I’m still not totally comfortable. I think my confusion arose because I was considering the related question of whether I could use my better knowledge than Eli to win money from bets (in expectation) -- I couldn’t, because Eli has no reason to bet on the bomb going off. More generally, Eliezer never had reason to bet (in the sense that he gets epistemic credit if he’s right) on nanotech-doom-by-2010, because in the worlds where he’s right we’re dead. It feels weird to update against Eliezer on the basis of beliefs that he wouldn’t have bet on; updating against him doesn’t seem to be incentive-compatible… but maybe that’s just the sacrifice immanent to the epistemic virtue of publicly sharing your belief in doom.
No, my survival for 12 hours is evidence against Eli being correct about the bomb.
So: oops, I think.
I’m still not totally comfortable. I think my confusion arose because I was considering the related question of whether I could use my better knowledge than Eli to win money from bets (in expectation) -- I couldn’t, because Eli has no reason to bet on the bomb going off. More generally, Eliezer never had reason to bet (in the sense that he gets epistemic credit if he’s right) on nanotech-doom-by-2010, because in the worlds where he’s right we’re dead. It feels weird to update against Eliezer on the basis of beliefs that he wouldn’t have bet on; updating against him doesn’t seem to be incentive-compatible… but maybe that’s just the sacrifice immanent to the epistemic virtue of publicly sharing your belief in doom.