1) It can be phrased as a prediction. “I predict if someone had no way to evaluate their predictions based on evidence they would have no way of attaining a map that reflects the territory. They would have no way of attaining a belief-set that works better in this world than in the average of all possible worlds”.
2) It is a mathematical statement, or at any rate the logical implication of a mathematical statement, and thus is probably true in all possible worlds so I am not trying to entangle it with the territory.
I understand, but disagree. The point I have been trying to make is that it does.
My original claim was that an agent’s outcome was determined solely by that agent’s predictions and the external world in which that agent lived. If you define a theory so that its predictive content is a strict subset of all the predictions which can be derived from it then yes, its predictive content is not all that matters, the other predictions matter as well.
It nonetheless remains the case that what happens to an agent is determined by that agent’s predictions. You need to understand that theories are not fundamentally Bayesian concepts, so it is much better to argue Bayes at either the statement-level or the agent-level than the theory-level.
In addition, I think our debate is starting to annoy everyone else here. There have been times when the entire recent comments bar is filled with comments from one of us, which is considered bad form.
I do not agree with this assertion.
Some things I note about it:
1) it isn’t phrased as a prediction
2) it isn’t phrased as an argument based on empirical evidence
Would you like to try rewriting it more carefully?
1) It can be phrased as a prediction. “I predict if someone had no way to evaluate their predictions based on evidence they would have no way of attaining a map that reflects the territory. They would have no way of attaining a belief-set that works better in this world than in the average of all possible worlds”.
2) It is a mathematical statement, or at any rate the logical implication of a mathematical statement, and thus is probably true in all possible worlds so I am not trying to entangle it with the territory.
If Y can be phrased as a prediction, it does not follow that Y is the predictive content of X. Do you understand?
I understand, but disagree. The point I have been trying to make is that it does.
My original claim was that an agent’s outcome was determined solely by that agent’s predictions and the external world in which that agent lived. If you define a theory so that its predictive content is a strict subset of all the predictions which can be derived from it then yes, its predictive content is not all that matters, the other predictions matter as well.
It nonetheless remains the case that what happens to an agent is determined by that agent’s predictions. You need to understand that theories are not fundamentally Bayesian concepts, so it is much better to argue Bayes at either the statement-level or the agent-level than the theory-level.
In addition, I think our debate is starting to annoy everyone else here. There have been times when the entire recent comments bar is filled with comments from one of us, which is considered bad form.
Could we continue this somewhere else?
Yes. I PMed you somewhere yesterday. Did you get it?