I believe it was John Stuart Mill who said that.

Nice move using Stalin instead of Hitler, since I get tired of hearing the latter brought up. I myself have endorsed some of Stalin's ideas like "[ideology] in one country" since even if his policies were bad he was at least fairly successful in getting them implemented and lasting for a good while.

I'm with McCabe-- what was the epiphany?

every (modern) atheist knows his or her atheism is a product of scientific understanding

This is wrong.

Even presuming that you're speaking very informally, and your statement shouldn't be interpreted literally, it's STILL wrong.

Clarification: Just yudkowsky after 2003 or yudkowsky and bostrom together, perhaps sharing the same mistake? It would be usefull to know so I don't make the same mistake, et al.

Matthew: Just me after 2003, not Bostrom.

I call the experience my "Bayesian enlightenment" but that doesn't really say anything, does it? Guess you'll have to keep reading Overcoming Bias until I get there.

michael vassar: You're right when you say a correlation of intelligence with liberalism is evidence for liberalism, but that's not because the stupid people are conservative, it's because the smart people are liberal. At least I think that's what Eliezer meant.

Though you could see the conservativeness of stupid people as strengthening the evidence provided by smart liberal people because it points at there being more of a conservative human baseline to deviate from.

"""A car with a broken engine cannot drive backward at 200 mph, even if the engine is really really broken."""

Wrong!

"When the player's truck is put into reverse, the truck will accelerate infinitely; however, the truck will halt instantly when the reverse key is released."

"I call the experience my "Bayesian enlightenment" but that doesn't really say anything, does it?"

Note to readers: Eli discovered Bayesian probability theory (in general) much earlier than 2003, see http://www.singinst.org/upload/CFAI//design/clean.html#programmer_bayesbinding.

"You're right when you say a correlation of intelligence with liberalism is evidence for liberalism, but that's not because the stupid people are conservative, it's because the smart people are liberal."

If you assume the population is partitioned into liberals and conservatives, a high percentage of stupid conservatives implies a high percentage of smart liberals, and vice-versa. If smart liberals are Bayesian evidence for B, then smart conservatives must be Bayesian evidence against B (note that 'smart' here is relative to the average, not some absolute level of smartness).

Isn't the truth of a thing (such as a sentence or artwork) determined by how closely it matches reality? And the match-level is a function of the identity of reality and of the thing. So there is no mention of smart or dumb people anywhere in that.

Good post, and good job putting this into a common language framework. If you convince only one or two more people to think clearly, it was worth it! B

Steven: Yes we can, with the caveat you mentioned earlier about the human baseline. Of course, that point is plausibly precisely what Mill or whoever was pointing to with his comment.

this cannot be evidence against B unless you have background knowledge on the fraction of people who think B,

No. The "unless" clause is still incorrect. We can know a great deal about the fraction of people who think B, and it still cannot serve even as meta-evidence for or against B.

There is an ongoing confusion here about the difference between evidence and meta-evidence. It is as obvious and important as the difference between experimental analysis and meta-analysis, and it is NOT being acknowledged.

"No. The "unless" clause is still incorrect. We can know a great deal about the fraction of people who think B, and it still cannot serve even as meta-evidence for or against B."

This can't be right. I have a hundred measuring devices. Ninety are broken and give a random answer with an unknown distribution, while ten give an answer that strongly correlates with the truth. Ninety say A and ten say B. If I examine a random meter that says B and find that it is broken, then surely that has to count as strong evidence against B.

This is probably an unnecessarily subtle point, of course; the overall thrust of the argument is of course correct.

We can know a great deal about the fraction of people who think B, and it still cannot serve even as meta-evidence for or against B. There is an ongoing confusion here about the difference between evidence and meta-evidence.

No. From a Bayesian perspective, there is no difference other than strength. This is, of course, different from saying that the truth is what the authorities say it is, but I think that's what you're hearing it as.

Actually, if I'm not wrong (and it still confuses me), arguments from authority have a different conditional probability structure than "normal" arguments.

"You're right when you say a correlation of intelligence with liberalism is evidence for liberalism, but that's not because the stupid people are conservative, it's because the smart people are liberal."

That seems to me exactly wrong. A proposition's truth or falseness is not entangled in the intelligence of the people who profess the proposition. Alien cultists do not change the probability of poorly hidden aliens. Dumb people who argue for evolution over creationism do not raise the probability that Genesis is natural history, no matter how dumb they are. Conservative Proposition X will be true or not true regardless of whether it is supported by a very intelligent conservative or by a very dumb conservative.

From a Bayesian perspective, there is no difference other than strength.

That's precisely why Bayes' Theorem isn't all you need to know in order to reason. It's an immensely powerful tool, but a grossly inadequate methodology.

Again: there is a great deal of confusion about the difference between evidence and meta-evidence here.

If I do find someone whose statement seem to reliably anti-correlate with reality, am I justified in taking their making a statement as evidence that the statement is false?

Caledonian: please define meta-evidence, then, since I think Eliezer has adequately defined evidence. Clear up our confusion!

Eliezer has NOT adequately defined evidence. There is no data that isn't tied to every event through the operations of causality.

To say it abstractly: For an event to be evidence about a target of inquiry, it has to happen differently in a way that's entangled with the different possible states of the target. (To say it technically: There has to be Shannon mutual information between the evidential event and the target of inquiry, relative to your current state of uncertainty about both of them.) Entanglement can be contagious when processed correctly, which is why you need eyes and a brain. If photons reflect off your shoelaces and hit a rock, the rock won't change much. The r

Yes Doug. Furthermore, if you can find a pair of people the difference of who's opinions seems to correlate with reality you can use that as evidence, which is the pattern pointed to by the original quote.

The definition Eliezer offered, and the way in which he used the term later, are not connected in any meaningful way. His definition is wrong.

And you haven't tried to define meta-evidence at all.

Do you know what a meta-analysis study is?

Beware of feeding trolls. If the one can offer naught but flat assertions, you may be better off saying, "Let the audience decide." If you engage and offer defense to each repeated flat assertion, you encourage them to do even less work in the future, since it offers the same attention-reward.

@yudkowsky I would be happy if I could judge the merit of Bayes for myself versus the frequentists approach. I doubt UTD faculty have seen the light, but who knows, they might. I wonder even more deeply if a thorough understanding of Bayes gives any insight into Epistemology? If you can answer Bayes does offer insight into epistemology I know for sure I will be around for many more months. If I remember correctly, we both have the same IQ (140) yet I am much worse at mathematics. OF course, my dad is an a/c technician, not a physicist.

I enjoy your hard work and insights Eliezer. Also Caledonians comments, mainly for their mystery.

Likewise, if you attempt to engage people who make foolish proclamations and ambiguous definitions, it can reward them with attention and conversation. The benefits to puncturing shoddy arguments are often greater than the prices that need to be paid to do so.

Eliezer has repeatedly offered a definition for a term, gone on to mention that this definition is incomplete, and then failed to explicitly refine the definition or provide a process for the reader to update it. Despite recognizing the fallacious nature of conclusions or arguments supported with su... (read more)

Caledonian,

What do you mean by meta-evidence? How isMr. Yudkowsky's definition of evidence not adequate for the use in this post?

How about this for a precise definition: A is evidence about B if p(A | B) != p(A | ~B).

Of course, by this definition, almost everything is evidence about almost everything else. So we'd like to talk about the strength of evidence. A good candidate is log p(A | B) - log p(A | ~B). This is the number that gets added to your log odds for B when you observe A.

Of course, by this definition, almost everything is evidence about almost everything else.

Ding ding ding!

It may even be the case that, by that definition, everything is evidence about everything else. And clearly that doesn't match our everyday understanding and use of the term - it doesn't even match our formal understanding and use of the term.

What's missing from the definition that we need, in order to make the definition match our understanding?

But everything is evidence about everything else. I don't see the problem at all.

Steven, I reduxified your argument as Argument Screens Off Authority.

If not, why not? I gave you plenty of evidence.

Caledonian, you gave evidence, but you certainly didn't give plenty of it. I see you ignored the part of my post where I talked about how to quantify evidence. The important question isn't whether or not we have evidence; it's how much evidence we have.

Let me make an analogy. I can define sugar as sucrose; a specific carbohydrate whose molecular structure you can view on wikipedia. I might say that a substance is "sugary" if it contains some sugar. But by this definition, almost everything is sugary,... (read more)

Evidence is like gravity. Everything is pulling on everything else, but in most cases the pull is weak enough that we can pretty much ignore it. What you have done, Caledonian, is akin to telling me the position of three one-gram weights, and then asking me to calculate the motion of Charon based on that.

If, after I have pointed this out, you offer me some sugar cookies containing 1 molecule of sucrose, and then defend yourself by saying that according to my definition, they are indeed sugary, you are being obnoxious. I already told you how to quantify sugariness, and you ignored it for rhetorical reasons.

No, I'm not being obnoxious. I'm pointing out that your definition is bad by showing that it leads directly to common and absurd conclusions.

By Eliezer's definition, even the thing he offers as an example of a thing that isn't evidence IS STILL EVIDENC... (read more)

Everything is pulling on everything else, but in most cases the pull is weak enough that we can pretty much ignore it. What you have done, Caledonian, is akin to telling me the position of three one-gram weights, and then asking me to calculate the motion of Charon based on that.

So close... and yet, so far.

I agree with you that, even if I gave you absolute, complete, and utterly precise data on the three weights, there is no way you could derive the motion of Charon from that.

So: are the three weights evidence of Charon's movement?

For any that may be genuinely confused: If you read What is Evidence?, An Intuitive Explanation of Bayesian Reasoning, and A Technical Explanation of Technical Explanation, you will understand how to define evidence both qualitatively and quantitatively.

For the rest of you: Stop feeding the troll.

Caledonian is just trying to point out that the keys to rationalism are family values and a literal interpretation of the Bible. I don't know why you all can't see something so obvious.

Observe:

"It may even be the case that, by that definition, everything is evidence about everything else. And clearly that doesn't match our everyday understanding and use of the term - it doesn't even match our formal understanding and use of the term.

What's missing from the definition that we need, in order to make the definition match our understanding?"

Jesus.

&qu... (read more)

If this is the same Caledonian who used to post to the Pharyngula blog, he's barred from there now with good reason.

Is there a cognitive bias at work that makes it hard for people not to feed trolls?

Ben Jones, I don't see the human existence of religion as having any evidential bearing on the existence of a Super Happy Agent sufficiently like a person and unlike evolution that theists would actually notice its existence. Pretty much the same probability as an object one foot across and composed of chocolate cake existing in the asteroid belt. For interventionist Super Happy Agents, same probability as elves stealing your socks.

Incidentally, with sufficiently precise measurements it's perfectly possible to get a gravitational map of the entire Solar System off a random household object.

Ben Jones, I don't see the human existence of religion as having any evidential bearing on the existence of a Super Happy Agent sufficiently like a person and unlike evolution that theists would actually notice its existence.

Any evidential bearing? Surely P(religion X exists|religion X is true) is higher than P(religion X exists|religion X is false).

Nick, I don't see how that follows for the supermajority of religions that are logically self-contradictory, except in the sense that if 1=2 then the probability of the Sun rising tomorrow is nearly 200%. Furthermore, Ben Jones asked about religion in general rather than any specific religion, and religion in general most certainly cannot be true.

Incidentally, with sufficiently precise measurements it's perfectly possible to get a gravitational map of the entire Solar System off a random household object.

Also incorrect. More than one configuration of masses can have exactly the same effect on the object. No matter how precisely you measure the properties of the object, you can never distinguish between those configurations.

In general, any claim maintained by even a single human being to be true will be more probable, simply based on the authority of that human being, than some random claim such as the chocolate cake claim, which is not believed by anyone.

There are possibly some exceptions to this (and possibly not), but in general there is no particular reason to include religions as exceptions.

I should add that this is true about self-contradictory religions as well. For the probability that I mistakenly interpret the religion to be self-contradictory is greater than the probability that the chocolate cake is out there.

"If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him."

Nick: Why should an atheistic rationalist have any more faith a a religion that exists than a religion that doesn't? I don't belive in God; the testimony of a man that claims he spoke to God in a burning bush doesn't sway me to update my probability. I Defy The Data!

My 'lack of faith' stems from a probability-based judgment that there is no Super Agent. With this as my starting point, I have as much reason to worship Yoda as I do God.

Ben Jones, I don't see the human existence of religion as having any evidential bearing on the existence of a Super Happy Agent sufficiently like a person and unlike evolution that theists would actually notice its existence. Pretty much the same probability as an object one foot across and composed of chocolate cake existing in the asteroid belt. For interventionist Super Happy Agents, same probability as elves stealing your socks.

Eli, you're just saying that you don't believe in the existence of a SHASLAPAUETTWANIE. But since you labeled it with: ".... (read more)

Eli, you're just saying that you don't believe in the existence of a SHASLAPAUETTWANIE. But since you labeled it with: "...that theists would actually notice its existence," then clearly the existence of religion has some evidential bearing on the existence of a SHASLAPAUETTWANIE.

(Blink.)

Um, I concede to your crushing logic, I guess... what exactly am I conceding again?

Flying saucer cultism was helped along by secret Cold War technological advances that were accidentally witnessed by civilians.

For example, the famous 1947 Roswell incident was the crashing of an American strategic reconnaissance super-balloon that was supposed to float over the Soviet Union and snap pictures, which would then be recovered many thousands of miles away. That's why it was made out of the latest high-tech materials that were unfamiliar to people in small town New Mexico in 1947.

The KGB used to generate flying saucer stories in Latin America... (read more)

Steve, maybe this was your point anyway, but the incidents you mention indicate that the existence of flying saucer cults is evidence for the existence of aliens (namely by showing that the cults were based on seeing something in the real world.) No doubt they aren't much evidence, especially given the prior improbability, but they are certainly evidence.

"Not all Conservatives are stupid, but most stupid people are
Conservatives." (The British Conservative Party was the brunt of this quip by J.S. Mills.) It helps to Venn diagram this. I find that many stupid conservatives assume that conservatives are the majority, which leaves few stupid people to be liberals or anything else (although a majority of Liberals are assumed by stupid conservatives to be stupid people). But if conservatives are not a majority, there are many stupid people who MIGHT or MIGHT NOT be liberals. I assume there are plenty... (read more)

In Hansonian terms: Your instinctive willingness to believe something will change along with your willingness to affiliate with people who are known for believing it - quite apart from whether the belief is actually true.

And that's why politics is more about identity than predictive truth.

Many people are unsatisfied with their monogamous relationships, therefore polyamory must be great?

Again, I disagree. Cults can't form around anything. They can only form around issues that would make them social or intellectual outcasts. And in a world in which there were poorly hidden aliens, too many intelligent people would be of the opinion that there are poorly hidden aliens, and no such cult could arise.

But the more important point is... IF I start to think that there are poorly hidden aliens, that could be due to one of two reasons: either because I have reasonable evidence for their existence, or because I'm being influenced by some sort of bia... (read more)

It's not much evidence one way or the other.

I'd guess P(cults|aliens) would be noticeably bigger than P(cults|~aliens).

It's just that the prior P(aliens) is so tiny that even the posterior P(aliens|cults) is negligible.

I think that this has deal with boundeed rationality. Perfect knowledge required endless ammount of time- and all human have only limited lifetime. So, ammount of time for each dessision limited even more. Therefore we can not explore all argument. And I think - it would be a good strategy to throw away some arguments right in the begining and don't waste time on them. Instead you can pay more attention to more plausible one. And this give you a opportunity to build a relatively accurate model of the world in relativly short time. If you not agree- conside... (read more)

I'm reserved as to the corollary that only winning against the strongest advocate of an idea holds ANY meaning to disprove the idea.

For one, there could be a better arguer. If there is a better advocate of the intelligence explosion than Eliezer, unlikely as they may seem, who just won't go public and keeps to private circles, would it do nothing to win against the former? Taken another step further, if it is likely there ever will be such a proponent, does that invalidate all present and past efforts?

For another, the quality of an arguer can only be made ... (read more)

One point Hans Rosling tried to convey constantly in Factfulness is that most stupid people perform significantly worse than random (than "the chimps" as he portrayed it). He argued that this results from biases etc. If this generalises to more than people's perception of how the world is doing and increases in strength for less intelligent people or people with more exposition to mass media, this could potentially apply to silliness and alien intervention not being orthogonal but having significant correlation as well. Similarly, "most stupid people vote ... (read more)

I actually think it is possible for someone's beliefs to anti-correlate with reality without being smart enough to know what really is true just to reverse it. I can think of at least three ways this could happen, beyond extremely unlikely coincidences. The first two are that a person could be systematically deceived by someone else, until they have more false beliefs then true ones, and the second is that systematic cognitive biases could reliably distort their beliefs. The third is the most interesting one, though: If someone has a belief that many of th... (read more)

At least for me and therefore possibly others it would be useful to put a hyperlink on an Important Name to go off to a review of their primary argument. For instance "Hanson". Wonderful writeup.

Thanks.

"If a hundred inventors fail to build flying machines using metal and wood and canvas, it doesn’t imply that what you really need is a flying machine of bone and flesh."

Although we do, because that would be awesome.

Even though cults would indeed arise even without genuine extraterrestrial encounters, I think that the actual presence of aliens would increase the probability and # of flying saucer cults. Actual alien encounters would likely inspire some # of these sorts of beliefs, making the formation of cults even more probable than in a world without aliens. Essentially, while the baseline probability of cult formation might be high due to "human silliness", the added “signal” from genuine alien events could tip the scales further in favor of cult emergence.

Thus the conditional probability P(cults|aliens) would be greater than P(cults|!aliens).

What I understood: We wouldn't be automatically right by saying the opposite of what stupid people say. This is because stupid people are wrong from many angles, and to be right one needs to be right in all angles. And some times, stupid people may be correct too. Or rather, stupidity of believers is not evidence against the belief. In fact, most beliefs are not completely wrong. We want to keep the correct parts and reject wrong parts, not reject everything once we realize it fails to predict our goals.