Science lets you believe any damn stupid idea that hasn’t been refuted by experiment. Bayesianism says there is always an exactly rational degree of belief given your current evidence, and this does not shift a nanometer to the left or to the right depending on your whims. Science is a social freedom—we let people test whatever hypotheses they like, because we don’t trust the village elders to decide in advance—but you shouldn’t confuse that with an individual standard of rationality.
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This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we’ll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky’s old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was When Science Can’t Help, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day’s sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.
[SEQ RERUN] Science Isn’t Strict Enough
Today’s post, Science Isn’t Strict Enough was originally published on 16 May 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we’ll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky’s old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was When Science Can’t Help, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day’s sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.