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The Bottom Line — LessWrong

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There are two sealed boxes up for auction, box A and box B. One and only one of these boxes contains a valuable diamond. There are all manner of signs and portents indicating whether a box contains a diamond; but I have no sign which I know to be perfectly reliable. There is a blue stamp on one box, for example, and I know that boxes which contain diamonds are more likely than empty boxes to show a blue stamp. Or one box has a shiny surface, and I have a suspicion—I am not sure—that no diamond-containing box is ever shiny. Now suppose there is a clever arguer, holding a sheet of paper, and they say to the owners of box A and box B: “Bid for my services, and whoever wins my services, I shall argue that their box contains the diamond, so that the box will receive a higher price.” So the box-owners bid, and box B’s owner bids higher, winning the services of the clever arguer. The clever arguer begins to organize their thoughts. First, they write, “And therefore, box B contains the diamond

x The Bottom Line — LessWrong Pitfalls of Human Cognition Rationalization Filtered Evidence Litany of Tarski Rationality Frontpage 231 The Bottom Line by Eliezer Yudkowsky 28th Sep 2007 4 min read 17 231 There are two sealed boxes up for auction, box A and box B. One and only one of these boxes contains a valuable diamond. There are all manner of signs and portents indicating whether a box contains a diamond; but I have no sign which I know to be perfectly reliable. There is a blue stamp on one box, for example, and I know that boxes which contain diamonds are more likely than empty boxes to s

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