the other presenting the data and drawing a conclusion, we can weight them differently, if we only have access to one. The first case might leave out contrary data and alternative hypotheses in an attempt to make the thesis look better. We expect the second case to mention all relevant data and the obvious alternatives, if only briefly, so the absence of contrary data is evidence of its nonexistence in that case.

Since we have both, we can exclude the possibility that the first author left out data to make his case look better. Thus, the two arguments are equally valid.