Eliezer, I am very interested in the Bayesian approach to reasoning you’ve outlined on this site, it’s one of the more elegant ideas I’ve ever run into.
I am a bit confused, though, about to what extent you are using math directly when assessing truth claims. If I asked you for example “what probability do you assign to the proposition ‘global warming is anthropogenic’ ?” (say), would you tell me a number?
Or is this mostly about conceptually understanding that P(effect|~cause) needs to be taken into account?
If it’s a number, what’s your heuristic for getting there (i.e., deciding on a prior probability & all the other probabilities)?
If there’s a post that goes into that much detail, I haven’t seen it yet, though your explanations of Bayes theorem generally are brilliant.
Eliezer, I am very interested in the Bayesian approach to reasoning you’ve outlined on this site, it’s one of the more elegant ideas I’ve ever run into.
I am a bit confused, though, about to what extent you are using math directly when assessing truth claims. If I asked you for example “what probability do you assign to the proposition ‘global warming is anthropogenic’ ?” (say), would you tell me a number?
Or is this mostly about conceptually understanding that P(effect|~cause) needs to be taken into account?
If it’s a number, what’s your heuristic for getting there (i.e., deciding on a prior probability & all the other probabilities)?
If there’s a post that goes into that much detail, I haven’t seen it yet, though your explanations of Bayes theorem generally are brilliant.
See When (Not) To Use Probabilities.