It was the correct assumption to make, in precisely the same way that 2 for 1 odds on a coin flip is the correct bet to take. That is why I included the context of “given his knowledge or priors” directly after the part you quoted.
In any event, dfranke failed to multiply this small prior probability by the huge negative utility of bringing up associations in a transwoman of being cruelly treated as a defective male instead of the female she sees herself as. The art did not fail him in assigning low probability to the truth, he failed the art in not considering the potential consequences of low probability possibilities.
It is true that people make mistakes, and we should be able to react by improving ourselves and moving on, but the first step in this process is to stop making excuses and admit the mistake.
Ever played poker? You can tell if a player’s going to improve a lot or only a little by looking at whether they reward themselves for making the right play win or lose, or for winning the hand right play or no. Analogously, dfranke made the right play and got unlucky.
I can invoke selection effects and the dust specks vs torture post and especially a failure to multiply to explain why the disutility of accidentally insulting a transgendered person appears to outweigh the disutility of adopting a different communication style but does not, but you should be doing that for yourself.
It was a reasonable assumption, but not a “completely correct” one. Certainty, for example, wouldn’t be justified (but it wasn’t expressed either, this sub-discussion rather refers to shokwave’s “completely correct” characterization).
Interesting. I got completely stuck on shuffling around the existing words instead of looking for a substitute.
“Reasonable” may suffer from the same problem (immediately I can imagine “reasonable people don’t go around Xing all the Ys”) as correct, but to a lesser extent. At the very least, thanks for opening up my thought process on the matter.
Making assumptions usually trades off correctness for simplicity (which is often a good idea), raising merely likely to the status of certain. By its nature, making of assumptions won’t be characterized by “complete correctness”.
What I am aiming for is to be able to examine the process a person used in producing their assumption, compare it to a prototypical process that always produces the best possible assumption from all given knowledge, background knowledge, and prior distributions, and then be able to say “this person made the best possible assumption they could have possibly made under the circumstances”.
Something similar to how you can look at a person making a bet and say whether they have made that bet correctly or not—before they win or lose.
It might be that ‘correct’ is simply contraindicated with ‘assumption’ and I have to find another way to express this.
It was the correct assumption to make, in precisely the same way that 2 for 1 odds on a coin flip is the correct bet to take. That is why I included the context of “given his knowledge or priors” directly after the part you quoted.
So what?
In any event, dfranke failed to multiply this small prior probability by the huge negative utility of bringing up associations in a transwoman of being cruelly treated as a defective male instead of the female she sees herself as. The art did not fail him in assigning low probability to the truth, he failed the art in not considering the potential consequences of low probability possibilities.
It is true that people make mistakes, and we should be able to react by improving ourselves and moving on, but the first step in this process is to stop making excuses and admit the mistake.
Ever played poker? You can tell if a player’s going to improve a lot or only a little by looking at whether they reward themselves for making the right play win or lose, or for winning the hand right play or no. Analogously, dfranke made the right play and got unlucky.
I can invoke selection effects and the dust specks vs torture post and especially a failure to multiply to explain why the disutility of accidentally insulting a transgendered person appears to outweigh the disutility of adopting a different communication style but does not, but you should be doing that for yourself.
It was a reasonable assumption, but not a “completely correct” one. Certainty, for example, wouldn’t be justified (but it wasn’t expressed either, this sub-discussion rather refers to shokwave’s “completely correct” characterization).
He completely correctly made the assumption that....
Would this phrasing illustrate the nuance I was aiming for better?
“Made the reasonable assumption” strikes me as most appropriate.
Interesting. I got completely stuck on shuffling around the existing words instead of looking for a substitute.
“Reasonable” may suffer from the same problem (immediately I can imagine “reasonable people don’t go around Xing all the Ys”) as correct, but to a lesser extent. At the very least, thanks for opening up my thought process on the matter.
Making assumptions usually trades off correctness for simplicity (which is often a good idea), raising merely likely to the status of certain. By its nature, making of assumptions won’t be characterized by “complete correctness”.
What I am aiming for is to be able to examine the process a person used in producing their assumption, compare it to a prototypical process that always produces the best possible assumption from all given knowledge, background knowledge, and prior distributions, and then be able to say “this person made the best possible assumption they could have possibly made under the circumstances”.
Something similar to how you can look at a person making a bet and say whether they have made that bet correctly or not—before they win or lose.
It might be that ‘correct’ is simply contraindicated with ‘assumption’ and I have to find another way to express this.
A 50% chance of each outcome of a coin toss would not count as an assumption about the outcome in my sense.
Works for me.