As one data point, I did not have this association with “impressions” vs. “beliefs”, even though I do in fact distinguish between these two kinds of credences and often report both (usually with a long clunky explanation since I don’t know of good terminology for it).
The comments on naming beliefs by Hal Finney (2008) appears to be how the consensus around the impressions/beliefs distinction began to form (the commenters include such movers and shakers as Eliezer and Anna Salamon).
Also, impression track records by Katja (September 2017) recent blog post/article circulated in the rationalist community that revived the terminology.
Thanks for drawing our attention to that early Overcoming Bias post. But please note that it was written by Hal Finney, not Robin Hanson. It took me a few minutes to realize this, so it seemed worth highlighting lest others fail to appreciate it.
Incidentally, I’ve been re-reading Finney’s posts over the past couple of days and have been very impressed. What a shame that such a fine thinker is no longer with us.
Explicitly separate “individual impressions” (impressions based only on evidence you’ve verified yourself) from “beliefs” (which include evidence from others’ impressions)
To add to the list of references in this thread, Brian Tomasik talks about this in “Gains from Trade through Compromise” in the section “Epistemic prisoner’s dilemma”.
As one data point, I did not have this association with “impressions” vs. “beliefs”, even though I do in fact distinguish between these two kinds of credences and often report both (usually with a long clunky explanation since I don’t know of good terminology for it).
The comments on naming beliefs by Hal Finney (2008) appears to be how the consensus around the impressions/beliefs distinction began to form (the commenters include such movers and shakers as Eliezer and Anna Salamon).
Also, impression track records by Katja (September 2017) recent blog post/article circulated in the rationalist community that revived the terminology.
Thanks for drawing our attention to that early Overcoming Bias post. But please note that it was written by Hal Finney, not Robin Hanson. It took me a few minutes to realize this, so it seemed worth highlighting lest others fail to appreciate it.
Incidentally, I’ve been re-reading Finney’s posts over the past couple of days and have been very impressed. What a shame that such a fine thinker is no longer with us.
ETA: Though one hopes this is temporary.
Somehow I missed your reply originally; I’ve updated my comment to correct the author name of the post.
Thanks! By the way, I found your original comment helpful for writing about the history of the concept of an independent impression.
I’m not sure where I picked it up, though I’m pretty sure it was somewhere in the rationalist community.
E.g. from What epistemic hygiene norms should there be?:
To add to the list of references in this thread, Brian Tomasik talks about this in “Gains from Trade through Compromise” in the section “Epistemic prisoner’s dilemma”.