I think I figured where the source of confusion is. From the wording of the problem I assume that:
The first researcher is going to publish anyways once he reaches 100 patients, no matter what the results are.
The second researcher will continue as long as he doesn’t meet his desired ratio, and had he not reached these results—he would continue forever without publishing and we’d never even heard of his experiment.
For the first researcher, a failure would update our belief in the treatment’s effectiveness downward and a success would update it upward. For the second researcher, a failure will not update our belief—because we wouldn’t even know the research existed—so for a success to update our belief upward would violate the Conservation of Expected Evidence.
But—if we do know about the second researcher’s experiment, we can interpret the fact that he didn’t publish as a failure to reach a sufficient ratio of success, and update our belief down—which makes it meaningful to update our belief up when he publishes the results.
So—it’s not about state of mind—it’s about the researchers actions in other Everett branches where their experiments failed.
I think I figured where the source of confusion is. From the wording of the problem I assume that:
The first researcher is going to publish anyways once he reaches 100 patients, no matter what the results are.
The second researcher will continue as long as he doesn’t meet his desired ratio, and had he not reached these results—he would continue forever without publishing and we’d never even heard of his experiment.
For the first researcher, a failure would update our belief in the treatment’s effectiveness downward and a success would update it upward. For the second researcher, a failure will not update our belief—because we wouldn’t even know the research existed—so for a success to update our belief upward would violate the Conservation of Expected Evidence.
But—if we do know about the second researcher’s experiment, we can interpret the fact that he didn’t publish as a failure to reach a sufficient ratio of success, and update our belief down—which makes it meaningful to update our belief up when he publishes the results.
So—it’s not about state of mind—it’s about the researchers actions in other Everett branches where their experiments failed.