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the trouble with making predictions as an agent

substack.com · 660 words · saved by 1 readers

a forecast probability is an endorsement of the event staying at that likelihood

This piece has been replaced by Deep Anti-Determinism. Go read that instead! Say there’s some event you care about, E. You want E to happen. Initially, your life plan is π_0, and you estimate P(E | π_0) < 1. But since you want E to happen, you come up with a new plan, π_1, to make E more likely. Now you calculate P(E | π_1) and check: are you satisfied? If not, you devise a new plan, π_2, and calculate P(E | π_2). If each plan is better than the last, you’ll obtain a monotone increasing sequence of probability forecasts, bounded above by 1. By Monotone Convergence Theorem, this sequence…

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