Well, you are certainly a lot better at Bayesian Statistics than I am. But if I am to base my “physics-defying, benevolent, superintelligent sky wizard” hypothesis on evidence such as badly written holy books that look spuriously like hodge-podge culture dumps, the general religious disagreement, the continued non-answering of prayers, failure to divine simple mathematical or physical truths, and how science is significantly more productive, well… Every time a prayer goes unanswered I can theoretically update on it for a lower credence. Every conflicting holy scripture allegedly bequeathed by the divine, claiming to be the one truth is a major hit.
Meanwhile the hypothesis that what most people call religious experiences is located in the temporal lobe gains credence from every cognitive neuro-scientific study of it.
If you haven’t updated your credence of immortal physics defying super-intelligent friendly sky wizards in a while, I am going to tell you to look harder. The evidence is there. From what you state it seems that you might suffer from motivated cognition and belief hysteresis, so take this opportunity to get a feel on those so you might recognize them in the future.
Now, for the hypothesis of “immortal physics-defying wizard doing whatever makes the world seem normal” is strictly dominated by the hypothesis of “whatever makes the world seem normal”. That is Minimum Message Length/Solomonoff Induction right there.
But given that you already have Bayes down to a science, I don’t see why you should become a fine Lesswrongian in just a short time. Welcome to lesswrong.
It’s a straw dummy to say that I haven’t updated my priors about insert ridiculous thing here. Those are not the things I described having residual posterior mass on; my “sky wizard” is currently content to play by very different rules. As for the epi-phenomena of how a society embraces religion, or does not, I agree, this does suggest that it would be foolish to base one’s beliefs SOLELY on the “evidence” of the crowd as you grow up.
Also, incidentally, MML/Kolmogorov complexity and Solomonoff are not the same here. The former do not give a posterior on models, they select one model. The later could and would easily put posterior mass on multiple programs that were observationally the same up to the amount of data we have currently observed.
Consider the sequence of numbers: 1,2,3.
MML would (for most Turing machines anyway) select the program: next=old+1.
Solomonoff would have posterior mass on many other sequences (e.g. do a query on http://oeis.org/). It’d put most of it’s mass on that program, but leave nonzero mass on other programs, like one that computes this sequence, say: http://oeis.org/A006530, and if the next numbers reveals the sequence:
1, 2, 3, 2, 5, 3, 7, 2, 3, 5
Then you can bet that’s where a lot of the mass will shift.
… And the really subtle bit, that I don’t want you to miss, is that it doesn’t all shift there, it’s still not a point posterior. There’s still mass on:
That mass won’t go away for a LONG time (that is if the data keeps coming from http://oeis.org/A006530 for at least Googol/2 steps.
And there are many possibilities like this out there. Sure, they have less mass individually, but there ARE many of them. And some don’t even have appreciably less prior mass (under a Solomonoff prior and a “reasonable” Turing machine). Computability is a whole ’nother issue.
Hee! I sort of like the idea of immortal physics defying super-intelligent friendly sky wizards, actually. ”Hamlet, in love with the old man’s daughter, the old… man… thinks.”
Well, you are certainly a lot better at Bayesian Statistics than I am. But if I am to base my “physics-defying, benevolent, superintelligent sky wizard” hypothesis on evidence such as badly written holy books that look spuriously like hodge-podge culture dumps, the general religious disagreement, the continued non-answering of prayers, failure to divine simple mathematical or physical truths, and how science is significantly more productive, well… Every time a prayer goes unanswered I can theoretically update on it for a lower credence. Every conflicting holy scripture allegedly bequeathed by the divine, claiming to be the one truth is a major hit.
Meanwhile the hypothesis that what most people call religious experiences is located in the temporal lobe gains credence from every cognitive neuro-scientific study of it.
If you haven’t updated your credence of immortal physics defying super-intelligent friendly sky wizards in a while, I am going to tell you to look harder. The evidence is there. From what you state it seems that you might suffer from motivated cognition and belief hysteresis, so take this opportunity to get a feel on those so you might recognize them in the future.
Now, for the hypothesis of “immortal physics-defying wizard doing whatever makes the world seem normal” is strictly dominated by the hypothesis of “whatever makes the world seem normal”. That is Minimum Message Length/Solomonoff Induction right there.
But given that you already have Bayes down to a science, I don’t see why you should become a fine Lesswrongian in just a short time. Welcome to lesswrong.
Thanks for mentioning belief hysteresis.
It’s a straw dummy to say that I haven’t updated my priors about insert ridiculous thing here. Those are not the things I described having residual posterior mass on; my “sky wizard” is currently content to play by very different rules. As for the epi-phenomena of how a society embraces religion, or does not, I agree, this does suggest that it would be foolish to base one’s beliefs SOLELY on the “evidence” of the crowd as you grow up.
Also, incidentally, MML/Kolmogorov complexity and Solomonoff are not the same here. The former do not give a posterior on models, they select one model. The later could and would easily put posterior mass on multiple programs that were observationally the same up to the amount of data we have currently observed.
Consider the sequence of numbers: 1,2,3. MML would (for most Turing machines anyway) select the program: next=old+1. Solomonoff would have posterior mass on many other sequences (e.g. do a query on http://oeis.org/). It’d put most of it’s mass on that program, but leave nonzero mass on other programs, like one that computes this sequence, say: http://oeis.org/A006530, and if the next numbers reveals the sequence: 1, 2, 3, 2, 5, 3, 7, 2, 3, 5 Then you can bet that’s where a lot of the mass will shift.
… And the really subtle bit, that I don’t want you to miss, is that it doesn’t all shift there, it’s still not a point posterior. There’s still mass on:
Use http://oeis.org/A006530 for the first Googol entries, and then, all zeros.
That mass won’t go away for a LONG time (that is if the data keeps coming from http://oeis.org/A006530 for at least Googol/2 steps.
And there are many possibilities like this out there. Sure, they have less mass individually, but there ARE many of them. And some don’t even have appreciably less prior mass (under a Solomonoff prior and a “reasonable” Turing machine). Computability is a whole ’nother issue.
If I understand what you mean, put a hyphen between “physics” and “defying”, because I had mis-parsed that the first time.
Hee!
I sort of like the idea of immortal physics defying super-intelligent friendly sky wizards, actually.
”Hamlet, in love with the old man’s daughter, the old… man… thinks.”