you can fault them for not properly updating but you can’t fault them for inconsistency.
They’re still being inconsistent with respect to the reality they observe. Why is the self-consistency alone more important than a consistency with observation?
You are correct that both sorts of things could be called inconsistency, and as soon as I come up with a better way to phrase that difference I’ll edit.
I think being consistent with observations + priors is better than being consistently wrong. I also think being wrong in known ways is better than being wrong is unknown ways. Imagine driving a car with a speedometer that’s always ten miles an hour under what you’re actually going, or using a clock that’s twenty minutes fast. You know you’re getting wrong answers, but you can do an adjustment in your head to correct for it. If your speedometer is off by a random amount that changes at random times, it’s both inconsistent with observation and inconsistent with itself, and therefore useless. You can’t adjust or compensate, you just have to ignore it. (Or get used to getting pulled over :p)
They’re still being inconsistent with respect to the reality they observe. Why is the self-consistency alone more important than a consistency with observation?
You are correct that both sorts of things could be called inconsistency, and as soon as I come up with a better way to phrase that difference I’ll edit.
I think being consistent with observations + priors is better than being consistently wrong. I also think being wrong in known ways is better than being wrong is unknown ways. Imagine driving a car with a speedometer that’s always ten miles an hour under what you’re actually going, or using a clock that’s twenty minutes fast. You know you’re getting wrong answers, but you can do an adjustment in your head to correct for it. If your speedometer is off by a random amount that changes at random times, it’s both inconsistent with observation and inconsistent with itself, and therefore useless. You can’t adjust or compensate, you just have to ignore it. (Or get used to getting pulled over :p)