You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

SquirrelInHell comments on Open Thread May 23 - May 29, 2016 - Less Wrong Discussion

4 Post author: Gunnar_Zarncke 22 May 2016 09:11PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (120)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: SquirrelInHell 24 May 2016 02:26:32AM 5 points [-]
Comment author: jollybard 25 May 2016 03:07:52AM 1 point [-]

This looks great and I can see that it should work, but I can't seem to find a formal proof. Can you explain a bit?

Comment author: Elo 25 May 2016 07:18:16AM -1 points [-]
Comment author: Elo 24 May 2016 11:16:54PM -1 points [-]

If I am reading this correctly:

I saw some footprints; I know that there are 1/3 humans around and 2/3 cats around. there is a 3/4 likelyhood that humans made the human shaped footprint; there is a 1/4 chance that cats in boots made the human shaped footprints. Therefore my belief is that humans are more likely to have made the footprints than cats.

(I think it needs a little work, but it's an excellent diagram so far)

A suggestion: modify the number of creatures on the left to equal a count of the frequency of the priors? And the number on the right to account for frequency of belief.

Comment author: SquirrelInHell 25 May 2016 01:13:02AM 0 points [-]

Yup.

A suggestion: modify the number of creatures on the left to equal a count of the frequency of the priors? And the number on the right to account for frequency of belief.

I don't buy "frequency of belief". Maybe instead, I'd put those in thought bubbles, and change scaling of the bubbles.

Comment author: Elo 25 May 2016 07:24:08AM *  -1 points [-]

C̶a̶n̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶a̶l̶s̶o̶ ̶a̶d̶d̶ ̶a̶ ̶w̶a̶t̶e̶r̶m̶a̶r̶k̶ ̶s̶o̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶g̶e̶t̶ ̶c̶r̶e̶d̶i̶t̶s̶ ̶i̶f̶ ̶I̶ ̶r̶e̶p̶o̶s̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶i̶m̶a̶g̶e̶?̶ Edit: woops there is a watermark, I just didn't see it.

I was thinking more specficially, "I live with 1 humans and 2 cats. therefore my priors of who could have made these footprints are represented by one human and two cats". not exactly frequency of belief but a "belief of frequency"?

Edit: also can it be a square not a rectangle? Is there a reason it was a rectangle to begin with? Something about strength of evidence maybe?

One last edit: Can you make the "cat in boots" less likely? How many cats in boots do other people have in normal priors??

Comment author: SquirrelInHell 26 May 2016 01:47:10AM *  3 points [-]

Can you make the "cat in boots" less likely?

It's not supposed to be realistic - real frequency of cats in boots is way too low for that. But I adjusted it a little for you: https://i.imgsafe.org/5876a8e.png

Edit: and about the shape, it matters not, as long as you think in odds ratios.

Comment author: Elo 26 May 2016 03:17:04AM *  -1 points [-]

I like this version much better. Yes the shape does not matter; it does help me think about it though. I think this is generally an excellent visual representation. Well done!

Comment author: PipFoweraker 24 May 2016 04:19:19AM *  0 points [-]

Whoah. That gets many points. What an excellent layout! We need to know what boots are for it to translate, but that's a lot closer to an ideal solution than I've worked through.

Edit - I thought the diagram looked familiar!