I’ve never seen prediction used in reference to a belief before. I’m curious to hear how you arrived at the conclusion that a belief is a prediction.
For me, a belief is something that I cannot prove but I suspect is true whereas a prediction is something that is based in research. Philip Tetlock’s book Superforcasting is a good example. Belief has little to nothing to do with making accurate forecasts whereas confronting one’s biases and conducting deep research are requirements.
I think it’s interesting how the word “belief” can simultaneously reflect certainty and uncertainty depending upon how it’s used in a sentence. For example, if I ask a project manager when her report will be finished, and she responds “I believe it will be finished on Tuesday”, I’d press the issue because that suggests to me that it might not be finished on Tuesday.
On the other hand, if I ask my religious brother-in-law if he believes in God, he will answer yes with absolute certainty.
My difficulty probably lies in part with my own habits around when and how I’m accustomed to using the word “believe” versus your own.
I’m curious to hear how you arrived at the conclusion that a belief is a prediction.
I got this in part from Eliezer’s post Make your beliefs pay rent in anticipated experiences. IMO, this premise (that beliefs should try to be predictions, and should try to be accurate predictions) is one of the cornerstones that LessWrong has been based on.
I just read the post that you linked to. He used the word “prediction” one time in the entire post so I’m having trouble understanding how that was mean’t to be an answer to my question. Same with that it’s a cornerstone of LessWrong, which, for me, is like asking a Christian why they believe in God, and they answer, because the Bible tells me so.
Is a belief a prediction?
If yes, and a prediction is an act of forecasting, then there must be a way to know if your prediction was correct or incorrect.
Therefore, maybe one requirement for a belief is that it’s testable, which would eliminate all of our beliefs in things unseen.
Maybe there are too many meanings assigned to just that one word—belief. Perhaps instead of it being a verb, it should be a preposition attached to a noun; i.e., a religious belief, a financial belief, etc. Then I could see a class of beliefs that were predictive versus a different class of beliefs that were matters of faith.
While he doesn’t explicitly use the word “prediction” that much in the post, he does talk about “anticipated experiences”, which around here is taken to be synonymous with “predicted experiences”.
I’ve never seen prediction used in reference to a belief before. I’m curious to hear how you arrived at the conclusion that a belief is a prediction.
For me, a belief is something that I cannot prove but I suspect is true whereas a prediction is something that is based in research. Philip Tetlock’s book Superforcasting is a good example. Belief has little to nothing to do with making accurate forecasts whereas confronting one’s biases and conducting deep research are requirements.
I think it’s interesting how the word “belief” can simultaneously reflect certainty and uncertainty depending upon how it’s used in a sentence. For example, if I ask a project manager when her report will be finished, and she responds “I believe it will be finished on Tuesday”, I’d press the issue because that suggests to me that it might not be finished on Tuesday.
On the other hand, if I ask my religious brother-in-law if he believes in God, he will answer yes with absolute certainty.
My difficulty probably lies in part with my own habits around when and how I’m accustomed to using the word “believe” versus your own.
I got this in part from Eliezer’s post Make your beliefs pay rent in anticipated experiences. IMO, this premise (that beliefs should try to be predictions, and should try to be accurate predictions) is one of the cornerstones that LessWrong has been based on.
I just read the post that you linked to. He used the word “prediction” one time in the entire post so I’m having trouble understanding how that was mean’t to be an answer to my question. Same with that it’s a cornerstone of LessWrong, which, for me, is like asking a Christian why they believe in God, and they answer, because the Bible tells me so.
Is a belief a prediction?
If yes, and a prediction is an act of forecasting, then there must be a way to know if your prediction was correct or incorrect.
Therefore, maybe one requirement for a belief is that it’s testable, which would eliminate all of our beliefs in things unseen.
Maybe there are too many meanings assigned to just that one word—belief. Perhaps instead of it being a verb, it should be a preposition attached to a noun; i.e., a religious belief, a financial belief, etc. Then I could see a class of beliefs that were predictive versus a different class of beliefs that were matters of faith.
While he doesn’t explicitly use the word “prediction” that much in the post, he does talk about “anticipated experiences”, which around here is taken to be synonymous with “predicted experiences”.