tut comments on Crisis of Faith - Less Wrong

57 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 10 October 2008 10:08PM

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Comment author: Caledonian2 11 October 2008 11:34:22AM 0 points [-]

Trying to set up an artificial crisis in which one outcome is as likely as another is a very bad idea.

If your belief is rationally unjustfiable, a 'crisis' in which one has only a fifty-fifty chance of rejecting the belief is not an improvement in rationality. Such a crisis is nothing more than picking a multiple-choice answer at random -- and with enough arbirarily-chosen options, the chance of getting the *right* one becomes arbitrarily small.

A strategy that actually works is setting your specific beliefs aside and returning to a state of uncertainty, then testing one possibility against the other on down to first principles. Uncertainty != each possibility equally likely.

Comment author: tut 18 June 2009 07:06:48AM *  1 point [-]

Uncertainty != each possibility equally likely

I think he meant that each possibility appears equally likely before you look at the evidence. Basically reset your prior, if that were possible.