Alexei comments on Tendencies in reflective equilibrium - LessWrong

27 Post author: Yvain 20 July 2011 10:38AM

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Comment author: Alexei 20 July 2011 08:26:16PM 1 point [-]

One of the ways to be more correct is to use frameworks of reasoning rather than your intuition. When you see a question like: "What sounds like a fair punishment for a homeless man who steals $1,000?", you should quickly create a framework for answering questions like that. Yvain's example for that kind of framework is "jail time = (10 * amount stolen)/net worth". This significantly helps to anyone be more consistent.

Comment author: JGWeissman 20 July 2011 08:49:37PM 2 points [-]

If you want to not just be consistant, but consistantly reflect your preferences (or reflective equilibrium of tendencies), you should validate your framework against a wide range of hypotheticals in the domain before actually using it in the specific case that prompted you to create it.

(Or try to meet the higher criteria of consistancy, not just that you judgments on a sequence of situations are consistant with each other, but that they are also consistant with the judgements made by a copy of you who sees the situations in a different order.)

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 21 July 2011 10:59:27AM *  1 point [-]

It's "consistent".

Comment author: JGWeissman 21 July 2011 05:24:03PM 16 points [-]

At least I spelled it the same way every time ;)

Comment author: Alexei 20 July 2011 10:09:24PM 1 point [-]

Absolutely. You start with a framework of reasoning and you make it less wrong. :)