"Life Experience" as a Conversation-Halter

If someone has made a claim that they have life experience and their opinion, that is an observation, so its significance as at least outside-view evidence can still be interpreted in Bayesian terms. That means there is still analyzable evidence on the table, so the conversation doesn't have to halt: you can quote their claim as an observation, and argue about its interpretation as evidence. "So then, what are the odds that people with your claimed amount of life experience would have your opinion if that opinion were true, versus if that opinion were false? Are there other things that might cause people with your claimed amount of life experience to have your opinion without its still being true?"

I am not sure what to make of this, because I do think that many times the "When you get to be my age..." argument is often used to shut down an opponent. But... I also think that at times it has merit.

For instance, I don't know of a single one of the fellow art students who could understand the argument for needing to do 500 tracings a week when the instructor told us "At the end of the semester, you will understand why you needed to do them. At least, those of you who do them will understand why"

And, he was right, yet most of us were angry that he could have communicated this more effectively had he tried. However, if he had done a better job of telling us why we needed to do 500 tracings a week, it is likely that fewer of us would have done the 500 tracings a week (also supported by past evidence of when he used to give a fuller explanation to his classes. We could see in both the grades and the classes' work that they had not put in their time)... So, in that case, there was a motivational factor to have us gain the experience on our own, instead of trying to gain it through proxy.

BTW, the reason that we did 500 tracings a week was much like the whole Karate Kid "Wax On", "Wax Off" thing... So that our bodies would learn the motions of drawing, leaving our brains free to think about composition or morphology of the image on which we were working. Except that it was long before the movie ever came out.

As I've become an old fart, I've found myself using such statements occasionally. And I believe correctly. There ARE topics on which a large amount of difficult-to-communicate experience can make a difference.

To a wannabe bayesean like myself, I'd probably phrase it as:

"This topic is complicated and the evidence that changed my probability estimates over the last few decades is hard to communicate. I find it likely that you will accumulate such evidence as you experience more things, but I don't know how to speed that process up."

Of course, I wouldn't classify such a correspondent as an opponent, just as another truthseeker with a different set of evidence. Also, in many cases, if we agree on some basics, we can profitably disassemble the argument to find subcomponents on which we CAN respect each other enough to find agreement.

I don't mean to say that this isn't rude or annoying, just that sometimes it's correct. Pointing out to someone that they haven't updated (or updated sufficiently) based on your communication of belief is pretty much going to be rude. But so is the fact that you didn't update (sufficiently) when you learned this belief in the first place.

You should declare your age here, and whether you have ever known so much more about anything, relative to someone else, that this might have been a valid claim for you to make in a conversation.

Telling someone that they just lack enough experience to appreciate some point is, if true, extremely valuable info. If it seems reasonable to end the conversation after receiving such info, then why shouldn't the conversation end at that point? The issue isn't Bayesian vs. not, but how easily could they communicate all the specific data on which their overall judgment is based.

What about "You just can't understand what it is like to be an x in this society." where x is some gender, race or other social classification?

Experience can provide an excellent dummy check to make sure there isn't an obvious counter-argument or flaw in something that you are unable to see because you haven't seen it yet. There is much to be said from simply going out there and trying the theory; the results of trying are experience. When you can translate your experience into Bayesian terms you have succeeded.

I have no problem with deferring to someone who has more experience than I do as long as I trust their methodology. Once that trust is gone I start doubting the truth of their experience. I don't think their experience says what they think it says; they haven't translated it correctly.

Sometimes in an argument, an older opponent might claim that perhaps as I grow older, my opinions will change, or that I'll come around on the topic. Implicit in this claim is the assumption that age or quantity of experience is a proxy for legitimate authority. In and of itself, such "life experience" is necessary for an informed rational worldview, but it is not sufficient.

If there is a high rate of conversation as people grow older than it makes sense to predict that you will come around eventually. People here tell me the same thing about my religious beliefs. The consensus is that as I grow older in the Way of Bayes I will eventually identify as atheist. I don't think this implies the proxy that you mention. Quantity of experience isn't legitimate authority but if I (a) predict you will change and (b) predict that I am unable to exact the change but rather (c) the change will happen on your own accord sometime in the future than I have no reason to talk to you. Telling you my prediction is halting the conversation, but the real conversation halter is whatever is causing you not to switch now.

But really, in the end, I do agree with you. I ran out of time and had to cut this comment short. Sorry.

Semi-seriously, "life experience" is where I thought priors come from.

And Jaynes got it from Russell who got it from Shaw who got it from Yeats...

So, while life experience may be a fallacious argument to win an argument; but at the same time there may really be some things learnt over the years that are simply hard to explain. This is sometimes mirrored by younger people who think that precisely because they are not blinded by life experience, they can see things clearer.

The problem to state this all in strictly Bayesian terms is that so much of the reasons why we think A or B is implicit are only accessible through intuition. Thus, in a discussion it may be quite hard to make all knowledge common. In practice, nobody is a strict Bayesian, people's opinions will be based on implicit assumption.

One interesting thought experiment to think of this: suppose you could meet your younger self, say 5-10-20 years ago; and let's say that you already were a fairly rational person then. How hard would it be to convince your younger self of the things of you think differently now than you did back then?

FYI: This was previously posted in the open thread, and had a good follow-up discussion, IMHO.

While I agree with your post, I would recommend that you reread it with an eye toward lawful sentences which mean what you think they mean.

I'm not entirely sure that this is worthy of a top-level post, but it certainly is an interesting pattern. "Logically-rude" is probably the largest objection to this kind of behavior, though - some facts are genuinely hard to defend in analytical terms, despite being empirically true, and some fraction of those will be among those which people come around to as they grow more experienced.

That said, in many cases you are probably exactly correct - the argument is not a factual description of the case, but a soldier to field on their side.

Experience predicts better decision making.

"Recognition-primed decision (RPD) is a model of how people make quick, effective decisions when faced with complex situations. In this model, the decision maker is assumed to generate a possible course of action, compare it to the constraints imposed by the situation, and select the first course of action that is not rejected. RPD has been described in diverse groups including ICU nurses, fireground commanders, chess players, and stock market traders. It functions well in conditions of time pressure, and in which information is partial and goals poorly defined. The limitations of RPD include the need for extensive experience among decision-makers (in order to correctly recognize the salient features of a problem and model solutions) and the problem of the failure of recognition and modeling in unusual or misidentified circumstances. It appears to be a valid model for how human decision-makers make decisions. Overview

The RPD model identifies a reasonable reaction as the first one that is immediately considered. RPD combines two ways of developing a decision; the first is recognizing which course of action makes sense, and the second, evaluating the course of action through imagination to see if the actions resulting from that decision make sense. However, the difference of being experienced or inexperienced plays a major factor in the decision-making processes.

RPD reveals a critical difference between experts and novices when presented with recurring situations. Experienced people will generally be able to come up with quicker decision because the situation may match a prototypical situation they have encountered before. Novices, lacking this experience, must cycle through different possibilities, and tend to use the first course of action that they believe will work. The inexperienced also have the tendencies of using trial and error through their imagination.""