TY - JOUR
T1 - Updating on the credences of others
T2 - Disagreement, agreement, and synergy
AU - Easwaran, Kenny
AU - Fenton-Glynn, Luke
AU - Hitchcock, Christopher
AU - Velasco, Joel D.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2016, Easwaran, Fenton-Glynn, Hitchcock, and Velasco.
PY - 2016/6
Y1 - 2016/6
N2 - We introduce a family of rules for adjusting one’s credences in response to learning the credences of others. These rules have a number of desirable features. 1. They yield the posterior credences that would result from updating by standard Bayesian conditionalization on one’s peers’ reported credences if one’s likelihood function takes a particular simple form. 2. In the simplest form, they are symmetric among the agents in the group. 3. They map neatly onto the familiar Condorcet voting results. 4. They preserve shared agreement about independence in a wide range of cases. 5. They commute with conditionalization and with multiple peer updates. Importantly, these rules have a surprising property that we call synergy - peer testimony of credences can provide mutually supporting evidence raising an individual’s credence higher than any peer’s initial prior report. At first, this may seem to be a strike against them. We argue, however, that synergy is actually a desirable feature and the failure of other updating rules to yield synergy is a strike against them.
AB - We introduce a family of rules for adjusting one’s credences in response to learning the credences of others. These rules have a number of desirable features. 1. They yield the posterior credences that would result from updating by standard Bayesian conditionalization on one’s peers’ reported credences if one’s likelihood function takes a particular simple form. 2. In the simplest form, they are symmetric among the agents in the group. 3. They map neatly onto the familiar Condorcet voting results. 4. They preserve shared agreement about independence in a wide range of cases. 5. They commute with conditionalization and with multiple peer updates. Importantly, these rules have a surprising property that we call synergy - peer testimony of credences can provide mutually supporting evidence raising an individual’s credence higher than any peer’s initial prior report. At first, this may seem to be a strike against them. We argue, however, that synergy is actually a desirable feature and the failure of other updating rules to yield synergy is a strike against them.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84978371325&partnerID=8YFLogxK
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84978371325
SN - 1533-628X
VL - 16
SP - 1
EP - 39
JO - Philosophers Imprint
JF - Philosophers Imprint
IS - 11
ER -