Furslid comments on Fallacies as weak Bayesian evidence - LessWrong

59 Post author: Kaj_Sotala 18 March 2012 03:53AM

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

Comments (41)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: Furslid 22 March 2012 03:26:18PM 3 points [-]

Weak Bayesian evidence is neither necessary nor sufficient for a fallacy in this framework.

There are arguments which provide strong evidence that are still fallacious. As an example. 1% of the population considered is B. 90% of A are B. Therefore you should be 99% certain that X is a B, because you know that X is an A.

There are arguments which provide weak evidence that are not fallacious. As an example. 1% of the population considered is B. 25% of A are B. If you learn that X is an A, you should adjust your probability that X is a B upward.

The key to many fallacies is not weak evidence. The key to fallacies is evidence being treated as stronger than it is. This has the interesting implication that most arguments that claim complete certainty are fallacious.