Next time someone uses “I don’t know” to try and justify not making a decision, I’ll try to see if I can explain the maximum entropy distribution, and convince them that that’s how it should be approached.
I anticipate that the main difficulty will be in convincing people that they have to assign a probability, and that even if they don’t they’re implicitly choosing one based on their actions.
There was a comment writer on LW who assumed that a probabilistic argument that referred to the word “bet” applied only to gambling wagers. He had no reply when someone pointed out that the probabilistic argument under consideration worked even when every decision by every agent is considered a bet.
Rhetorical tactics like using the word “bet” in a very inclusive sense strike me as more useful for the OP’s purpose than explaining the MAXENT prior.
Next time someone uses “I don’t know” to try and justify not making a decision, I’ll try to see if I can explain the maximum entropy distribution, and convince them that that’s how it should be approached.
I anticipate that the main difficulty will be in convincing people that they have to assign a probability, and that even if they don’t they’re implicitly choosing one based on their actions.
There was a comment writer on LW who assumed that a probabilistic argument that referred to the word “bet” applied only to gambling wagers. He had no reply when someone pointed out that the probabilistic argument under consideration worked even when every decision by every agent is considered a bet.
Rhetorical tactics like using the word “bet” in a very inclusive sense strike me as more useful for the OP’s purpose than explaining the MAXENT prior.
See my comment above which shows that the arguments surrounding maximum entropy are rather confused.