BiasedBayes

• BiasedBayesSep 24, 2015, 12:36 PM

  1 point

  in reply to: acrmartins’s comment on: Wel­come to Less Wrong! (8th thread, July 2015)

  Thanks for the link! Very nice publication!

• BiasedBayesSep 15, 2015, 2:03 PM

  0 points

  on: The Heuris­tic About Rep­re­sen­ta­tive­ness Heuris­tic

  Thanks for the post. I love it.

  My comments:

  First sidenote that dont assume that if something is a heuristic it is automatically a wrong way of thinking.(sorry if i misinterpret this, because you dont explicitly say this at all :) In some situations simple heuristics will outperform regression analysis for example.

  But about your mainpoint. If I understood right this is actually a problem of violating so called “ratio rule”.

  (1) The degree to which c is representative of S is indicated by the conditional propability p (c | S)- that is, the propability of members of S have characterestic c.

  (2) The propability that the characteristic c implies membership S is given by p (S | c). (Like you write)

  (3) p (c | S) /​ p (S | c) = p(c) /​ p(S)

  This is the Ratio Rule= Ratio of inverse propabilities equals the ratio of simple propabilities. So to equate these two propabilities p(c|S) and p(S|c) in the absence of equating ALSO the simple propabilitis is just wrong and bad thinking.

  Representative thinking does not reflect these differences between p(c|S) and p(S|c) and introduces a symmetry in the map (thought) that does not exist in the world.

  For example: “Home is the most dangerous place in the world because most accidents happen in home. So stay away from home!!!” --> This is confusion about the propability of accident given being home with propability being home given accident.

• BiasedBayesSep 14, 2015, 5:36 PM

  2 points

  in reply to: hyporational’s comment on: Wel­come to Less Wrong! (8th thread, July 2015)

  Yep :) You are definetely right career wise. Problem for me was the 200 other people who will absorb completely wrong idea of how the mind works if I wont say anything. Primum non nocere.

  But yeah, this was 4 years ago anyway...just wanted to mention it as an anecdote of bad general reasoning and biases :)

• BiasedBayesSep 14, 2015, 12:15 PM

  4 points

  in reply to: Anders_H’s comment on: Wel­come to Less Wrong! (8th thread, July 2015)

  Thanks hyporational ! It is exactly same here. Cognitive biases, heuristics, or even Bayes Theorem (normative decision making) is not really taught here.

  Also I once argued against some pseudoscientific treatment (in mental illnesses) and my arguments were completely ignored by 200 people because of argumentum ad hominem and attribute substitution (who looks like he is right vs. looking the actual arguments). Most people dont know what is a good argument or how to think about the propability of a statement.

  Interesting points Anders_H, I have to think about those littlebit.

• BiasedBayesSep 13, 2015, 3:51 PM

  12 points

  on: Wel­come to Less Wrong! (8th thread, July 2015)

  Hello all!

  Im a medical student and a researcher. My interests are consciousness, computational theory of mind, evolutionary psychology, and medical decision making. I bought Eliezers book and found here because of it.

  Want to thank Eliezer for writing the book, best writing i have read this year. Thank You.