LW - ’Empiricism!’ as Anti-Epistemology by Eliezer Yudkowsky

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Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: 'Empiricism!' as Anti-Epistemology, published by Eliezer Yudkowsky on March 14, 2024 on LessWrong.
(Crossposted by habryka after asking Eliezer whether I could post it under his account)
i.
"Ignore all these elaborate, abstract, theoretical predictions," the Spokesperson for Ponzi Pyramid Incorporated said in a firm, reassuring tone. "Empirically, everyone who's invested in Bernie Bankman has received back 144% of what they invested two years later."
"That's not how 'empiricism' works," said the Epistemologist. "You're still making the assumption that --"
"You could only believe that something different would happen in the future, if you believed in elaborate theoretical analyses of Bernie Bankman's unobservable internal motives and internal finances," said the spokesperson for Ponzi Pyramid Incorporated. "If you are a virtuous skeptic who doesn't trust in overcomplicated arguments, you'll believe that future investments will also pay back 144%, just like in the past.
That's the prediction you make if you predict based purely on empirical observations, instead of theories about a future nobody has seen!"
"That's not how anything works," said the Epistemologist. "Every future prediction has a theory connecting it to our past observations. There's no such thing as going from past observations directly to future predictions, with no theory, no assumptions, to cross the gap --"
"Sure there's such a thing as a purely empirical prediction," said the Ponzi spokesperson. "I just made one. Not to mention, my dear audience, are you really going to trust anything as complicated as epistemology?"
"The alternative to thinking about epistemology is letting other people do your thinking about it for you," said the Epistemologist. "You're saying, 'If we observe proposition X "past investors in the Ponzi Pyramid getting paid back 144% in two years", that implies prediction Y "this next set of investors in the Ponzi Pyramid will get paid back 144% in two years"'. X and Y are distinct propositions, so you must have some theory saying 'X -> Y' that lets you put in X and get out Y."
"But my theory is empirically proven, unlike yours!" said the Spokesperson.
"...nnnnoooo it's not," said the Epistemologist. "I agree we've observed your X, that past investors in the Ponzi Pyramid got 144% returns in 2 years -- those investors who withdrew their money instead of leaving it in to accumulate future returns, that is, not quite all investors. But just like prediction Y of 'the next set of investors will also receive 144% in 2 years' is not observed, the connecting implication 'if X, then Y' is not yet observed, just like Y itself is not observed.
When you go through the step 'if observation X, then prediction Y' you're invoking an argument or belief whose truth is not established by observation, and hence must be established by some sort of argument or theory. Now, you might claim to have a better theoretical argument for 'X -> Y' over 'X -> not Y', but it would not be an empirical observation either way."
"You say words," replied the Spokesperson, "and all I hear are -- words words words! If you instead just look with your eyes at past investors in the Ponzi Pyramid, you'll see that every one of them got back 144% of their investments in just two years! Use your eyes, not your ears!"
"There's a possible theory that Bernie Bankman is making wise investments himself, and so multiplying invested money by 1.2X every year, then honestly returning that money to any investor who withdraws it," said the Epistemologist. "There's another theory which says that Bernie Bankman has been getting more money invested every year, and is using some of the new investments to pay back some fraction of previous investors who demanded their money back --"
"Why would Bernie Bankman do that, instead of taking all the ...