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Viliam_Bur comments on Open thread, 23-29 June 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: David_Gerard 23 June 2014 07:21AM

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Comment author: Viliam_Bur 24 June 2014 07:42:08AM *  7 points [-]

A simple informal reason for giving a small probability to "A causes B" could be this:

For any fixed values A and B, there is only one explanation "A causes B", one explanation "B causes A", and many explanations "C causes A and B" (for many different values of C). If we split 100% between all these explanations, the last group gets most of the probability mass.

And as you said, the more complex given field is, the more realistic values of C there are.