tmercer

Karma: −58

tmercer 10 Apr 2024 21:51 UTC
−3 points
−1
in reply to: papetoast’s comment on: Absence of Evidence Is Evidence of Absence
you can still apply a rough estimate on the probability distribution.
No, you cannot. For things you have no idea, there is no way to (rationally) estimate their probabilities.
Bayesian updates usually produces better estimate than your prior (and always better than your prior if you can do perfect updates, but that’s impossible), and you can use many methods to guestimate a prior distribution.
No. There are many many things that have “priors” of 1, 0, or undefined. These are undefined. You can’t know anything about their “distribution” because they aren’t distributions. Everything is either true or false, 1 or 0. Probabilities only make sense when talking about human (or more generally, agent) expectations/uncertainties.
You can’t completely rationally Bayesian reason about it, and that doesn’t mean you can’t try to Bayesian reason about it.
That’s not what I mean, and it’s not even what I wrote. I’m not saying “completely”. I said you can’t Bayesian reason about it. I mean you are completely irrational when you even try to Bayesian reason about undefined, 1, or 0 things. What would trying to Bayesian reason about an undefined thing even look like to you?
Do you admit that you have no idea (probability/certainty/confidence-wise) about what might cause the sun not to rise tomorrow? Like is that a good example to you of a completely undefined thing, for which there is no “prior”? It’s one of the best to me, because the sun rising tomorrow is such a cornerstone example for introducing Bayesian reasoning. But to me it’s a perfect example of why Bayesianism is utterly insane. You’re not getting more certain that anything will happen again just because something like it happened before. You can never prove a hypothesis/theory/belief right (because you can’t prove a negative). We can only disprove hypotheses/theories/beliefs. So, with the sun, we have no idea what might cause it to not-rise tomorrow, so we can’t Bayesian ourselves into any sort of “confidence” or “certainty” or “probability” about it. A Bayesian alive but isolated from things that have died would believe itself immortal. This is not rational. Rationality is to just fail to disprove the null hypothesis, not believe ever-stronger in the null just because disconfirming evidence hasn’t yet been encountered.
Back to the blog post, there are cases in which absence of evidence is evidence of absence, but this isn’t it. If you look for something expected by a theory/hypothesis/belief, and you fail to find what it predicts, then that is evidence against it. But, “The 5th column exists” doesn’t predict anything (different from “the 5th column doesn’t exist”), so “the 5th column hasn’t attacked (yet)” isn’t evidence against it.

tmercer 7 Apr 2024 20:33 UTC
1 point
−1
in reply to: papetoast’s comment on: Absence of Evidence Is Evidence of Absence
If “Observing nothing carries no information”, then you should not be able to use it to update belief. I agree.
Any belief must be updated based on new information I agree. Observing nothing carries no information, so you don’t use it to update belief.
I would say observing nothing carries the information that the action (sabotage) which your belief predicts to happen did not happen during the observation interval.
Yes, so if you observe no sabotage, then you do update about the existence of a fifth column that would have, with some probability, sabotaged (an infinite possibility). But you don’t update about the existence of the fifth column that doesn’t sabotage, or wouldn’t have sabotaged YET, which are also infinite possibilities. Possibilities aren’t probabilities, and you have no probability of what kind of fifth column you’re dealing with, so you can’t do any Bayesian reasoning. I guess it’s a general failure of Bayesian reasoning. You can’t update 1 confidence beliefs, you can’t update 0 confidence beliefs, and you can’t update undefined beliefs. So, for example, you can’t Bayesian reason about most of the important things in the universe, like whether the sun will rise tomorrow, because you have no idea what causes that’s based on. You have a pretty good model about what might cause the sun to rise tomorrow, but no idea, complete uncertainty (not 0 with certainty nor 1 with certainty, nor ⁵⁰⁄₅₀ uncertainty, just completely undefined certainty) about what would make the sun NOT rise tomorrow, so you can’t (rationally) Bayesian reason about it. You can bet on it, but you can’t rationally believe about it.

tmercer 7 Jul 2022 21:10 UTC
1 point
on: Anchoring and Adjustment
I guessed 55,000 for the fast multiplication after this 65 anchor. I think the percentage of UN countries in Africa is <65%.

tmercer 6 Jul 2022 21:08 UTC
2 points
on: Argument Screens Off Authority
I think there’s some nuance missing from Scenario 1. Authority doesn’t include competence or expert-ness. Authority is like believing someone because they’re paid to be a scientist, but you absolutely SHOULD assign more weight to assertions from actual scientists, people who follow the scientific method to update their beliefs, people who don’t believe in the wrong default/null beliefs/hypotheses. This gets mixed up all the time.
Authority: M.D., member of AHA, J.D., professional ______
Competence/expert-ness: performs specific surgery with X% success rate, wins X% of cases in specific legal niche
You shouldn’t care at all, not even ceteris paribus, about this definition of authority. You should care a lot about competence/expert-ness, because people can’t get competent/expert without having accurate beliefs in the area of competence, so even if they’re ignoring some piece of evidence or got to their beliefs very unconsciously or un-Bayesianly, you have strong evidence that their beliefs are close to correct.

tmercer 6 Jul 2022 19:16 UTC
3 points
on: The Scales of Justice, the Notebook of Rationality
Another problem with policies like this hypothetical nuclear reactor is that people don’t have access to facts about the future or hypothetical futures, so we’re left with estimates. People don’t acknowledge that their “facts” are actually estimates, and don’t share how they’re estimating things. If we did this, politics would be better. Just give your methods and assumptions, as well as the estimates that are determined by the methods and assumptions, of costs and benefits, and then people can pick the choice(s) with the best estimated benefits—costs.

The other thing about political arguments is that people don’t start with the foundation to the above, which is values. People will often talk about “lives saved”, which is ridiculous, because you can’t save lives, only postpone deaths. People who don’t agree on values aren’t ready to look at estimated costs and benefits. If I value 3 years of postponed-death at $100k, and someone else values it at $10, then we’re almost certain to disagree about which policies are best. Values are the prices at which you trade things you like/want/value.

tmercer 6 Jul 2022 19:09 UTC
1 point
on: Policy Debates Should Not Appear One-Sided
A few ideas:
You can’t save a life. Every living thing is doomed to die. You can only postpone deaths.
Morality ought to be based on the expected values of decisions people make or actions they do, not the actual outcomes. Morality includes the responsibility to correctly evaluate EV by gathering sufficient evidence.

tmercer 6 Jul 2022 17:49 UTC
0 points
on: How to Convince Me That 2 + 2 = 3
Earplug gang represent!

All the no-earplug sleepers are fools.

tmercer 6 Jul 2022 1:52 UTC
3 points
in reply to: Liliet B’s comment on: Rationality: An Introduction
“you’ll also immediately know the others all don’t”

No. Receiving an anonymous love note from among the 6 in NO WAY informs you that 5 of the 6 DON’T have a crush on you. All it does is take the unspecified prior (rate of these 6 humans having a crush on you), and INCREASE it for all 6 of them.

@irmckenzie is right. There’s no way you get < 10:1 with MORE positive (confirmatory) evidence for Bob than a random stranger. All positive evidence HAS TO make a rational mind MORE certain the thing is true. Weak evidence, like the letter, which informs that AT LEAST 1 in 6 has a crush, should move a rational mind LESS than strong evidence, like the wink, but it must move it all the same, and in the affirmative direction.

tmercer 6 Jul 2022 1:49 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Ian McKenzie’s comment on: Rationality: An Introduction
This is obviously correct. The error was that Rob interpreted the evidence incorrectly. Getting an anonymous letter DOES NOT inform a rational mind that Bob has 1:5 odds of crushing. It informs the rational mind that AT LEAST ONE of the 6 classmates has a crush on you. It DOES NOT inform a rational mind that 5 of the 6 classmates DO NOT have a crush on you. I also hated this. Obviously, two pieces of evidence should make Bob MORE LIKELY to have a crush on you that one. There’s no baseline rate of humans having a crush on us, so the real prior isn’t in the problem.

tmercer 3 Jul 2022 5:39 UTC
2 points
on: Hindsight Devalues Science
Strongly believed the reverse on 1 and 4, and had very little belief either way on the rest. But it was enough that I began to suspect they were all false, perhaps also the big white space beneath it tipped off my subconscious to such a possibility. Can’t find the paper on sci-hub. What are the answers?

tmercer 28 Jun 2022 22:47 UTC
0 points
on: Typicality and Asymmetrical Similarity
“98 is closer to 100 than 100 is to 98”

Geometrically, this is literally true. I would like to see if the same applies for how close 98 is to 100 vs 100 to 101. I suspect we get the same result, but for me, at least, it “feels” different. My innate comparison is multiply/divide, then add/subtract, then other things. I bet I’m more likely to add/subtract weird multiples of 12 and 24 and 100 (like 3, 6, 8, and 25), and more likely to multiply/divide “round” numbers like 1, 5, 10, 20, 100.

tmercer 28 Jun 2022 22:25 UTC
0 points
on: Extensions and Intensions
“you only communicate maps to concepts, or instructions for building concepts—you don’t communicate the actual categories as they exist in your mind or in the world.”

Really? I’ve always defined definition as either the sorting algorithm between, or description of the boundary between, two categories, yes-thing and not-thing.

Of course you’re not giving me your neuronal arrangement, but you ought to be giving me one of two things that any agent, on any substrate, can use to sort every possible thing into yes-thing and not-thing, the same way you do.

If, after receiving a “definition”, I (and any/every rational agent) am not able to apply the algorithm or description of the boundary between, and sort everything into yes-thing and not-thing the same way as you do, then what you’ve given me isn’t really a definition (by my definition).
Using this definition of definition cuts down lots of useless (or anti-useful) definitions people try to give. I find that bad definitions are at the root of most stupid disagreements, both on the internet and IRL.

tmercer 28 Jun 2022 20:35 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Caledonian2’s comment on: Words as Hidden Inferences
You’re absolutely right. You can define a word any way you like. Almost all definitions are useless or even anti-useful.

tmercer 27 Jun 2022 23:22 UTC
−6 points
in reply to: gwern’s comment on: An Intuitive Explanation of Bayes’s Theorem
LOL, I don’t care about downvotes, and I capitalize for emphasis, not to appear “cool” to accounts in cyberspace. I don’t care if you think my comments are “bad”. My comments are either right or wrong. It doesn’t matter whether you or anyone thinks they’re good/bad. It doesn’t matter whether you or anyone upvotes/downvotes them.

My assertions are CORRECT, and counter to Eliezer. That’s reason enough to make them.

Not sure why you’re mentioning ego depletion, but it’s not “dubious”, it’s something without any substantial evidence it exists. The existence of the celestial teapot isn’t “dubious”, just like the existence of pseudoscience like willpower depletion isn’t “dubious”. We (rational minds) have a duty to not even consider not-real things until we get sufficient evidence.

I’m re-reading the whole site. That a post is 13 years old is irrelevant. All the assertions in posts, new and old, need to be true. We’re on LW, after all.

tmercer 24 Jun 2022 23:12 UTC
−2 points
on: Distinct Configurations
Isn’t energy (matter) in EXACTLY one place/state at EXACTLY one time? The “blobs” are just OUR uncertainty, right? The confusion exists in the map, not the territory. Particles aren’t real, they’re just energy, which travels in waves, in specific states. But if spacetime is real, then the energy has whatever properties, including mass, velocity, spin, polarization, etc, and it is exactly where it is. Heisenberg’s uncertainty is because of measuring a wave of energy is hard, and measuring a tiny wave is harder, and photons are ridiculously tiny but their waves are (comparatively) huge!

tmercer 24 Jun 2022 23:03 UTC
−2 points
on: Distinct Configurations
Ok, my big question/worry is WHAT is the mysterious Sensitive Thingy S DOING? HOW does it collapse the energy that otherwise flows in two directions at once into only flowing along one path, and also, why does it seem to collapse that flow of energy, faster than light, AFTER the energy would have flowed one way vs both ways?

Minor typo: “But in this case, the two amplitude flows (1) and (3) are now [TWO] distinct configurations”

tmercer 5 Jun 2022 18:30 UTC
−16 points
on: An Intuitive Explanation of Bayes’s Theorem
“Popper’s idea that there is only falsification and no such thing as confirmation turns out to be incorrect.”

No, that is still correct. Even if you only probabilistically falsify hypotheses, you can only FAIL TO DISCONFIRM/FALSIFY hypotheses. THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO SUCH THING AS CONFIRMATION.
You can NEVER, EVER get more certain about something just because you fail to get less certain of it, UNLESS there are a set of MECE hypotheses, in which case getting more certain one is wrong IS getting more certain the other(s) are right.

tmercer 5 Jun 2022 16:27 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Nominull’s comment on: The Unfinished Mystery of the Shangri-La Diet
If you have more than a few pounds of fat, for VERY nearly 100% of people, no, it’s strictly beneficial or net-neutral.

tmercer 4 Jun 2022 2:36 UTC
−10 points
on: Soulless morality
Here in pandemic world, it’s insane. I value healthy time (life). NOBODY should value “lives saved” / “deaths prevented” because everyone is doomed to die. You can’t save a life. You can only postpone a death, and (possibly) allow for more healthy time. I don’t value unhealthy time. Once health is gone, I wish for a swift death, for myself and everyone else (except the shitheads).

To mask or not to mask—pretty obvious, you pick your units of what you value, for me, healthy time, and then estimate the costs vs benefits. Obviously, we all think masking isn’t “worth” the costs in not-pandemics, and most of us think masking is “worth” the costs in pandemics. So, why doesn’t everyone just show their work? How are you estimating the costs and benefits of masking?
First, we can disagree about what is valuable. Then, we can disagree about the estimates. But we (rational people) CAN’T disagree about what to do. If the costs are bigger than the benefits, DON’T MASK. If the benefits are bigger than the costs, MASK.

tmercer 3 Jun 2022 23:48 UTC
−1 points
on: Can Humanism Match Religion’s Output?
“then we run out of mental energy”

No. This is bullshit. There is no(t sufficient) good evidence of ego depletion.