How much time and energy would a sane skeptic be willing to put into examining the independent evidence?
Quite a bit. I think you underestimate the open-mindedness of a certain kind of person—they might be quite confident and yet still passionately willing to look for evidence contrariwise.
Taking advantage of komponisto’s link, I quote from Chapter 5, pg. 505:
Indeed, the very evidence which the ESP’ers throw at us to convince us, has the opposite effect on our state of belief; issuing reports of sensational data defeats its own purpose. For if the prior probability of deception is greater than that of ESP, then the more improbable the alleged data are on the null hypothesis of no deception and no ESP, the more strongly we are led to believe, not in ESP, but in deception. For this reason, the advocates of ESP (or any other marvel) will never succeed in persuading scientists that their phenomenon is real, until they learn how to eliminate the possibility of deception in the mind of the reader. As (5-15) shows, the reader’s total prior probability of deception by all mechanisms must be pushed down below that of ESP.
[emphasis added]
The point I was drawing was precisely captured in Jaynes’ caveat—the advocates must, if they can, provide evidence to eliminate other possibilites.
Edit: But I forget my point: they must if they can, but if they can, they will overwhelm the differing priors. Educating a person with poor priors—or poor assumptions in general—is inconvenient, not impossible.
You have a point there, still in practice how difficult would it be to
eliminate the possibility of deception in the mind of the reader.
What about cases like a mathematician who just chooses to start with another set of basic axioms?
Lest we don’t get lost in a forest of arguments I want to phrase my original point again: we all operate under certain assumptions and no two people probably have the same ones so our conclusions might also differ.
But diagnosing conflicting assumptions does not require that the discussion end. The fallacy of the conversation halter Eliezer cites is assuming that it does end the discussion (therefore protecting the speaker from further defense of their position).
As I do not have access to Jaynes’ book, this response is rather less than useful. I assume that Jaynes’ example relates to observing just the demonstration of psychic powers—what I am suggesting is that further observations, causally related to the demonstration and those features which may suggest or oppose fraud, can overwhelm this initial difference in interpretation.
I think you might want to reconsider the scope within which appealing to differing initial assumptions is valid.
Quite a bit. I think you underestimate the open-mindedness of a certain kind of person—they might be quite confident and yet still passionately willing to look for evidence contrariwise.
Well, words are limited, I recommend Jaynes’ example of the psychic he goes more into the math of it all.
Taking advantage of komponisto’s link, I quote from Chapter 5, pg. 505:
The point I was drawing was precisely captured in Jaynes’ caveat—the advocates must, if they can, provide evidence to eliminate other possibilites.
Edit: But I forget my point: they must if they can, but if they can, they will overwhelm the differing priors. Educating a person with poor priors—or poor assumptions in general—is inconvenient, not impossible.
You have a point there, still in practice how difficult would it be to
What about cases like a mathematician who just chooses to start with another set of basic axioms?
Lest we don’t get lost in a forest of arguments I want to phrase my original point again: we all operate under certain assumptions and no two people probably have the same ones so our conclusions might also differ.
But diagnosing conflicting assumptions does not require that the discussion end. The fallacy of the conversation halter Eliezer cites is assuming that it does end the discussion (therefore protecting the speaker from further defense of their position).
This reply seems to be an illustration of the above discussed appeal to authority.
Yep, and so is every appeal to Reverend Bayes and his formulas.
As I do not have access to Jaynes’ book, this response is rather less than useful. I assume that Jaynes’ example relates to observing just the demonstration of psychic powers—what I am suggesting is that further observations, causally related to the demonstration and those features which may suggest or oppose fraud, can overwhelm this initial difference in interpretation.
I think you might want to reconsider the scope within which appealing to differing initial assumptions is valid.
(Pssst....actually, you do.)
That is convenient! Now I just need chapter and section numbers!
That’s an incomplete preliminary version of the book; the published version has more material, particularly after Chapter 5.
Chapter 5 is what is being referenced, I believe.