There is truth to this sentiment, but you should keep in mind results like this one by Scott Aaronson, that the amount of info that people actually have to transmit is independent of the amount of evidence that they have (even given computational limitations).
It seems like doubting each other’s rationality is a perfectly fine explanation. I don’t think most people around here are perfectly rational, nor that they think I’m perfectly rational, and definitely not that they all think that I think they are perfectly rational. So I doubt that they’ve updated enough on the fact that my views haven’t converged towards theirs, and they may be right that I haven’t updated enough on the fact that their views haven’t converged towards mine.
In practice we live in a world where many pairs of people disagree, and you have to disagree with a lot of people. I don’t think the failure to have common knowledge is much of a vice, either of me or my interlocutor. It’s just a really hard condition.
There is truth to this sentiment, but you should keep in mind results like this one by Scott Aaronson, that the amount of info that people actually have to transmit is independent of the amount of evidence that they have (even given computational limitations).
The point I wanted to make was that AFAIK there is currently no practical method for two humans to reliably reach agreement on some topic besides exchanging all the evidence they have, even if they trust each other to be as rational as humanly possible. The result by Scott Aaronson may be of theoretical interest (and maybe even of practical use by future AIs that can perform exact computations with the information in their minds), but seem to have no relevance to humans faced with real-world (i.e., as opposed to toy examples) disagreements.
I don’t think the failure to have common knowledge is much of a vice, either of me or my interlocutor. It’s just a really hard condition.
there is currently no practical method for two humans to reliably reach agreement on some topic besides exchanging all the evidence they have
Huh? There is currently no practical method for two humans to reliably reach agreement on some topic, full stop. Exchanging all evidence might help, but given that we are talking about humans and not straw Vulcans, it is still not a reliable method.
There is truth to this sentiment, but you should keep in mind results like this one by Scott Aaronson, that the amount of info that people actually have to transmit is independent of the amount of evidence that they have (even given computational limitations).
It seems like doubting each other’s rationality is a perfectly fine explanation. I don’t think most people around here are perfectly rational, nor that they think I’m perfectly rational, and definitely not that they all think that I think they are perfectly rational. So I doubt that they’ve updated enough on the fact that my views haven’t converged towards theirs, and they may be right that I haven’t updated enough on the fact that their views haven’t converged towards mine.
In practice we live in a world where many pairs of people disagree, and you have to disagree with a lot of people. I don’t think the failure to have common knowledge is much of a vice, either of me or my interlocutor. It’s just a really hard condition.
The point I wanted to make was that AFAIK there is currently no practical method for two humans to reliably reach agreement on some topic besides exchanging all the evidence they have, even if they trust each other to be as rational as humanly possible. The result by Scott Aaronson may be of theoretical interest (and maybe even of practical use by future AIs that can perform exact computations with the information in their minds), but seem to have no relevance to humans faced with real-world (i.e., as opposed to toy examples) disagreements.
I don’t understand this. Can you expand?
Huh? There is currently no practical method for two humans to reliably reach agreement on some topic, full stop. Exchanging all evidence might help, but given that we are talking about humans and not straw Vulcans, it is still not a reliable method.