“discovering that you’re wrong about something should, in expectation, reduce your confidence in X”
This logic seems flawed. Suppose X is whether humans go extinctinct. You have an estimate of the distribution of X (for a bernoulli process it would be some probability p). Take the joint distribution of X and the factors on which X depends (p is now a function of those factors). Your best estimate of p is the mean of the joint distribution and the variance measures how uncertain you’re about the factors. Discovering that you’re wrong about something means becoming more uncertain about some of the factors. This would increase the variance of the joint distribution. I don’t see any reason to expect the mean to move in any particular direction.
Or maybe I’m making a mistake. In any case, I’m not convinced.
“discovering that you’re wrong about something should, in expectation, reduce your confidence in X”
This logic seems flawed. Suppose X is whether humans go extinctinct. You have an estimate of the distribution of X (for a bernoulli process it would be some probability p). Take the joint distribution of X and the factors on which X depends (p is now a function of those factors). Your best estimate of p is the mean of the joint distribution and the variance measures how uncertain you’re about the factors. Discovering that you’re wrong about something means becoming more uncertain about some of the factors. This would increase the variance of the joint distribution. I don’t see any reason to expect the mean to move in any particular direction.
Or maybe I’m making a mistake. In any case, I’m not convinced.