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Christy Sands's avatar

Imo, it's because beliefs can be rational and/or aesthetic at the same time. A good example of this is my inclination towards socialism. I have heard many compelling criticisms of socialism over the years, some of which have raised serious doubts in my mind as to the feasibility of socialism as a system, but because I have a greater investment in socialism as an aesthetic, I continue to hold this allegiance despite my awareness of these valid criticisms on a rational level. I often wonder if a similar phenomenon is occurring at a cognitive level for those who identify as religious in spite of the overwhelming lack of evidence they are presented with today.

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

The theorem is not normative. Agreeing to agree may be a logical result of interaction between perfect Bayesian agents; but my simulation indicates that doing this decreases expected correctness.

I also dispute that the theorem says what Aumann claimed it says, for two reasons.

First, it requires agents to know each others' partition functions. This is laughably impossible in the real world.

Second, I believe that Aumann's attempt to justify saying that "The meet at w of the partitions of X and Y is a subset of event E" means the same as the English phrase "X knows that Y knows event E" means, is incorrect.

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