I have a distinct memory, albeit one which could plausibly be false, of Eliezer once stating that he was ’100% sure that nonhuman animals aren’t conscious’ because of his model of consciousness. If he said it, it’s now been taken down from whichever site it appeared on. I’m now genuinely curious whether anyone else remembers this (or some actual exchange on which my psyche might have based it)
I would be shocked if Eliezer ever said he was “100% sure” about anything. It would just sound gauche coming from him.
Using the log odds exposes the fact that reaching infinite certainty requires infinitely strong evidence, just as infinite absurdity requires infinitely strong counterevidence.
Furthermore, all sorts of standard theorems in probability have special cases if you try to plug 1s or 0s into them—like what happens if you try to do a Bayesian update on an observation to which you assigned probability 0.
So I propose that it makes sense to say that 1 and 0 are not in the probabilities; just as negative and positive infinity, which do not obey the field axioms, are not in the real numbers.
Wait sorry it’s hard to see the broader context of this comment on account of being on my phone and comment sections being hard to navigate on ea forum. I don’t know if I said eliezer had 100% credence, but if I did, that was wrong.
I have a distinct memory, albeit one which could plausibly be false, of Eliezer once stating that he was ’100% sure that nonhuman animals aren’t conscious’ because of his model of consciousness. If he said it, it’s now been taken down from whichever site it appeared on. I’m now genuinely curious whether anyone else remembers this (or some actual exchange on which my psyche might have based it)
I would be shocked if Eliezer ever said he was “100% sure” about anything. It would just sound gauche coming from him.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QGkYCwyC7wTDyt3yT/0-and-1-are-not-probabilities
Wait sorry it’s hard to see the broader context of this comment on account of being on my phone and comment sections being hard to navigate on ea forum. I don’t know if I said eliezer had 100% credence, but if I did, that was wrong.
I agree—but that’s why it stuck in my mind so strongly. I remember thinking how incongruous it was at the time.