Not always. Time-consuming investigations have a disutility value - if the prior for theories in this reference class multiplied by the utility of finding this idea to be true does not overcome that disutility, you ought not investigate. That is a very serious reason to reject an idea. If you do not give some weight to time costs of investigation, I have a reductio ad absurdum here that will monopolise your free time forever.
That’s true. But that’s a reason to not investigate and not read this thread and not think about the subject at all, not a reason to reply in this thread that the idea is unlikely, much less to declare it unlikely.
If your reaction to reading about the truther idea is “the value of knowing the facts about this issue, whatever they are, is rather low, and it would be time consuming to learn them, so I don’t care” that is A-OK. If your reaction is “the value of knowing the facts about this issue, whatever they are, is rather low, and it would be time consuming to learn them, therefore I am not going to update whatsoever on this issue and will ignore the evidence I know is available and yet still have a strong, high-confidence belief on it” then that seems kind of silly to me.
Does that make sense? Do you agree, or not? This is not an issue I feel very strongly about, but value of information is something I’ve been thinking about more recently and so I think that hearing others’ opinions on it would be useful. At the very least, worth the time to read them :) Amusing link, by the way.
That’s true. But that’s a reason to not investigate and not read this thread and not think about the subject at all, not a reason to reply in this thread that the idea is unlikely, much less to declare it unlikely.
If it’s a priori deemed unlikely, deciding not to investigate will lead to it staying this way, and one could as well express this state of knowledge in posting to the thread.
So does the traditional explanation.
So is the traditional explanation. War in Iraq, anyone?
This is a very silly reason to reject an idea.
Not always. Time-consuming investigations have a disutility value - if the prior for theories in this reference class multiplied by the utility of finding this idea to be true does not overcome that disutility, you ought not investigate. That is a very serious reason to reject an idea. If you do not give some weight to time costs of investigation, I have a reductio ad absurdum here that will monopolise your free time forever.
That’s true. But that’s a reason to not investigate and not read this thread and not think about the subject at all, not a reason to reply in this thread that the idea is unlikely, much less to declare it unlikely.
If your reaction to reading about the truther idea is “the value of knowing the facts about this issue, whatever they are, is rather low, and it would be time consuming to learn them, so I don’t care” that is A-OK. If your reaction is “the value of knowing the facts about this issue, whatever they are, is rather low, and it would be time consuming to learn them, therefore I am not going to update whatsoever on this issue and will ignore the evidence I know is available and yet still have a strong, high-confidence belief on it” then that seems kind of silly to me.
Does that make sense? Do you agree, or not? This is not an issue I feel very strongly about, but value of information is something I’ve been thinking about more recently and so I think that hearing others’ opinions on it would be useful. At the very least, worth the time to read them :) Amusing link, by the way.
I agree with you that “investigating is time-consuming” is not a defense for declaring ideas you don’t like to be unlikely.
If it’s a priori deemed unlikely, deciding not to investigate will lead to it staying this way, and one could as well express this state of knowledge in posting to the thread.
It’s a reason to keep the idea rejected, without giving it a chance to become accepted.