Eliezer Yudkowsky

But if we know the value of the argument node, this de-separates the node truth from the node expert belief by blocking all paths between them, according to certain technical criteria for path blocking that seem pretty obvious in this case.

This does not represent a contradiction of ordinary probability theory.

It's just a more compact way of expressing certain probabilistic facts.

You could read the same equalities and inequalities often unadorned probability distribution, but it would be harder to see it by eyeballing.

Authority and argument don't need two different kinds of probability any more than sprinklers are made out of ontologically different stuff than sunlight.

In practice, you can never completely eliminate reliance on authority.

Good authorities are more likely to know about any counter evidence that exists and should be taken into account.

A lesser authority is less likely to know this, which makes their arguments less reliable.

This is not a factor you can eliminate merely by hearing the evidence they did take into account.

it's also very hard to reduce arguments to pure math.

And otherwise, judging the strength of an inferential step may rely on intuitions you can't duplicate without the same 30 years of experience.

There's an eradicable legitimacy to assigning slightly higher probability to what E.T.

Janes tells you about Bayesian probability than you assign to Eliezer Yudkowsky making the exact same statement.

50 years of additional experience should not account for literally zero influence.

But this slight strength of authority is only ceteris paribus and can easily be overwhelmed by stronger arguments.

I have a minor erratum in one of Jane's books because algebra trumps authority.