Eliezer’s mistake here was that he didn’t, before the QM sequence, write a general post to the effect that you don’t have an additional Bayesian burden of proof if your theory was proposed chronologically later. Given such a reference, it would have been a lot simpler to refer to that concept without it seeming like special pleading here.
It’s mentioned in passing in the “Technical Explanation” (but yes, not a full independently-linkable post):
Humans are very fond of making their predictions afterward, so the social process of science requires an advance prediction before we say that a result confirms a theory. But how humans may move in harmony with the way of Bayes, and so wield the power, is a separate issue from whether the math works. When we’re doing the math, we just take for granted that likelihood density functions are fixed properties of a hypothesis and the probability mass sums to 1 and you’d never dream of doing it any other way.
Hmm, I’m not sure that point is sufficiently (a) widely applicable and (b) insightful that it would merit its own post. Perhaps I’m being unimaginative though?
There’s certainly a tradeoff involved in using a disputed example as your first illustration of a general concept (here, Bayesian reasoning vs the Traditional Scientific Method).
Eliezer’s mistake here was that he didn’t, before the QM sequence, write a general post to the effect that you don’t have an additional Bayesian burden of proof if your theory was proposed chronologically later. Given such a reference, it would have been a lot simpler to refer to that concept without it seeming like special pleading here.
It’s mentioned in passing in the “Technical Explanation” (but yes, not a full independently-linkable post):
Hmm, I’m not sure that point is sufficiently (a) widely applicable and (b) insightful that it would merit its own post. Perhaps I’m being unimaginative though?
There’s certainly a tradeoff involved in using a disputed example as your first illustration of a general concept (here, Bayesian reasoning vs the Traditional Scientific Method).