“But a lot of your pro-DAE evidence seems to me to fail this test. E.g. ok, he lied to the customers and to the Congress; why is this substantial evidence of DAE in particular?”
Because E is evidence in favor of a hypothesis H if:
P(E given H is true) > P(E given H is false)
And the strength of the evidence is determined by the ratio:
bayes factor = P(E given H is true)/P(E given H is false)
In my view there isn’t really any other reasonable mathematical definition of evidence other than the bayes factor (or transformations of the bayes factor).
Applied to this specific case:
Probabilityiity(Lying to congress given DAE) > Probability(Lying to congress given not DAE)
And the reason that inequality is true is because people with DAE are more likely to lie than people without DAE (all else equal).
“Everything under this seems to fail the rain test, at least; very many people have this willingness [to lie and deceive others] most of them don’t have DAE (simply based on the prevalence you mention). Is this particular “style” of dishonesty characteristic of DAE?”
The question of whether E is evidence for H is not the same as the question “Is H true most of the time when E?” That’s just a different question, and in my view, not the correct question to ask when evaluating evidence. The question to ask to evaluate evidence is whether the evidence is more likely if the hypothesis is true than if it’s not true.
Or to put it another way: in the full post you say
There is some evidence he has higher-than-normal narcissistic traits, and there’s a positive correlation between narcissistic traits and DAE. I think there is more evidence of him having DAE than there is of him having narcissistic traits
but to me it looks like you could have equally replaced DAE with “narcissistic traits” in Theories B and C, and provided the same list of evidence.
(1) Convicted criminals are more likely to have narcissistic traits.
(2) “extreme disregard for protecting his customers” is also evidence for narcissistic traits.
Etc. And then you could repeat the exercise with “sociopathy” and so on.
So there are two possibilities, as far as I can see:
One or more things on the list are in fact not evidence for narcissistic traits.
They are stronger evidence for DAE than for narcissistic traits.
But it isn’t clear which you believe and about what parts of the list in particular. (Of course, with the exception of (4) and (11), but they go in the opposite directions.)
Yes, it’s evidence. My question is how strong or weak this evidence is (and my expectation is that it’s weak). Your comparison relies on “wet grass is typically substantial evidence for rain”.
Thanks for your comment. Some thoughts:
“But a lot of your pro-DAE evidence seems to me to fail this test. E.g. ok, he lied to the customers and to the Congress; why is this substantial evidence of DAE in particular?”
Because E is evidence in favor of a hypothesis H if:
P(E given H is true) > P(E given H is false)
And the strength of the evidence is determined by the ratio:
bayes factor = P(E given H is true)/P(E given H is false)
In my view there isn’t really any other reasonable mathematical definition of evidence other than the bayes factor (or transformations of the bayes factor).
Applied to this specific case:
Probabilityiity(Lying to congress given DAE) > Probability(Lying to congress given not DAE)
And the reason that inequality is true is because people with DAE are more likely to lie than people without DAE (all else equal).
“Everything under this seems to fail the rain test, at least; very many people have this willingness [to lie and deceive others] most of them don’t have DAE (simply based on the prevalence you mention). Is this particular “style” of dishonesty characteristic of DAE?”
The question of whether E is evidence for H is not the same as the question “Is H true most of the time when E?” That’s just a different question, and in my view, not the correct question to ask when evaluating evidence. The question to ask to evaluate evidence is whether the evidence is more likely if the hypothesis is true than if it’s not true.
And yes, lying is indeed characteristic of DAE.
Or to put it another way: in the full post you say
but to me it looks like you could have equally replaced DAE with “narcissistic traits” in Theories B and C, and provided the same list of evidence.
(1) Convicted criminals are more likely to have narcissistic traits.
(2) “extreme disregard for protecting his customers” is also evidence for narcissistic traits.
Etc. And then you could repeat the exercise with “sociopathy” and so on.
So there are two possibilities, as far as I can see:
One or more things on the list are in fact not evidence for narcissistic traits.
They are stronger evidence for DAE than for narcissistic traits.
But it isn’t clear which you believe and about what parts of the list in particular. (Of course, with the exception of (4) and (11), but they go in the opposite directions.)
Yes, it’s evidence. My question is how strong or weak this evidence is (and my expectation is that it’s weak). Your comparison relies on “wet grass is typically substantial evidence for rain”.