Suppose I know for sure whether p is true, and you know for sure that I know, and you completely trust me. Moreover, suppose your credence in p is neither 0 nor 1. Then I can slightly manipulate your credence in p, in either direction, with great reliability, and without any dishonesty. Suppose I want to slightly raise your credence. Then I uniformly randomly pick a number N between one and a billion, and inform you whether
- p is true or N>1
- p is false or N>1
The above manipulation observation weakens the manipulation argument I used in this paper, though the manipulation in the paper is much more radical.
"Honest manipulation"?
ReplyDeleteThere I go misusing "quotation marks". Your argument sounds like something a politician does.
Politicians won't be satisfied with a one in a billion shift in credences.
ReplyDeleteAlex:
ReplyDeleteI initially misread your response earlier today while standing in line at the Subway during lunch, I misread "shift" by leaving the "f" out. I blame low blood sugar for that; however, it seemed more applicable to politicians that way. :-)