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VincentYu comments on Naming the Highest Virtue of Epistemic Rationality - Less Wrong Discussion

-3 Post author: potato 24 October 2011 11:00PM

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Comment author: VincentYu 25 October 2011 01:32:32AM *  1 point [-]

But take note that if humans don't have the consistency to satisfy P(a) + P(~a) = 1 they most certainly don't have the consistency to satisfy P(a) = 1 either. So no you could not get a perfect score by setting all your beliefs to 1 because you can't set all your beliefs to 1.

I don't follow the argument. Perhaps we mean different things by 'consistency'? By consistent beliefs, I meant a set of beliefs that cannot be used to derive a contradiction with the usual probability axioms. I was not making a claim about how humans come to believe things.

ETA: About this:

P(a) + P(~a) = 1 seems like something humans do alright with.

I think you place too much trust in the consistency of human beliefs. In fact, I wouldn't trust myself with that. Suppose you ask me to assign subjective probabilities to 50 statements. Immediately afterwards, you give me a list of the negations of these 50 statements. I'm pretty sure I'll violate P(a) + P(~a) = 1 at least once.

Comment author: potato 25 October 2011 02:06:51AM 0 points [-]

But you'll probably violate it within some reasonable error range. I doubt you would ever get anything as high as 150% given to (a or ~a) if you actually performed this test. And still 1/50 isn't bad.

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