[SEQ RERUN] The Meditation on Curiosity
Today’s post, The Meditation on Curiosity was originally published on 06 October 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
If you can find within yourself the slightest shred of true uncertainty, then guard it like a forester nursing a campfire. If you can make it blaze up into a flame of curiosity, it will make you light and eager, and give purpose to your questioning and direction to your skills.
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we’ll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky’s old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Avoiding Your Belief’s Real Weak Points, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day’s sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.
The counterpoint I offer to this idea is that true uncertainty as I have experienced it is absolutely unfocused and without answers. So I find that I have no direction, no need of skills and curiosity sort of evaporates in the overwhelming uncertainty.
At first, I was like “Yeah!” Because the conclusion is true. But then I thought about how someone who hasn’t read the sequences might thing it was crazy talk to say that the laws of probability say such a thing, so I tried to recreate the argument, because if I can’t create it, I don’t understand it.
Sadly, I don’t understand it. Are we talking about conservation of probability here? Are we talking about how if you already have your conclusion drawn, you have defined P(Conclusion) = P(Conclusion | evidence) + P(Conclusion | ~evidence) = 1? Are we saying P(Conclusion | evidence) = 1 (and P(Conclusion | ~evidence)) = 1, and therefore you can’t get any meaningful answers by invoking Bayes Theorem?
The result Eliezer is referring to is P(Conclusion)=P(Conclusion|Positive Test)P(Positive Test)+P(Conclusion|Negative Test)P(Negative Test)=E(P(Conclusion|Test Result))
If you know what you’ll believe after the test (i.e. your expected belief after the test), then that is your current belief.