Tyrrell_McAllister

What Bayesianism taught me

David Chapman criticizes "pop Bayesianism" as just common-sense rationality dressed up as intimidating math[1]: > Bayesianism boils down to “don’t be so sure of your beliefs; be less sure when you see contradictory evidence.” > Now that is just common sense. Why does anyone need to be told this? And how does [Bayes'] formula help? > > [...] > > The leaders of the movement presumably do understand probability. But I’m wondering whether they simply use Bayes’ formula to intimidate lesser minds into accepting “don’t be so sure of your beliefs.” (In which case, Bayesianism is not about Bayes’ Rule, after all.) > > I don’t think I’d approve of that. “Don’t be so sure” is a valuable lesson, but I’d rather teach it in a way people can understand, rather than by invoking a Holy Mystery. What does Bayes's formula have to teach us about how to do epistemology, beyond obvious things like "never be absolutely certain; update your credences when you see new evidence"? I list below some of the specific things that I learned from Bayesianism. Some of these are examples of mistakes I'd made that Bayesianism corrected. Others are things that I just hadn't thought about explicitly before encountering Bayesianism, but which now seem important to me. I'm interested in hearing what other people here would put on their own lists of things Bayesianism taught them. (Different people would make different lists, depending on how they had already thought about epistemology when they first encountered "pop Bayesianism".) I'm interested especially in those lessons that you think followed more-or-less directly from taking Bayesianism seriously as a normative epistemology (plus maybe the idea of making decisions based on expected utility). The LW memeplex contains many other valuable lessons (e.g., avoid the mind-projection fallacy, be mindful of inferential gaps, the MW interpretation of QM has a lot going for it, decision theory should take into account "logical causation", etc.). Howev

114Aug 12, 2013

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Good arguments against "cultural appropriation"

[Originally posted to Facebook.] I'm collecting steel-man arguments that the concept of "cultural appropriation" describes a real problem. Below are three arguments that seem somewhat reasonable to me in some cases. They seem to point to plausibly real costs of cross-cultural sharing and re-interpretation. (Just to lay my cards on...

Dec 18, 201824

Moving Factward

In the legendarium of J.R.R. Tolkien, the land of the gods is known as "The Uttermost West." For the world was originally created flat, and the gods took the westernmost region of this flat world for their dwelling place. On our globe, of course, there is no westernmost point. And...

Nov 29, 201814

Sam Harris and the Is–Ought Gap

Many secular materialist are puzzled by Sam Harris's frequent assertion that science can bridge Hume's is–ought gap. Indeed, bafflement abounds on both sides whenever he debates his "bridge" with other materialists. Both sides are unable to understand how the other can fail to grasp elementary and undeniable points. This podcast...

Nov 16, 201891

Intrinsic properties and Eliezer's metaethics

ABSTRACT I give an account for why some properties seem intrinsic while others seem extrinsic. In light of this account, the property of moral goodness seems intrinsic in one way and extrinsic in another. Most properties do not suffer from this ambiguity. I suggest that this is why many people...

Aug 29, 201718

Globally better means locally worse

Home appliances, such as washing machines, are apparently much less durable now than they were decades ago. [ETA: Thanks to commenters for providing lots of reasons to doubt this claim (especially from here and here).] Perhaps this is a kind of mirror image of "cost disease". In many sectors (education,...

Mar 22, 20178

Buckets and memetic immune disorders

AnnaSalamon's recent post on "flinching" and "buckets" nicely complements PhilGoetz's 2009 post Reason as memetic immune disorder. (I'll be assuming that readers have read Anna's post, but not necessarily Phil's.) Using Anna's terminology, I take Phil to be talking about the dangers of merging buckets that started out as separate....

Jan 3, 201723

Why is the A-Theory of Time Attractive?

I've always been puzzled by why so many people have such strong intuitions about whether the A-theory or the B-theory1 of time is true. [ETA: I've written "A-theory" and "B-theory" as code for "presentism" and "eternalism", but see the first footnote.] It seems like nothing psychologically important turns on this...

Oct 31, 201411

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Tyrrell_McAllister

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Tyrrell_McAllister

What Bayesianism taught me

Sam Harris and the Is–Ought Gap

Good arguments against "cultural appropriation"

An explanation of Aumann's agreement theorem

Tyrrell_McAllister

Good arguments against "cultural appropriation"

Moving Factward

Sam Harris and the Is–Ought Gap

Intrinsic properties and Eliezer's metaethics

Globally better means locally worse

Buckets and memetic immune disorders

Why is the A-Theory of Time Attractive?

What Bayesianism taught me

Sam Harris and the Is–Ought Gap

Good arguments against "cultural appropriation"

An explanation of Aumann's agreement theorem

Good arguments against "cultural appropriation"

Moving Factward

Sam Harris and the Is–Ought Gap

Intrinsic properties and Eliezer's metaethics

Globally better means locally worse

Buckets and memetic immune disorders

Why is the A-Theory of Time Attractive?