2008/7/30 <marc.geddes.domain.name.hidden>:
>> I've long been puzzled by the phenomenon of delusion in intelligent,
>> rational people who develop psychotic illness. For example, out of the
>> blue, someone starts to believe that their family have been replaced
>> by impostors. Their facility with deductive logic remains intact, and
>> it is tempting to try to argue with them to show that their belief is
>> false, but it doesn't work. The Bayes equation is:
>>
>> Pr(A|B) = Pr(B|A).Pr(A)/Pr(B)
>> A = they are impostors
>> B = they're acting weird
>>
>> The problem is that they overestimate Pr(A), the prior probability,
>> and underestimate Pr(B). A very dull, but sane, person can see this,
>> but they can't. Intelligence doesn't seem to help at all.
>>
>> --
>> Stathis Papaioannou-
>
> Um. I'm not totally sure what relevance this has to what I posted.
>
> Popper showed that an infinite number of theories is compatible is any
> given set of finite observations. Mere algorithmic shuffling to
> calculate Pr(B) probablities according to the Bayes formula won't help
> much. Successful induction needs principles to set the priors are set
> correctly.
Yes, I was partially agreeing with you. Psychotic people often still
manage very well with deductive reasoning, but they get the big
picture wrong, obviously and ridiculously wrong. So there must be more
to discovering truth about the world than mere algorithmic shuffling.
--
Stathis Papaioannou
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Received on Wed Jul 30 2008 - 09:26:35 PDT