[ExI] Probability is "subjectively objective"

Jef Allbright jef at jefallbright.net
Mon Jul 14 15:06:57 UTC 2008


A post by Eliezer today on Overcoming Bias goes to the heart of a
topic that triggers strong reactions from some on this list.  (Lee,
Gordon, are you listening?)

    But it also makes a deep philosophical point as well,
    which I never saw Jaynes spell out explicitly, but I think
    he would have approved: there is no such thing as a
    probability that isn't in any mind.  Any mind that takes
    in evidence and outputs probability estimates of the next
    event, remember, can be viewed as a prior - so there is
    no probability without priors/minds."

<http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/07/probability-is.html>

A personal aside:

The last several months, I have repeatedly enjoyed a strange sense of
being "virtually productive", in the sense that issues of significant
importance to me personally are getting done -- by others.

In particular, Eliezer, in his Overcoming Bias blog posts, hits most
of what I consider to be key, if not archetypal, points of conceptual
confusion common to thinking about evolution of intentional systems,
putting in hours of effort nearly every day.  Hours that I couldn't
afford.  And as he clears a widening swath of /how/ to reason
effectively about such matters, he is gradually exposing the central
question of coherently accounting for the intentional /who/ at the
apparent singularity of self.  I trust with increasing certainty that
Eli is moving ever closer to his "enlightenment."

I'll highlight here a segment which highlights [for me] a remaining
ongoing incoherency:

    I am not saying that this is everything people mean by
    "subjective" and "objective", just pointing to one aspect
    of the concept.  One might summarize this aspect
    thus:  "If you can change something by thinking
    differently, it's subjective; if you can't change it by
    anything you do strictly inside your head, it's objective."

If I had the time to write a proper (series of) essay(s), I would
strive to convey that while the above certainly represents a prevalent
view of the subjective/objective distinction, it's not so much an
/aspect/ of probability but a /view/ of probability, unnecessarily
complicated and therefore misleading with its implicit epicycles
assuming an ontological "you" being able to "change" that which is not
you.  Enough said for now.

Back to the topic of being "virtually productive", I'll close by also
expressing my appreciation for Iain Banks and his stories on the
Culture, which are nearly the kind of fiction I would hope to write
(given much more talent and time) to convey a less rigorous but more
seductive view of possibilities for more evolved morality and social
choice.

Onward!

- Jef



More information about the extropy-chat mailing list