Cyan2 comments on No Universally Compelling Arguments - Less Wrong

33 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 26 June 2008 08:29AM

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Comment author: Cyan2 26 June 2008 03:17:51PM 4 points [-]

What's the difference between calling Bayesian reasoning an "engine of accuracy" because of its information-theoretic properties as you've done in the past and saying that any argument based on it ought to be universally compelling?

Bayesian reasoning is an "engine of accuracy" in the same why that classical logic is an engine of accuracy. Both are conditional on accepting some initial state of information. In classical logic, conclusions follow from premises; in Bayesian reasoning, posterior probability assignments follow from prior probability assignments. An argument in classical logic need not be universally compelling: you can always deny the premises. Likewise, Bayesian reasoning doesn't tell you which prior probabilities to adopt.