lukeprog comments on Calibration Test with database of 150,000+ questions - LessWrong

37 Post author: Nanashi 14 March 2015 11:22AM

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Comment author: lukeprog 13 March 2015 05:59:17PM *  0 points [-]

I'd prefer not to allow 0 and 1 as available credences. But if 0 remained as an option I would just interpret it as "very close to 0" and then keep using the app, though if a future version of the app showed me my Bayes score then the difference between what the app allows me to choose (0%) and what I'm interpreting 0 to mean ("very close to 0") could matter.

Comment author: owencb 13 March 2015 07:56:56PM 4 points [-]

I think it's misleading to just drop in the statement that 0 and 1 are not probabilities.

There is a reasonable and arguably better definition of probabilities which excludes them, but it's not the standard one, and it also has costs -- for example probabilities are a useful tool in building models, and it is sometimes useful to use probabilities 0 and 1 in models.

(aside: it works as a kind of 'clickbait' in the original article title, and Eliezer doesn't actually make such a controversial statement in the post, so I'm not complaining about that)

Comment author: lukeprog 13 March 2015 09:55:55PM 1 point [-]

Fair enough. I've edited my original comment.

(For posterity: the text for my original comment's first hyperlink originally read "0 and 1 are not probabilities".)

Comment author: owencb 13 March 2015 10:16:04PM 0 points [-]

Perfect, thanks!