- Is Eve irrational?
- Can believing an unfalsifyable believe be rational?
- Can this argument be extended to believe in God?
Thank you, that was a very nice extension to the story. I should have included the scenario to make her belief relevant. I agree with you, assigning 100% probability is irrational in her case. But, if she is not rationally literate enough to express herself in fuzzy, non-binary way, I think she would maintain rationality through saying "Ceteris paribus, I prefer to be not locked in the same room with Cain because I believe he is a murder because I believe Adam was innocent" (ignoring ad hominem)
I was under the impression that the golden standard for rationality is falsifiability. However, I now understand that Eve is rational despite unfalsifiablity, because she remained Bayesian.
I'm still deeply troubled by the focus on labels "rational" and now "Bayesian", rather than "winning", "predicting", or "correct".
For epistemic rationality, focus on truth rather than rationality: do these beliefs map to actual contingent states of the universe? Especially for human-granularity beliefs, Bayesian reasoning is really difficult, because it's unlikely for you to know your priors in any precise way.
For instrumental rationality, focus on decisions: are the actions I'm taking based on these beliefs likely to improve my future experiences?