Stephen R. Diamond, there are two distinct things in play here: (i) an assessment of the plausibility of certain statements conditional on some background knowledge; and (ii) the relative frequency of outcomes of trials in a counterfactual world in which the number of trials is very large. You've declared that probability can't be (i) because it's (ii) -- actually, the Kolmogorov axioms apply to both. Justification for using the word "probability" to refer to things of type (i) can be found in the first two chapters of this book. I personally call things of type (i) "probabilities" and things of type (ii) "relative frequencies"; the key is to recognize that they need different names.
On your further critiques:
(1) Eliezer is a determinist; see the quantum physics sequence.
(2) True. A logical argument is only as reliable as its premises, and every method for learning from empirical information is only as reliable as its inductive bias. Unfortunately, every extant practical method of learning has an inductive bias, and the no free lunch theorems give reason to believe that this is a permanent state of affairs.
I'm not sure what you mean in your last sentence...
Vilhelm S., companies and people who lose money on CDOs have mortgages to pay and employ people who have mortgages to pay... Once the system gets coupled like that, one unlucky bet can start the cascade. I'm not saying this actually happened, but it's a mechanism which could falsify the assertion "the lack of correlation doesn't stop being real just because people believe in it".
David, the inelegance is that the study asked adults in general to imagine parental grief rather than asking parents in particular. (Your correct observations about imagined versus actual grief were already set forth in the post.)
This post helps to ease much of what I have found frustrating in the task of understanding the implications of EP.
Huh. I guess I just don't see Angel (the TV character, not the commenter) as the equivalent of the verthandi. (Also naming the idea after the actor instead of the character lead me somewhat astray.)
If you google boreana you should get an idea of where that term comes from, same as verthandi.
Still need a little help. Top hits appear to be David Boreanaz, a plant in the Rue family, and a moth.
No. I asserted that...
Fair enough.
This might be a good idea... At this point, the "hedonic impact" of this mechanic will almost disappear.
I don't disagree with this. My scenario is premised on the reward being a surprise, so it implicitly assumes one-time use, or at least no overuse.
Well, that is even worse, because essentially, you just took the choice away from player.
I can't help but feel that you didn't really bother to think this response through. Taken literally, you've just asserted that a surprising reward with character synergy is worse than a surprising rigid reward that makes the player feel regret. You assert that this is so because choice was taken away from the player even though neither situation involves player choice.
I get that yout design principle is to give the player choice and the ability to plan. So what is the right way to give "good news" to the player with the most hedonic impact?
CannibalSmith, JacobLyles,
The emphasis on Bayesian probability is because it is the simplest way to extend classical logic to propositions with varying degrees of plausibility. Just as all classical logic can be reduced to repeated applications of modus ponens, all manipulations of plausibility can be reduced to applications of Bayes' Theorem (assuming you want results that will line up with classical logic as the plausibilities approach TRUE and FALSE).
I don't know what document that link originally pointed to, but this document contains one of Jaynes's earliest (if not the earliest) descriptions of the idea.