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.
I asked him if he’d come on to be interviewed as part of it, and he said he’d be interested. I believe he is not opposed to me doing the episode.