anukool_j comments on Qualitatively Confused - Less Wrong

26 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 14 March 2008 05:01PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (77)

Sort By: Old

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: anukool_j 08 December 2010 07:35:06AM *  0 points [-]

This seems like a dead thread, but I'll chance it anyway.

Elizer, there's something off about your calculation of the expected score:

The expected score is something that should go up the more certain I am of something, right?

But in fact the expected score is highest when I'm most uncertain about something: If I believe with equal probability that snow might be white and non-white, the expected score is actually 0.5(-1) + 0.5(-1) = -1. This is the highest possible expected score.

In any other case, the expected score will be lower, as you calculate for the 70/30 case.

It seems like what you should be trying to do is minimize your expected score but maximize your actual score. That seems weird.

Comment author: HonoreDB 01 January 2011 10:54:45AM 0 points [-]

Looks like you've just got a sign error, anukool_j. -1 is the lowest possible expected score. The expected score in the 70/30 case is -0.88.

Graph.