Okay, so what events or things do you pay attention to for updates relating to Bayesianism? Like say I’m a Bayesian with random priors, except for P(Bayesianism) which is say 0.51 currently. What kind of things do you observe that cause updates and why/how?
Sorry for the delayed replay. My comments are being held for review.
I don’t think P(my epistemology) is a practically useful concept.
Various people have suggested paradoxes of Bayesian reasoning. The few I’ve looked in detail at, I don’t think hold water. But that’s the sort of thing to study.
Does critical fallibilism have anything to say about itself? If it gives itself a full bill of health, that’s no more useful than the statement “This sentence is true”, which can consistently be assigned any truth value.
I don’t think P(my epistemology) is a practically useful concept.
This is surprising to me—I’ve always thought that whatever our understanding of knowledge was should apply to itself. If it doesn’t, how do you know that your epistemology is right? An epistemology is the thing that’s meant to give you the answer to the question. So it seems like a problem if an epistemology can’t apply to itself.
One response might be ‘Bayesianism is about science, not philosophy’, but then on what basis are you adopting bayesianism? if that decision is supported by some other epistemology, then why not use that instead? (it seems like it might be more powerful because it can do something bayesianism can’t)
Does critical fallibilism have anything to say about itself? If it gives itself a full bill of health, that’s no more useful than the statement “This sentence is true”, which can consistently be assigned any truth value.
Yeah it does, though a ‘full bill of health’ might mean something different. CF says that we should use the best ideas we have access to. “Best” means that it works to achieve a goal and is unrefuted (no unanswered decisive criticisms). CF claims it has no decisive criticisms (at least insofar as the epistemology is concerned), but does not claim such criticisms are impossible (it’s fallibilist after all). CF is Elliot Temple’s school and he is very willing to debate (which means a forum discussion).
Debate is important because it enables errors to be corrected. If an intellectual is wrong, and a critic has an important correction, then refusing to debate is one of the common ways the intellectual can stay wrong.
One of goals of CF-ists is to find and debate people who disagree with you because that’s the best way to get criticisms, which are an integral part of error correction and improvement.
But also the world isn’t very good for debate, at least not at a high level. It’s hard to find people and forums who will continue a discussion to it’s conclusion. So maybe CF isn’t as good as it could be if there was more debate.
If someone knew of a criticism of CF, then Elliot would want to know. If he disagreed, he’d want a public discussion about it.
Okay, so what events or things do you pay attention to for updates relating to Bayesianism? Like say I’m a Bayesian with random priors, except for
P(Bayesianism)which is say 0.51 currently. What kind of things do you observe that cause updates and why/how?Sorry for the delayed replay. My comments are being held for review.
I don’t think P(my epistemology) is a practically useful concept.
Various people have suggested paradoxes of Bayesian reasoning. The few I’ve looked in detail at, I don’t think hold water. But that’s the sort of thing to study.
Does critical fallibilism have anything to say about itself? If it gives itself a full bill of health, that’s no more useful than the statement “This sentence is true”, which can consistently be assigned any truth value.
This is surprising to me—I’ve always thought that whatever our understanding of knowledge was should apply to itself. If it doesn’t, how do you know that your epistemology is right? An epistemology is the thing that’s meant to give you the answer to the question. So it seems like a problem if an epistemology can’t apply to itself.
One response might be ‘Bayesianism is about science, not philosophy’, but then on what basis are you adopting bayesianism? if that decision is supported by some other epistemology, then why not use that instead? (it seems like it might be more powerful because it can do something bayesianism can’t)
Yeah it does, though a ‘full bill of health’ might mean something different. CF says that we should use the best ideas we have access to. “Best” means that it works to achieve a goal and is unrefuted (no unanswered decisive criticisms). CF claims it has no decisive criticisms (at least insofar as the epistemology is concerned), but does not claim such criticisms are impossible (it’s fallibilist after all). CF is Elliot Temple’s school and he is very willing to debate (which means a forum discussion).
From Debate Policies Introduction, he says:
One of goals of CF-ists is to find and debate people who disagree with you because that’s the best way to get criticisms, which are an integral part of error correction and improvement.
But also the world isn’t very good for debate, at least not at a high level. It’s hard to find people and forums who will continue a discussion to it’s conclusion. So maybe CF isn’t as good as it could be if there was more debate.
If someone knew of a criticism of CF, then Elliot would want to know. If he disagreed, he’d want a public discussion about it.
I can expand on anything if you have questions.