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Robin Hanson's avatar

Nick, it seems the issue we need to consider more to further explore this topic is the appropriateness of Bayesian-like analysis. But as it is a framework intended to account for a wide range of issues in inference, we should judge it overall in terms of all of the intuitions it may or may not conflict with, relative to other possible frameworks of analysis. Since we expect some of our intuitions to be in error, finding a few conflicts with intuition should not discourage us from embracing Bayesian analysis. I invite you to take the first shot by posting sometime on what you see as the most serious problems with the Bayesian approach.

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

I see this is in effect being further addressed in new posts, so I’ll just answer the last two points and then leave it.Eliezer (apologies for mis-spelling your name in the last post): The answer to your challenge is in the original post, where I offered precisely such an argument. Secondly, I think you are mistaken about where the burden of proof lies. No one is disputing that sometimes there are unreasonable disagreements, which is all that your examples go to show. But you are simply assuming that Bayesianism is true. My point is that it is no less reasonable, and perhaps more reasonable, to start from the premiss that people do reasonably disagree (indeed, some would argue that we are morally required to accept that premiss), and if Bayesianism conflicts with that, so much the worse for Bayesianism.Robin: It is not that I am uninterested or unsympathetic to the formal results, but I am bringing into view ways in which it might be argued that the formal model seems to give the wrong answer. Guy brought out the point about idealisation at the end of enquiry versus our situation. There is a lot to be discussed about whether and when idealisation is a clarification rather than obscuration of philosophical issues. I have been pressing on a different point, namely the the requirement that reasons for a belief should have content that is relevant to the truth of the content of the belief. I have drawn your attention to a specific argument about endurance versus perdurance which turns on the problem of temporary intrinsics. Attending to that argument shows why Lewis thinks temporary intrinsics means perdurance is true whilst Van Inwagen does not, and the reasons that Lewis adduces are other metaphysical doctrines, in particular, doctrines about what it is to be an intrinsic property. The belief in their disagreement has no content that bears. It is quite irrelevant. If you add it as a premiss to either of their arguments it sits as an idle cog. It can neither justify nor defeat any of the reasons they adduce in this dispute. So I have given an example of the way in which disagreement, at least prima facie, has no rational significance, and your reply is to say, well yes, but in my formal model with impossible possible worlds it does. Fine, say I, so much the worse for your model!

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