95% of climate models agree: the observations must be wrong • Hacker News Board

Re: 95% of climate models agree: the observations must be wrong

#151

Post by SamReidHughes » Sun, Feb 16, 2014, 8:26 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #149

SamReidHughes wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument's invalid, because P(prophet) has nothing to do with whether $diety is telling the truth through said prophet or lying. The only way to predict whether $diety is an earnest hypocrite or a master of deception is by pulling a prior out of your posterior.

Computing a posterior, whether about god or controlling climate via human actions, requires a prior. All decisionmaking requires a prior. What's your point?

My point is that your question about who's a prophet is irrelevant. You claim that stories of Jesus is evidence of Christianity -- or that Christians go to heaven -- but it's really evidence of anti-Christianity if you think God would set up honeypot ideologies. You're not doing anything but looping back around to the original question, that if Christianity is real, is it actually a honeypot? The religion's paraphernalia doesn't matter, and the "evidence" you've suggested doesn't affect the chance of it being a honeypot. That it's a question of picking priors is not news to the anti-Christianity anti-Pascal's wager people, that's what they're saying. For example, your act of saying that Jesus is evidence for Christianity and not anti-Christianity is just a roundabout way of saying your priors are anti-honeypot.

Re: 95% of climate models agree: the observations must be wrong

#152

Post by SamReidHughes » Mon, Feb 17, 2014, 5:33 AM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #149

SamReidHughes wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument's invalid, because P(prophet) has nothing to do with whether $diety is telling the truth through said prophet or lying. The only way to predict whether $diety is an earnest hypocrite or a master of deception is by pulling a prior out of your posterior.

Computing a posterior, whether about god or controlling climate via human actions, requires a prior. All decisionmaking requires a prior. What's your point?

Also, the phrase about pulling a prior out of your posterior was meant as a double entendre between your circular reasoning and the well known anti-Bayesian epithet. But it is easily pointed out that controlling climate via human actions requires a much easier prior than computing a posterior about god: its prior is essentially that reality is real and so is Doppler radar. A choice of priors about God, on the other hand, doesn't require throwing away belief in the empirical reality.

Re: 95% of climate models agree: the observations must be wrong

#153

Post by yummyfajitas » Mon, Feb 17, 2014, 8:15 AM UTC

SamReidHughes wrote: post #152

yummyfajitas wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computing a posterior, whether about god or controlling climate via human actions, requires a prior. All decisionmaking requires a prior. What's your point?

Also, the phrase about pulling a prior out of your posterior was meant as a double entendre between your circular reasoning and the well known anti-Bayesian epithet. But it is easily pointed out that controlling climate via human actions requires a much easier prior than computing a posterior about god: its prior is essentially that reality is real and so is Doppler radar. A choice of priors about God, on the other h…

Controlling climate via human actions requires far more than simply postulating that Doppler radar works. A huge number of mathematically unproven simplifications are performed when going from Navier-Stokes to GCM models, in addition to a number of known to be false assumptions (e.g., anisotropic viscosity of water). A large number of assumptions are thrown into GCM models for parameters that are unknown.

Admitting the possibility that god (or god-like beings) exists does not require throwing away belief in empirical reality. See, for example, simulation theories.

In any case, my reasoning is merely a continuity argument. TheEzEzz asserted that the very small probability of Christianity and Anti-Christianity, and Islam+Anti-Islam cancel exactly. I'm asserting that if the distributions are continuous then this has probability 0 - it takes a ridiculously tiny amount of evidence or an infinitesimally different prior to put you back into Pascal's wager territory.

Re: 95% of climate models agree: the observations must be wrong

#154

Post by xenophanes » Mon, Feb 17, 2014, 8:58 PM UTC

freshhawk wrote: post #139

xenophanes wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is "the consensus opinion of scientific experts" determined? Does that mean majority view, unanimous, or what? Is group voting really a good way to decide such things? But if you aren't talking about a type of vote, what do you mean? And who decides who qualifies as a "scientific expert"? Isn't that problematic?

To oversimplify a fair bit, when the vast majority of people who have spend years studying a subject and have the respect of the other people doing the same agree that's "consensus". There are plenty of subjects that do not have a consensus opinion, plenty of times a consensus fractures into multiple camps, etc. Who's an expert? Anyone who can convince other experts they are also an expert in a culture that glorifies…

I do not want an algorithm. My point was closer to: there is no algorithm, and so this approach doesn't work.

What I actually want is a different approach that rejects authority.

Re: 95% of climate models agree: the observations must be wrong

#155

Post by SamReidHughes » Tue, Feb 18, 2014, 4:33 AM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #153

SamReidHughes wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, the phrase about pulling a prior out of your posterior was meant as a double entendre between your circular reasoning and the well known anti-Bayesian epithet. But it is easily pointed out that controlling climate via human actions requires a much easier prior than computing a posterior about god: its prior is essentially that reality is real and so is Doppler radar. A choice of priors about God, on the other h…

Controlling climate via human actions requires far more than simply postulating that Doppler radar works. A huge number of mathematically unproven simplifications are performed when going from Navier-Stokes to GCM models, in addition to a number of known to be false assumptions (e.g., anisotropic viscosity of water). A large number of assumptions are thrown into GCM models for parameters that are unknown. Admitting t…

> Controlling climate via human actions requires far more than simply postulating that Doppler radar works.

Obviously I'm not saying that it doesn't (well it was obvious to me...). It's a stand-in for everything you'd use. The point is, it's beliefs that stuff you see working will continue working, be it radar or temperature gauges, the laws of physics, or mathematical simplifications or approximations. There is presumably some reason why some seemingly totally made up constants aren't actually 10 times the chosen values, or why it doesn't matter, or how likely that's the case. The difference between this and beliefs about God is that if you don't have reasons why you think the CO2 reading are wrong or why physics will change or why certain mathematical simplifications will stop working, you have to give reasons, you're, epistemologically speaking, discarding empiricism from your toolbox. You can't simply go "Laa dee daa I'm picking different priors than you." There has to be some reason (though it might be that they're going laa dee daa).

> Admitting the possibility that god (or god-like beings) exists does not require throwing away belief in empirical reality.

That's what I said. The difference is that unlike science and measurements of reality, there's no endless stream of evidence to beat your initial priors out of you. Unless you have 100% faith that past events can't be used to predict future outcomes, you'll get dragged over to the empiricist side. But you could have 90% faith in Christianity and maybe that'll only get beaten down to 40%, because there's just no evidence. (Not to mention the more practical way to get people to change their beliefs, no visible consequences for being wrong, either.)

> it takes a ridiculously tiny amount of evidence or an infinitesimally different prior to put you back into Pascal's wager territory.

Sure. But the same goes for putting you into anti-Christianity territory. The expected displacement a tiny amount of evidence would push you is 0 (if we regard the continued absence of new evidence to be evidence itself (e: and assuming potential "big" evidence is neglible, of course)). The whole argument against Pascal's wager is that it's about what your priors are.

And yeah, I don't know what TheEzEzz's 50/50 symmetry is all about.

Re: 95% of climate models agree: the observations must be wrong

#156

Post by freshhawk » Wed, Feb 19, 2014, 9:59 PM UTC

xenophanes wrote: post #154

freshhawk wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To oversimplify a fair bit, when the vast majority of people who have spend years studying a subject and have the respect of the other people doing the same agree that's "consensus". There are plenty of subjects that do not have a consensus opinion, plenty of times a consensus fractures into multiple camps, etc. Who's an expert? Anyone who can convince other experts they are also an expert in a culture that glorifies…

I do not want an algorithm. My point was closer to: there is no algorithm, and so this approach doesn't work. What I actually want is a different approach that rejects authority.

"this approach doesn't work" ... the fact you sent me this message over the internet in our modern society begs to differ. Science does actually work.

As to a different approach that rejects authority ... What would that look like? Would we not value expertise anymore? Would there be no expertise anymore? I like being allowed to get good at something by putting in effort ... and once I do I'm going to be right about the subject more often than those who haven't put in effort. And people will notice that and listen to me, they will value my opinion more than others.

I'm pretty lost as to how this dynamic could be broken in a non-nightmarish way.

Re: 95% of climate models agree: the observations must be wrong

#157

Post by xenophanes » Mon, Feb 24, 2014, 4:59 AM UTC

freshhawk wrote: post #156

xenophanes wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not want an algorithm. My point was closer to: there is no algorithm, and so this approach doesn't work. What I actually want is a different approach that rejects authority.

"this approach doesn't work" ... the fact you sent me this message over the internet in our modern society begs to differ. Science does actually work. As to a different approach that rejects authority ... What would that look like? Would we not value expertise anymore? Would there be no expertise anymore? I like being allowed to get good at something by putting in effort ... and once I do I'm going to be right about…

I said authority doesn't work, not science doesn't work. I think science works in a way other than authority.

Being right more often does not mean you're right in any particular dispute, so how exactly does it matter? Every dispute has to be resolved based on the actual ideas in question, not the authority of the person who said a particular idea.