From 4a9756bfe5741a01807e542ccd461e4b4955d409 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: "M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake" Date: Fri, 8 Dec 2017 17:37:56 -0800 Subject: [PATCH] drafting "Faster Than Science (Transgender Edition)" --- .../drafts/faster-than-science-transgender-edition.md | 9 +++++++-- 1 file changed, 7 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/content/drafts/faster-than-science-transgender-edition.md b/content/drafts/faster-than-science-transgender-edition.md index 2960f1a..85a0c57 100644 --- a/content/drafts/faster-than-science-transgender-edition.md +++ b/content/drafts/faster-than-science-transgender-edition.md @@ -10,9 +10,14 @@ It's important to [distinguish between](http://lesswrong.com/lw/qb/science_doesn But the _normative logic of inductive inference_ is much simpler. Hypotheses are favored (in mathematically exact precision) in proportion to their algorithmic simplicity and the amount of probability-mass they allocate to the correct answer. In principle, an ideal reasoner could wittle down its hypothesis space using far fewer clues than human scientific communities would take, using its powers of inference and background knowledge of other sciences to _predict_ features of reality that humans would demand be pinned down by reams of more careful (and more expensive) experiments and observation. -A conventional human scientist studying an account of such reasoning might protest, "You're jumping to conclusions! There's _no way_ you can prove that hypothesis with so little data!" +A conventional human scientist studying an account of such reasoning might protest, "You're jumping to conclusions! There's _no way_ you can justify confidence in that hypothesis with so little data!" Such epistemological disputes are not easy to ajudicate, but in the end, one cannot argue with success: the extent to which our scientist would be justified in accusing our alien reasoner of jumping to conclusions must be the extent to which we expect those conclusions to be disproven later. + +---- + +Suppose our alien reasoner were to be informed of the fact that, among humans, some fraction of males elect to undergo medical interventions to resememble females, and aspire to be perceived as females socially. Suppose our alien reasoner were asked to hypothesize about the cause of such behavior. REVISION NOTES— -* don't insist on it being an "ideal reasoner", just talk about an alien inference process that has a different balance of theory-drivenness vs. empiricism + * don't insist on it being an "ideal reasoner", just talk about an alien inference process that has a different balance of theory-drivenness vs. empiricism +* "norms and laws about ..." is too vague: need to explicitly argue that peer review and replication are about human unreliability rather than normative epistemology -- 2.17.1