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Tyler Cowen on Bloggingheads.tv
Tyler to Will:
No you can't agree with me because its absurd. I can agree with your absurd view, but you can't agree with mine.
That is from my Bloggingheads debut; Robin Hanson reproduces one critical and entertaining part of the transcript, in which I explain which is my most absurd belief.
Here is the link to the show, I am sorry that I cannot embed it. The chat covers many topics, including whether capitalism will triumph, whether you should have more kids, and which country is most likely to be hit by the next nuclear weapon attack. Can you guess my pick? Hint: It's not the U.S. or even Saudi Arabia or Israel.
I conclude with this:
If no one agrees with you, you should be quite worried. If only a small number of people agree with you, you still should be quite worried. I don't think it's a numbers game, but I think whatever view you end up with, it doesn't have to be a majority point of view, that reasons have weight, not just adding up whoever agrees with you. But you still ought to say at the end of the day, look all those other people are against me, maybe I think I'm right probability 57 to 43, but on any truly controversial question among intelligent people, you should never think it's 95 to 5 in your favor.
Addendum: Ann Althouse embeds the parenting discussion.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on June 23, 2008 at 07:12 AM in Television | Permalink
Comments
If it's not controversial, it's not interesting:
"Breathing -- An Important Thing to Do"
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Jun 23, 2008 7:27:07 AM
A more subtle point is that the more the evidence keeps piling up for unpopular theories, the more furious the attack on those who dare to go public, as Larry Summers and James Watson discovered.
Few people get really mad at Will Wilkinson for advocating libertarianism, at least not mad enough to do anything to him. Being a libertarian is a cute little intellectual eccentricity that doesn't really threaten anybody. Lots of people, however, felt threatened by what Summers and Watson said, so, despite their repute and power, they got Watsoned.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Jun 23, 2008 7:32:43 AM
I thnik Will is correct regarding the untenability of assigning probabilities to *all* possible beliefs. Isn't this why probabilities live in a measure space and not the power set, and why there are unmeasurable sets? Of course Will is arguing from the perspective of finite capacity computational agents; but I believe the limiting behaviour is similar. You are essentially talking about notions of expressibility under computational constraints: cardinality in the case of measure theory.
Posted by: corporate serf at Jun 23, 2008 9:05:39 AM
"If no one agrees with you, you should be quite worried. If only a small number of people agree with you, you still should be quite worried."
I have yet to listen (and I will); perhaps you expound more upon what it means to be "worried" in this context.
I'm not sure that Einstein had reason to be worried. If he did, he had a lot less reason than, say, Galileo.
My point: in this day and age (with the advent of the internet plus what I'll call the "Reality TV" factor where brash behavior is rewarded with more air time) chances are small that you will say or do something truly shocking. In the past - the further the moreso - one might have reason for concern.
Posted by: meter at Jun 23, 2008 9:28:51 AM
I like the parenting bit. My wife and I play the parenting thing out every time we take our 4-year-old to the park. My wife worries that he'll fall and hurt himself when he climbs too high. I worry that he won't be as good in gym class later if he doesn't practice climbing now.
Posted by: mike at Jun 23, 2008 9:56:01 AM
According to some polls, over 90 percent of people believe that high gas prices are the result of a conspiracy among oil executives.
Posted by: M. Hodak at Jun 23, 2008 10:02:13 AM
The full Bayesian picture is of course much more complicated. You must take into account:
1) Whether you spend an inordinate amount of time researching this issue (which generally raises your credibility);
2) Whether you win arguments with other people;
3) Whether your belief looks suspiciously biased because it aligns with your interests in some way
etc.
Posted by: mk at Jun 23, 2008 10:09:42 AM
Re: Obama - "energy traders he blames in large part for the skyrocketing price of oil." Apparently, McCain agrees. What percent of the population are they playing to on that one?
Posted by: M. Hodak at Jun 23, 2008 10:15:42 AM
OMG! Turning into Ben Bernanke.
Posted by: Yan Li at Jun 23, 2008 10:50:48 AM
"No you can't agree with me because its absurd. I can agree with your absurd view, but you can't agree with mine."
I don't understand why Will can't agree with you? Was this said in gest.
I read another blog (www.liberatorr.blogspot.com) in which the blogger has been writing on a similar subject for a long time...
so there is at least one other person who agrees, and I tend to put myself in the same boat.
It is however difficult to quantify.
Is it inconsistent to say that there is more than a 50% chance that you are wrong? Is 51% necessary to claim that you believe something is true?
Some things, like gravity, must also be close to 100%?
What is the thing of which you are most certain?
Posted by: Trevor Black at Jun 23, 2008 11:09:42 AM
Tyler, how confident are you that your recommendation for responding to disagreement is the best policy? After all, lots of intelligent people are aware that other intelligent people disagree with them about some topic or another, and take that into account, but remain relatively confident in their view. So it seems that your policy would recommend being not all that confident that it is the correct policy.
I'm quite sympathetic to the policy you're recommending, but I'm worried about how to understand it such that it's not self-defeating.
Posted by: Daniel at Jun 23, 2008 3:07:43 PM
Is the position that people over-estimate the probability of their beliefs being accurate all that absurd? I mean, isn't there some credence to the idea that people don't always understand their own beliefs in the first place? I.e. some atheists are, in their heart of hearts believers, and some believers are in their heart of hearts atheists. But they can't acknowledge it to themselves, or something like that.(Atheism is a good example because it's a contradiction - "I know the unknowable is untrue"). And then you have the old (corollary) idea of the sudden reversal (or new grasp) of beliefs, as on the deathbed.
Posted by: anon/portly at Jun 23, 2008 3:34:41 PM
Until watching this episode of you on Bloggingheads, I had not heard your voice nor seen your picture before. Two points:
1. Will looks more like a Will than you look like a Tyler. This is upsetting.
I could understand both of you perfectly at 1.4x speed. This is good, as Isaved 40% of my time.
I look forward to listening to you at 1.8x with the same level of comprehension.
Posted by: at Jun 23, 2008 3:57:05 PM
Tyler states in the conversation and in the above post that this is his first bloggingheads appearance, but this is simply not true.
Posted by: shawn at Jun 23, 2008 8:18:35 PM
Is everyone, everywhere afraid to ask the person they are talking to for clarification? There were several occasions where I felt Will and Tyler were talking past each other to some extent and one or both seemed unwilling to ask for clarification. I think clarity is especially important for conversations like these that are highly abstract and especially when they involve jargon and especially jargon that may be unique to a small circle of people or only to one person.
I still remember my first day of Property Law when the professor, in the fine socratic tradition, asked "what is Property?" The most unbelievable, incomprehensible bullshit started pouring out of peoples' mouths. I just wanted to stand up and yell "WTF are you talking about???" So that was a wasted class, up until the professor decided maybe his opinion was more valuable than that of the students ;)
So anyway, yes, on occasion this blog does remind me of that class (but not that bad). Clarity is good! You can't just string together abstract concepts and words somewhat related to an idea and throw them out there and expect people to understand you or get anything out of it.
Posted by: Cliff at Jun 23, 2008 8:44:16 PM
So I guess as an aspiring economist, I should go for the full-faced speckled grey-and-white beard, like Bernanke, Krugman, and Cowen...
Posted by: Billare at Jun 23, 2008 9:41:43 PM
i thought both were extremely cogent, for quite complex topics.
its interesting that will can't sit still, and how still tyler can sit. at one point i thought tyler's video had been replaced by a jpeg of tyler..but then he moved...this is an unbelievable feat.
i'm glad some other smart people (tyler) is worried about nuclear proliferation. this should be a wide topic of discussion but i fear its only discussed in security circles, and even then, perhaps not widely.
Posted by: cato at Jun 24, 2008 6:10:09 AM
"If no one agrees with you, you should be quite worried. If only a small number of people agree with you, you still should be quite worried."
It's when people agree with me that I am worried. When people disagree, I have no time to worry, because I am too busy arguing. And I don't worry about how intelligent people are, only about how intelligent their disagreement is.
Posted by: Arthur at Jun 24, 2008 7:12:46 AM
Regarding the probability of human extinction prior to the heat-death of the sun, which I believe you and Will put at over 99 percent, what's the probability of colonizing other solar systems within the next few hundred years? Better than 10 percent? If so, I'd think you are too pessimistic on that question.
Posted by: Daniel Klein at Jun 24, 2008 9:41:12 AM
I'm interested in the what I see as the escalating claims Tyler is making for Japanese food. I've listed what I think are the most recent on my blog, (http://wkitchen.blogspot.com/2008/06/japanese-food-is-french-food-really.html) but my understanding is that Tyler believes the Japanese to be better at French and Italian food than the French and Italians (even in dessert!) I just can't believe this, and, stretching the motor industry analogy, why aren't those pesky French and Italians being outcompeted globally, especially in New York, by superior Japanese cooperative technicians?
Posted by: Raffi at Jun 24, 2008 11:10:39 AM
I've asked atheists what's the chance you're wrong and they'll say something like a trillion to one, and that to me is absurd, that even if you think all of the strongest arguments for atheism are correct, your estimate that atheism is in fact the correct point of view shouldn't be that high, maybe you know 90-10 or 95 to 5, at most.
Well since no evidence, or even a coherent definition, has ever been advanced for "supernatural" phenomena, 5%-10% must be your lower limit of probability that any claim is true. Here are two unfalsifiable assertions that I just made up. What you are saying is that the probability that they are true, just because they have been stated is automatically 5%-10%:
1) There is a planet called Falko. On this planet 100 foot tall hamburgers eat people and wear pants.
2) The Earth's core is full of invisible, telepathic frogs.
So regardless if it's a trillion-to-1 or a million-to-1 -- whatever the number -- religious beliefs must be assigned the lowest possible probability of correctness as a class of claims, because there is a countless variety of them among human groups, they are mutually contradictory, mutually arbitrary, mutually unintelligible, contain nothing but false and unfalsifiable claims, and bear all the signs of human invention.
Posted by: Jason Malloy at Jun 24, 2008 3:39:14 PM
"you should never think it's 95 to 5 in your favor. "
Michael Crichton disagrees.
Posted by: Stacy at Jun 24, 2008 11:58:14 PM
Jason Malloy just reminded me of a few of the reasons why, although I am not religious, I don't want to be associated with atheism:
religious beliefs must be assigned the lowest possible probability of correctness as a class of claims, because there is a countless variety of them among human groups
To me, that implies a higher probability that one of them is true.
The trouble is, which one? I believe that a God who wants us to be vengeful is more likely than a God who wants us to be forgiving, but most people seem to disagree.
they are mutually contradictory
Atheism is also mutually contradictory with all of them.
contain nothing but false and unfalsifiable claims
You see? atheists have supernatural knowledge of the falsehood of beliefs which cannot be scientifically proven to be false!
Posted by: Arthur at Jun 25, 2008 8:15:13 AM
A person on her own luggage, leaving the noise of the city, into the 花蓮民宿 arms. To savor the refreshing nature of the original. In Taiwan, as long as a departure from the flow of downtown, everywhere in the garden-like 宜蘭民宿 you, they like their own home Like a warm and comfortable. Taiwan's Lodge 室內設計, the two luxury five-star hotel suite as if the presidential suite general Wah. It is there away.
Posted by: 清境民宿 at Dec 9, 2008 12:12:29 AM
thanks for all
Posted by: seks shop at May 20, 2009 5:35:01 AM
