= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Jiro comments on Common sense as a prior - LessWrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (212)
You're assuming that people work by probabilities and Bayes each time. Nobody can do that for all of their beliefs, and many people don't do it much at all. Typically a statement like "any probability less than 0.01 is I set to 0" really means "I have this set of preferences, but I think I can derive a statement about probabilities from that set of preferences". Pointing out that they don't actually ignore a probability of 0.01 when wearing a seatbelt, then, should lead to a response of "I guess my derivation isn't quite right" and lead them to revise the statement, but it's not a reason why they should change their preferences in the cases that they originally derived the statement from.
Yep, that's right. In my top-level comment, I said, "In any event, many elites are not even systematic or consequentialist in translating utilities times probabilities into actions." Still, on big government-policy questions that affect society (rather than personal actions, relationships, etc.) elites tend to be (relatively) more interested in utilitarian calculations.