I’m suspicious of the notion of “increasing” and “decreasing” a belief. Did you pick those words exactly because you didn’t want to use the word “updating”? Why not?
My guess is that having a bad memory is as much a disadvantage for Bayesians as for Popperians.
I’m suspicious of your suspicion. Is it purely because of the terms I used, or do you really have no beliefs you hold more tenuously than others?
If I ask you whether the sun rose this morning, will you examine a series of criticisms of that idea for validity and strength?
If I ask you whether it’s dangerous to swim after a heavy meal, you’ll probably check snopes to verify your suspicion that it’s an old wives’ tale, and possibly check any sources cited at snopes. But will you really store the details of all those arguments in your memory as metadata next to “danger of swimming after a heavy meal,” or just mark it as “almost certainly not dangerous”?
To save on storage, learn powerful explanations. Sometimes ideas can be integrated into better ideas that elegantly cover a lot of ground. Finding connections between fields is an important part of learning.
Learning easy to remember rules of thumb—and improving them with criticism when they cause problems—is also valuable for some applications.
I’m suspicious of the notion of “increasing” and “decreasing” a belief. Did you pick those words exactly because you didn’t want to use the word “updating”? Why not?
My guess is that having a bad memory is as much a disadvantage for Bayesians as for Popperians.
I’m suspicious of your suspicion. Is it purely because of the terms I used, or do you really have no beliefs you hold more tenuously than others?
If I ask you whether the sun rose this morning, will you examine a series of criticisms of that idea for validity and strength?
If I ask you whether it’s dangerous to swim after a heavy meal, you’ll probably check snopes to verify your suspicion that it’s an old wives’ tale, and possibly check any sources cited at snopes. But will you really store the details of all those arguments in your memory as metadata next to “danger of swimming after a heavy meal,” or just mark it as “almost certainly not dangerous”?
To save on storage, learn powerful explanations. Sometimes ideas can be integrated into better ideas that elegantly cover a lot of ground. Finding connections between fields is an important part of learning.
Learning easy to remember rules of thumb—and improving them with criticism when they cause problems—is also valuable for some applications.
I don’t think the shortcuts I take on easy questions are very demonstrative of anything.
I know what it means to think an outcome is likely or not likely. I don’t know what it means for a belief to be tenuous or not tenuous.