The Laws Governing Belief

1 Jul 2022 21:32 UTC

Part 3 of 6 from the Sequence Highlights.

While beliefs are subjective, that doesn’t mean that one gets to choose their beliefs willy-nilly. There are laws that theoretically determine the correct belief given the evidence, and it’s towards such beliefs that we should aspire.

Making Beliefs Pay Rent (in Anticipated Experiences)

Eliezer Yudkowsky28 Jul 2007 22:59 UTC

422 points

265 comments4 min readLW link

What is Evidence?

Eliezer Yudkowsky22 Sep 2007 6:43 UTC

159 points

60 comments3 min readLW link

Scientific Evidence, Legal Evidence, Rational Evidence

Eliezer Yudkowsky19 Aug 2007 5:36 UTC

123 points

18 comments3 min readLW link

How Much Evidence Does It Take?

Eliezer Yudkowsky24 Sep 2007 4:06 UTC

126 points

33 comments4 min readLW link

Absence of Evidence Is Evidence of Absence

Eliezer Yudkowsky12 Aug 2007 20:34 UTC

151 points

118 comments3 min readLW link

Conservation of Expected Evidence

Eliezer Yudkowsky13 Aug 2007 15:55 UTC

241 points

81 comments2 min readLW link

Argument Screens Off Authority

Eliezer Yudkowsky14 Dec 2007 0:05 UTC

112 points

85 comments5 min readLW link

An Intuitive Explanation of Bayes’s Theorem

Eliezer Yudkowsky1 Jan 2003 20:00 UTC

64 points

10 comments25 min readLW link

The Second Law of Thermodynamics, and Engines of Cognition

Eliezer Yudkowsky27 Feb 2008 0:48 UTC

167 points

72 comments9 min readLW link

Toolbox-thinking and Law-thinking

Eliezer Yudkowsky31 May 2018 21:28 UTC

160 points

49 comments12 min readLW link

Local Validity as a Key to Sanity and Civilization

Eliezer Yudkowsky7 Apr 2018 4:25 UTC

193 points

67 comments13 min readLW link 5 reviews