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"Two rational people cannot end up at [a] different conclusion" Wow. I couldn't disagree more. There's so much ambiguity in this world of ours that, even given

by pc2g4d 12y ago

"Two rational people cannot end up at [a] different conclusion" Wow. I couldn't disagree more. There's so much ambiguity in this world of ours that, even given a universally agreed upon definition of "rational" (which usually is a stand-in for "people whose thinking I approve of") there is enormous room for differing conclusions. The belief that "rational" people must come to same conclusions seems like a basis for transferring the argument from the issues to the people. I.e. if you're "rational" and not coming to the same conclusions as I am then there must be something wrong with you.

MichaelGG 12y ago
"More specifically, if two people are genuine Bayesian rationalists with common priors, and if they each have common knowledge of their individual posteriors, then their posteriors must be equal." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aumann%27s_agreement_theorem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aumann%27s_agreement_theorem But yes, essentially, even colloquially, if we're both rational and coming to different conclusions, then either one of is making a mistake, or one of has a incorrect assumption. In the case of there being no correct assumption ("red is better color than green"), then feel free to call it "different" assumptions.
- pc2g4d 12y ago
  In that case "rationality" basically means following the laws of probability theory given an existing statistical model. However, the process of arriving at the statistical model to begin with is fraught with areas of potential disagreement. The promises of that agreement theorem are actually pretty narrow and essentially reduce down to "math is consistent with itself".
  - MichaelGG 12y ago
    You're not wrong. But it should be explicitly noted and let people reduce their arguments to "my priors say an invisible force has a terminal value of consuming drugs being bad". Then instead of saying how people disagree, we can just note that people have flawed beliefs. Otherwise talking about agreement somehow seems like there's a problem with the correct side, that hey "both are valid" and so on.

by pc2g4d 12y ago

MichaelGG 12y ago

"More specifically, if two people are genuine Bayesian rationalists with common priors, and if they each have common knowledge of their individual posteriors, then their posteriors must be equal." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aumann%27s_agreement_theorem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aumann%27s_agreement_theorem But yes, essentially, even colloquially, if we're both rational and coming to different conclusions, then either one of is making a mistake, or one of has a incorrect assumption. In the case of there being no correct assumption ("red is better color than green"), then feel free to call it "different" assumptions.

pc2g4d 12y ago
In that case "rationality" basically means following the laws of probability theory given an existing statistical model. However, the process of arriving at the statistical model to begin with is fraught with areas of potential disagreement. The promises of that agreement theorem are actually pretty narrow and essentially reduce down to "math is consistent with itself".
- MichaelGG 12y ago
  You're not wrong. But it should be explicitly noted and let people reduce their arguments to "my priors say an invisible force has a terminal value of consuming drugs being bad". Then instead of saying how people disagree, we can just note that people have flawed beliefs. Otherwise talking about agreement somehow seems like there's a problem with the correct side, that hey "both are valid" and so on.