Your second-order desires are fixed by your desires as a whole, trivially. But they aren't fixed by your first-order desires. So it makes sense for me to ask whether you harbor a second-order desire to change your first-order desires in this case, or whether you are reflectively satisfied with your first-order desires.
Consider the alcoholic who desires to stop craving alcohol (a second-order desire), but who continues to drink alcohol (because his first-order desires are stronger than his desire-desires). Presumably your first-order desires are currently defeating your second-order ones, else you'd have already switched first-order desires. But it doesn't follow from this that your second-order desires are nonexistent!
Perhaps, for instance, your second-order desire is strong enough that if you could simply push a button to forever effortlessly change your first-order desires, you would do so; but your second-order desire isn't so strong that you'll change first-order desires by willpower alone, without having a magic button to press. This, I think, is an extremely common situation humans find themselves in. So I was curious whether you were satisfied or unsatisfied with your current first-order priorities.
I still do not alieve that keeping my child a safe distance away while sleeping but showing love and care at all other times increases her chance of SIDS. If I was to be shown conclusive research of cause and effect between them, I would reverse my current opinion, mos' def.
So it's not really the case that you'd prioritize psychological-guilt-avoidance over SIDS-avoidance? In that case the question is less interesting, since it's just a matter of how well you can think yourself into the hypothetical in which you have to choose between, say, increasing your child's odds of surviving by 1% and the cost of, say, increasing your guilt-if-the-child-does-die by 200%.
In that case the question is less interesting, since it's just a matter of how well you can think yourself into the hypothetical in which you have to choose between, say, increasing your child's odds of surviving by 1% and the cost of, say, increasing your guilt-if-the-child-does-die by 200%.
I guess, but in real life I don't sit down with a calculator to figure that out; I'd settle for some definitive research.
...Your second-order desires are fixed by your desires as a whole, trivially. But they aren't fixed by your first-order desires. So it makes sense
Why is Bayes' Rule useful? Most explanations of Bayes explain the how of Bayes: they take a well-posed mathematical problem and convert given numbers to desired numbers. While Bayes is useful for calculating hard-to-estimate numbers from easy-to-estimate numbers, the quantitative use of Bayes requires the qualitative use of Bayes, which is noticing that such a problem exists. When you have a hard-to-estimate number that you could figure out from easy-to-estimate numbers, then you want to use Bayes. This mental process of testing beliefs and searching for easy experiments is the heart of practical Bayesian thinking. As an example, let us examine 1 Kings 3:16-28:
Notice that Solomon explicitly identified competing hypotheses, raising them to the level of conscious attention. When each hypothesis has a personal advocate, this is easy, but it is no less important when considering other uncertainties. Often, a problem looks clearer when you branch an uncertain variable on its possible values, even if it is as simple as saying "This is either true or not true."
Solomon considers the empirical consequences of the competing hypotheses, searching for a test which will favor one hypothesis over another. When considering one hypothesis alone, it is easy to find tests which are likely if that hypothesis is true. The true mother is likely to say the child is hers; the true mother is likely to be passionate about the issue. But that's not enough; we need to also estimate how likely those results are if the hypothesis is false. The false mother is equally likely to say the child is hers, and could generate equal passion. We need a test whose results significantly depend on which hypothesis is actually true.
Witnesses or DNA tests would be more likely to support the true mother than the false mother, but they aren't available. Solomon realizes that the claimant's motivations are different, and thus putting the child in danger may cause the true mother and false mother to act differently. The test works, generates a large likelihood ratio, and now his posterior firmly favors the first claimant as the true mother.