Open Thread, May 1-14, 2013

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

I'm not trying to be nice. Do not interpret the fact that I'm won't admit to attacking you to mean that I'm trying to be nice—perhaps I'm really not attacking you. I honestly believe that your position is fully self-justified, and I respect it.

Neither am I asking for politeness. I didn't get come on here expecting you to be nice, only rational and reasonable, which most people have been. I'd be happy for you all to tell me that it's irrational to conclude that God exists. One of my biggest questions was whether you all thought this was the case. Some of you don't, but you all did, and undiplomatically told me so, I wouldn't be offended. I might come away disappointed that this community wasn't as open-minded as I had hoped (no accusations intended), but I wouldn't be offended. If you think it's the case, please tell me so, and I will respectfully disagree.

If E1 entails high confidence in G1, then an SREoE given E1 concludes that G1 is much more likely than NOT(G1), and an agent that does not conclude this is not an SREoE. That's just what it means for evidence to entail a given level of confidence in a conclusion, be it a low level or a high level.

I think the biggest problem here is that, as I wrote in the other post, I don't believe there's only one conclusion a rational person (SREoE) can draw from the evidence. I don't believe that there is only one correct "methodology," and so I don't believe that evidence necessarily entails one thing or the other.

I don't believe that there is only one correct "methodology," and so I don't believe that evidence necessarily entails one thing or the other.

I see. I apologize; I missed this the first time you said it.

So, on your view, what does it mean to evaluate evidence reliably, if not that sufficiently reliable evaluations of given evidence will converge on the same confidence in given propositions? What does it mean for a methodology to be correct, if not that it leads a system that implements it to a given confidence in given propositions given evide... (read more)

0TimS13y

There is one direction a SREoE updates on evidence - towards the evidence. If I have strong reasons (high prior probability) of thinking that a coin has heads on both sides, I'm making a mistake by becoming more confident after I flip the coin and it comes up tails. Likewise, if I have strong reasons of thinking that another coin is biased towards heads, so it turns up heads 60% instead of 50%, I'm committing the same error if I become more confident after seeing the coinflip turn up tails. So learning E1 should make any SREoE become more confident of G1 unless that person's priors are already very heavily weighed towards G1. In the real world, there just aren't that many SREoE's with high priors on G1 before being exposed to E1.

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