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[Please read the OP before voting. Special voting rules apply.]
As long as you get the gist (think in probability instead of certainty, update incrementally when new evidence comes along), there's no additional benefit to learning Bayes' Theorem.
I think this post should win the thread for blowing the most minds. (I'll upvote even though I think your position is tenable, since I only assign it 20% probability or so.)
I think the whole point is that there's no fact of the matter. "There are only maps" is a map, and on its own logic it's only as true as it is useful. I'm not sure how I would assign a probability to it.
In response to
What resources have increasing marginal utility?
A society where people abide by contracts 80% of the time is not 80% as good as a society where people abide by contracts 100% of the time; most of the societal value of trust (e.g. decreasing transaction costs) doesn't seem to manifest until people are pretty close to 100% trustworthy.
I don't agree since a society without contracts would be very, very bad. Still you ask an overall excellent question.
I don't understand your objection. What good would (written) contracts be if everyone always kept their word anyway?
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Sure. But then you've already lapsed into consequentialism, and thus stuck yourself with a mandate to consider the trade-offs between desirable and undesirable consequences. This is not what deontological and virtue-theoretic politicians actually do. What they actually do is see an undesirable consequence, and start loudly pointing it out, signaling "Look how morally brave I am for being willing to let this sort of thing happen out of pure principle!"
Can you give me some examples of this type of bravery by politicians, Eli?
Politicians might address downsides to their policies by ignoring, hiding, or downplaying them ("There may have been some civilian casualties, but the important thing is..."), calling them a necessary evil ("We protect hate speech to protect all other speech"), or spinning them into a positive good ("My new law inconveniences criminals? Good, let's stick it to 'em!").
But I can't think of any time a politician engaged in the proud bullet-biting you see with philosophers.