How is “investigating is whether Option 2 is the only long-term rational answer” different from investigating which options are long-term rational answers? And why are you choosing to focus on the former, rather than on the latter?
As a heads up, that point has been addressed (from a slightly different angle) elsewhere in the thread. You might yet get it across better than I did, though.
ETA: Oh, I guess you’re objecting to the wording change which was made in response to the earlier comment. Carry on then.
“Option 2 is the only long-term rational answer” is a clear hypothesis. It is disproved if any of the other options is also a long-term rational answer. “Which options are long-term rational answers?” is a question, not a hypothesis.
In other words, you’re still investigating the same things (possibly with different stopping criteria—e.g. you’d be done if you disproved your hypothesis), but you have substantial evidence in favor of your hypothesis already. Am I understanding you correctly?
I’m not sure the blog post you’re linking to is helpful, though. One could come up with your list of options without having done any prior investigation. In other words, unlike Einstein, it’s entirely plausible to be at the stage where you’re considering Option 2 without having evidence favoring Option 2 over the others. And even if you have 50% certainty in Option 2, that only implies 3-4 bits of evidence.
And I think the mistrust you see in the comments is due precisely to the absence of evidence from your post. Which is weakly evidence of absence. Granted, I don’t think your post is intended to present all your evidence, but seeing some of it first would help frame your discussion.
Upvote from me! Yes, you are understanding me correctly.
One could indeed come up with my list of options without having done any prior investigation. But would one share it with others? My pointing at that particular post is meant to be a signal that I grok that it is not rational to share it with others until I believe that I have strong evidence that it is a strong hypothesis and have pretty much run out of experiments that I can conduct by myself that could possibly disprove the hypothesis.
Skepticism is desired as long as it doesn’t interfere with the analysis of the hypothesis. If mistrust leads someone to walk away from a hypothesis that would be of great interest to them, if true, without fairly analyzing the hypothesis, that’s a problem.
Yes, I realize that I still am lacking some of the skills necessary to present and frame a discussion here. I should have presented an example as Vladimir pointed out. I’m under the impression that evidence isn’t necessarily appropriate at this point. If people would leap in to correct me if that is incorrect, it would be appreciated.
The question “which options are long-term rational answers?” corresponds immediately to the hypothesis “among the options are some long-term rational answers” and can be investigated in the same way.
Mind you, “long-term rational answer” is not well-defined; I guess you mean something influenced by ideas like Nash equilibrium and evolutionarily stable strategy. What is a “short-term rational answer”?
The post you link to is irrelevant to Misha’s reasonable question, except insofar as it contains discussion of hypotheses. If you really think that people here need to be educated as to what a hypothesis is, then a) it’d be better to link to a wikipedia definition and b) why are you bothering to post here?
The question “which options are long-term rational answers?” corresponds immediately to the hypothesis “among the options are some long-term rational answers” and can be investigated in the same way.
Incorrect. Prove that one option is a long-term rational answer and you have proved the hypothesis “among the options are some long-term rational answers”. That is nowhere near completing answering the question “which options are long-term rational answers”
My hypothesis was much, much more limited than “among the options are some long-term rational answers”. It specified which of the options was a long-term rational answer. It further specified that all of the other options were not long-term rational answers. It is much, much easier to disprove my hypothesis than the broader hypothesis “among the options are some long-term rational answers” which gives it correspondingly more power.
If you really think that people here need to be educated as to what a hypothesis is, then a) it’d be better to link to a wikipedia definition and b) why are you bothering to post here?
Fully grokking Eliezer’s post that I linked would have given you all of the above reply. The wikipedia definition is less clear than Eliezer’s post. I post here because this community is more than capable of helping/forcing me to clarify my logic and rationality.
I didn’t downvote because you were right that the hypothesis I provided (there are some rational options) was not equivalent to the question (which are the rational options). This is quite a fundamental point, so extra black marks to me for being careless.
However, Einstein’s Arrogance doesn’t deal with this fundamental point, so I disagree with “would have given you all of the above reply” and still dispute its relevance to Misha’s original comment.
ETA: also you didn’t address “what is a short-term rational answer?”. Maybe these are possible reasons for downvoting?
How is “investigating is whether Option 2 is the only long-term rational answer” different from investigating which options are long-term rational answers? And why are you choosing to focus on the former, rather than on the latter?
As a heads up, that point has been addressed (from a slightly different angle) elsewhere in the thread. You might yet get it across better than I did, though.
ETA: Oh, I guess you’re objecting to the wording change which was made in response to the earlier comment. Carry on then.
“Option 2 is the only long-term rational answer” is a clear hypothesis. It is disproved if any of the other options is also a long-term rational answer. “Which options are long-term rational answers?” is a question, not a hypothesis.
Reread Einstein’s Arrogance
In other words, you’re still investigating the same things (possibly with different stopping criteria—e.g. you’d be done if you disproved your hypothesis), but you have substantial evidence in favor of your hypothesis already. Am I understanding you correctly?
I’m not sure the blog post you’re linking to is helpful, though. One could come up with your list of options without having done any prior investigation. In other words, unlike Einstein, it’s entirely plausible to be at the stage where you’re considering Option 2 without having evidence favoring Option 2 over the others. And even if you have 50% certainty in Option 2, that only implies 3-4 bits of evidence.
And I think the mistrust you see in the comments is due precisely to the absence of evidence from your post. Which is weakly evidence of absence. Granted, I don’t think your post is intended to present all your evidence, but seeing some of it first would help frame your discussion.
Upvote from me! Yes, you are understanding me correctly.
One could indeed come up with my list of options without having done any prior investigation. But would one share it with others? My pointing at that particular post is meant to be a signal that I grok that it is not rational to share it with others until I believe that I have strong evidence that it is a strong hypothesis and have pretty much run out of experiments that I can conduct by myself that could possibly disprove the hypothesis.
Skepticism is desired as long as it doesn’t interfere with the analysis of the hypothesis. If mistrust leads someone to walk away from a hypothesis that would be of great interest to them, if true, without fairly analyzing the hypothesis, that’s a problem.
Yes, I realize that I still am lacking some of the skills necessary to present and frame a discussion here. I should have presented an example as Vladimir pointed out. I’m under the impression that evidence isn’t necessarily appropriate at this point. If people would leap in to correct me if that is incorrect, it would be appreciated.
The question “which options are long-term rational answers?” corresponds immediately to the hypothesis “among the options are some long-term rational answers” and can be investigated in the same way.
Mind you, “long-term rational answer” is not well-defined; I guess you mean something influenced by ideas like Nash equilibrium and evolutionarily stable strategy. What is a “short-term rational answer”?
The post you link to is irrelevant to Misha’s reasonable question, except insofar as it contains discussion of hypotheses. If you really think that people here need to be educated as to what a hypothesis is, then a) it’d be better to link to a wikipedia definition and b) why are you bothering to post here?
Incorrect. Prove that one option is a long-term rational answer and you have proved the hypothesis “among the options are some long-term rational answers”. That is nowhere near completing answering the question “which options are long-term rational answers”
My hypothesis was much, much more limited than “among the options are some long-term rational answers”. It specified which of the options was a long-term rational answer. It further specified that all of the other options were not long-term rational answers. It is much, much easier to disprove my hypothesis than the broader hypothesis “among the options are some long-term rational answers” which gives it correspondingly more power.
Fully grokking Eliezer’s post that I linked would have given you all of the above reply. The wikipedia definition is less clear than Eliezer’s post. I post here because this community is more than capable of helping/forcing me to clarify my logic and rationality.
Could someone give me a hint as to why this particular comment which was specifically in answer to a question is being downvoted? I don’t get it.
I didn’t downvote because you were right that the hypothesis I provided (there are some rational options) was not equivalent to the question (which are the rational options). This is quite a fundamental point, so extra black marks to me for being careless.
However, Einstein’s Arrogance doesn’t deal with this fundamental point, so I disagree with “would have given you all of the above reply” and still dispute its relevance to Misha’s original comment.
ETA: also you didn’t address “what is a short-term rational answer?”. Maybe these are possible reasons for downvoting?