I understand that what you’re really complaining about is that some people are overconfident in their speculations (which is a fine and good thing to complain about) but the way you’ve phrased that objection here is a general counterargument against pretty much any statement that doesn’t fall within mathematics, including all heuristics, priors, educated guesses, and parsimony intself.
(And the literal meaning of “I know nothing about this but here’s my pontification” is very similar to “I have no evidence, but here is my prior assumption”. You’re just rewording it so it’s a low status thing.)
Might be helpful to narrow down the objection a little, to explain where precisely you feel people are commonly overreaching?
A prior is a statement of one’s knowledge (or to say exactly the same thing with an antonym, a statement of one’s ignorance), as expressed before performing an experiment or observation. It stands in contrast to one’s posterior, the state of belief after having updated on the evidence obtained. Outside of that context, one’s beliefs are not prior to anything, and talking about one’s priors is just, well, rewording it so it sounds like a high status thing.
But on reconsideration, I think I’m being unfair in making that response to your post. In the flying example you are talking about things that have been observed that as it happens confirm the stated prior. It’s just a thought about the casual use of the word “prior” that has been on my mind for a while.
The way that I’ve phrased this outside of lesswrong (where people don’t typically know what priors are) is: “In the absence of empirical data, things which are evolutionarily novel should be treated as guilty until evidence proves them innocent, whereas things which are evolutionarily familiar should be treated as innocent until evidence proves them guilty.”
“Prior” captures the connotation that this is only a provisionary belief until more evidence surfaces in one neat word.
I understand that what you’re really complaining about is that some people are overconfident in their speculations (which is a fine and good thing to complain about) but the way you’ve phrased that objection here is a general counterargument against pretty much any statement that doesn’t fall within mathematics, including all heuristics, priors, educated guesses, and parsimony intself.
(And the literal meaning of “I know nothing about this but here’s my pontification” is very similar to “I have no evidence, but here is my prior assumption”. You’re just rewording it so it’s a low status thing.)
Might be helpful to narrow down the objection a little, to explain where precisely you feel people are commonly overreaching?
A prior is a statement of one’s knowledge (or to say exactly the same thing with an antonym, a statement of one’s ignorance), as expressed before performing an experiment or observation. It stands in contrast to one’s posterior, the state of belief after having updated on the evidence obtained. Outside of that context, one’s beliefs are not prior to anything, and talking about one’s priors is just, well, rewording it so it sounds like a high status thing.
But on reconsideration, I think I’m being unfair in making that response to your post. In the flying example you are talking about things that have been observed that as it happens confirm the stated prior. It’s just a thought about the casual use of the word “prior” that has been on my mind for a while.
The way that I’ve phrased this outside of lesswrong (where people don’t typically know what priors are) is: “In the absence of empirical data, things which are evolutionarily novel should be treated as guilty until evidence proves them innocent, whereas things which are evolutionarily familiar should be treated as innocent until evidence proves them guilty.”
“Prior” captures the connotation that this is only a provisionary belief until more evidence surfaces in one neat word.