Terminology request: Can we use the term “positive test bias” instead of “positive bias”?
“Positive bias” seems like bad jargon—it is not used by researchers, an unfamiliar listener would probably think that it had something to do with having an overly rosey view of things, and all of the results on the first page of Google except for those from LW use it to refer to an overly rosey view.
Whereas “positive test bias” is used by some researchers in the same sense that Eliezer used “positive bias”, is only used in that sense on the first page of Google hits, is a more precise phrasing of the same idea, and is less likely to be taken by unfamiliar listeners as referring to an overly rosey view.
The term that is most commonly used by researchers is “confirmation bias”, but as Eliezer noted in his original post this term gets used to talk about a cluster of related biases; some researchers recognize this and instead talk about “confirmatory biases”. Singling out “positive test bias” with a separate label seems like a potentially good case of jargon proliferation—having more terms in order to talk more precisely about different related concepts—but calling it “positive bias” seems like a mistake.
Terminology request: Can we use the term “positive test bias” instead of “positive bias”?
“Positive bias” seems like bad jargon—it is not used by researchers, an unfamiliar listener would probably think that it had something to do with having an overly rosey view of things, and all of the results on the first page of Google except for those from LW use it to refer to an overly rosey view.
Whereas “positive test bias” is used by some researchers in the same sense that Eliezer used “positive bias”, is only used in that sense on the first page of Google hits, is a more precise phrasing of the same idea, and is less likely to be taken by unfamiliar listeners as referring to an overly rosey view.
The term that is most commonly used by researchers is “confirmation bias”, but as Eliezer noted in his original post this term gets used to talk about a cluster of related biases; some researchers recognize this and instead talk about “confirmatory biases”. Singling out “positive test bias” with a separate label seems like a potentially good case of jargon proliferation—having more terms in order to talk more precisely about different related concepts—but calling it “positive bias” seems like a mistake.
Unnamed, great to see you on LW2.0! We interacted a month ago, but I didn’t register that it was you. Renaming the bias seems like a good idea—done.