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Dmytry comments on Request: Interesting Invertible Facts - Less Wrong Discussion

19 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 08 October 2010 08:02PM

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Comment author: Dmytry 10 November 2011 09:26:28PM *  0 points [-]

Sorry, but many of those statements are simply vague ('much the same', does driving count? 'often' ?), and/or overgeneralised. Or non-informative, e.g. the statement that <50% of abused children become abusive adults. It's much more interesting to compare that against the baseline. In a society where >50% of adults are abusive, you can expect most abused children to become abusive adults. The infants mirror self recognition is extremely variable, see this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rouge_test

Speaking of which, something interesting. A vague statement is generally unsurprising and/or is predictable, as is negation of the vague statement, not because of some cognitive bias, but because of vagueness.