From: Robin Hanson (hanson@econ.berkeley.edu)
Date: Tue Dec 22 1998 - 10:58:30 MST
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
>Of late, the opinion has been expressed that it's okay to believe
>strongly in something as long as you have evidence for it - in other
>words, "dogma" describes a belief that is held strongly in the absence
>of evidence. I disagree. Any strong belief is a chain. ...
>Any strong belief causes the opinion to persist in and of itself and
>slows reaction to new information. Translation: It makes you stupid
>and slow.
Bayesian decision theory gives a nice account of how one's degree of
belief in some claim should vary as evidence accumulates. It allows
for assigning probabilities close to one when the evidence is strong.
I presume you mean something else by "strong belief."
Robin Hanson
hanson@econ.berkeley.edu http://hanson.berkeley.edu/
RWJF Health Policy Scholar FAX: 510-643-8614
140 Warren Hall, UC Berkeley, CA 94720-7360 510-643-1884
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