It does apply to every person. The other information you have about the claimed messiahs may allow you to conclude them not worthy of further consideration (or any consideration). The low prior makes that easy. But if you do consider other arguments for some reason, you have to take them into account. And some surface signals can be enough to give you grounds for in fact seeking/considering more data. Also, you are never justified in active arguing from ignorance: if you expend some effort on the arguing, you must consider the question sufficiently important, which must cause you to learn more about it if you believe yourself to be ignorant about potentially conclusion-changing detail.
I don’t know to what you refer either, but I can guess. The thing is, my guesses haven’t been doing very well lately, so I would appreciate some feedback. Were you suggesting that you would have thought that taw should have more easily understood your point, but he didn’t (because inferential distance between you was greater than expected)?
I don’t know to what you refer either, but I can guess.
I admit was being obscure so I’m rather impressed that you followed my reasoning—especially since it included a reference that you may not be familiar with. I kept it obscure because I wanted the focus to be on my confusion while minimising slight to taw.
Actually this whole post-thread has been eye opening and or confusing and or surprising to me. I’ve been blinking and double taking all over the place: “people think?”, “that works?”, etc. What surprised me most (and in a good way) was the degree to which all the comments have been a net positive. Political and personal topics so often become negative sum but this one didn’t seem to.
As a newcomer to LW, it has certainly impressed me. I’ve never before seen a discussion where the topic was “Is this guy we all respect a loon?” and the whole discussion is filled with clever arguments and surprising connections being drawn by all concerned—most particularly by the purported/disputed loon himself.
I wouldn’t have believed it possible if I hadn’t participated in it myself.
Also, you are never justified in active arguing from ignorance: if you expend some effort on the arguing
Reference class of “people who claimed to be saving the world and X” has exactly the same number of successes as reference class of “people who claimed to be saving the world and not X”, for every X.
It will be smaller, so you could argue that evidence against Eliezer will be weaker (0 successes in 1000 tries vs 0 successes in 1000000 tries), but every such X needs evidence by Occam’s razor (or your favourite equivalent). Otherwise you can take X = “wrote Harry Potter fanfiction” to ignore pretty much all past failures.
Unfortunately Internet doesn’t let me guess if you meant this humorously or not.
Entirely seriously. I also don’t see anything particularly funny about it.
Why does it apply to Eliezer and not to every other person claiming to be a messiah?
It does apply to every person. The other information you have about the claimed messiahs may allow you to conclude them not worthy of further consideration (or any consideration). The low prior makes that easy. But if you do consider other arguments for some reason, you have to take them into account. And some surface signals can be enough to give you grounds for in fact seeking/considering more data. Also, you are never justified in active arguing from ignorance: if you expend some effort on the arguing, you must consider the question sufficiently important, which must cause you to learn more about it if you believe yourself to be ignorant about potentially conclusion-changing detail.
See also: How Much Thought, Readiness Heuristics.
I am confused. Something has gone terribly wrong with my inferential distance prediction model.
And I have no idea what you refer to.
Approximately this entire comment branch.
I don’t know to what you refer either, but I can guess. The thing is, my guesses haven’t been doing very well lately, so I would appreciate some feedback. Were you suggesting that you would have thought that taw should have more easily understood your point, but he didn’t (because inferential distance between you was greater than expected)?
I admit was being obscure so I’m rather impressed that you followed my reasoning—especially since it included a reference that you may not be familiar with. I kept it obscure because I wanted the focus to be on my confusion while minimising slight to taw.
Actually this whole post-thread has been eye opening and or confusing and or surprising to me. I’ve been blinking and double taking all over the place: “people think?”, “that works?”, etc. What surprised me most (and in a good way) was the degree to which all the comments have been a net positive. Political and personal topics so often become negative sum but this one didn’t seem to.
As a newcomer to LW, it has certainly impressed me. I’ve never before seen a discussion where the topic was “Is this guy we all respect a loon?” and the whole discussion is filled with clever arguments and surprising connections being drawn by all concerned—most particularly by the purported/disputed loon himself.
I wouldn’t have believed it possible if I hadn’t participated in it myself.
Reference class of “people who claimed to be saving the world and X” has exactly the same number of successes as reference class of “people who claimed to be saving the world and not X”, for every X.
It will be smaller, so you could argue that evidence against Eliezer will be weaker (0 successes in 1000 tries vs 0 successes in 1000000 tries), but every such X needs evidence by Occam’s razor (or your favourite equivalent). Otherwise you can take X = “wrote Harry Potter fanfiction” to ignore pretty much all past failures.