very much intra-Bayesian and not a criticism of Bayesian reasoning?
Not really. It’s a criticism of a system that allows (and even encourages) you to pretend to know things when you don’t.
Of course, I’m a mathematician and I think Bayesian reasoning is fundamentally correct and is useful in some contexts. Just not the contexts EA uses it for.
Yeah I think the obvious Bayesian reply is: Just make your prior less informative if you know less? It’s fine to choose it to be close to uniform over a very wide range if you know close to nothing.
I think the main concern is that people often use the expected value of such a wide distribution in utility maximisation. So the concerning part is the interaction between eg utilitarianism and Bayesian inference.
Not really. It’s a criticism of a system that allows (and even encourages) you to pretend to know things when you don’t.
Of course, I’m a mathematician and I think Bayesian reasoning is fundamentally correct and is useful in some contexts. Just not the contexts EA uses it for.
Yeah I think the obvious Bayesian reply is: Just make your prior less informative if you know less? It’s fine to choose it to be close to uniform over a very wide range if you know close to nothing.
I think the main concern is that people often use the expected value of such a wide distribution in utility maximisation. So the concerning part is the interaction between eg utilitarianism and Bayesian inference.