Making Beliefs Pay Rent (in Anticipated Experiences)

Great post. As always.

I assume that most of math is being ignored for simplicity's sake?

What good is math if people don't know what to connect it to?

What good is math if people don't know what to connect it to?

Allow me to answer your question with a question: What good is music?

In practice, most of the time people figure out what to connect it to later. More precisely, most of it probably doesn't connect to anything, but what does connect to stuff usually isn't found to do so until much later than it is invented/discovered.

Some ungrounded concepts can produce your own behavior which in itself can be experienced, so it's difficult to draw the line just by requiring concepts to be grounded. You believe that you believe in something, because you experience yourself acting in a way consistent with you believing in it. It can define intrinsic goal system, point in mind design space as you call it. So one can't abolish all such concepts, only resist acquiring them.

For any instrumental activity, done to achieve some other end, it makes sense to check that specific examples are in fact achieving the intended end.

Most beliefs may have as their end the refinement of personal decisions. For such beliefs it makes sense not only to check whether they effect your personal experience, but also whether they effect any decisions you might make; beliefs could effect experience without mattering for decisions.

On the other hand, some beliefs may have as their end effecting the experiences or decisions of other creatures, such as in the far future. And you may care about effects that are not experienced by any creatures.

Elizer, your post above strikes me, at least, as a restatement of verificationism: roughly, the view that the truth of a claim is the set of observations that it predicts. While this view enjoyed considerable popularity in the first part of the last century (and has notable antecedents going back into the early 18th century), it faces considerable conceptual hurdles, all of which have been extensively discussed in philosophical circles. One of the most prominent (and noteworthy in light of some of your other views) is the conflict between verificationism and scientific realism: that is, the presumption that science is more than mere data-predictive modeling, but the discovery of how the world really is. See also here and here.

Rooney, as discussed in The Simple Truth I follow a correspondence theory of truth. I am also a Bayesian and a believer in Occam's Razor. If a belief has no empirical consequences then it could receive no Bayesian confirmation and could not rise to my subjective attention. In principle there are many true beliefs for which I have no evidence, but in practice I can never know what these true beliefs are, or even focus on them enough to think them explicitly, because they are so vastly outnumbered by false beliefs for which I can find no evidence.

It's amazing how many forms of irrationality failure to see the map-territory distinction, and the resulting reification of categories (like 'sound') that exist in the mind, causes: stupid arguments, phlogiston, the Mind Projection Fallacy, correspondence bias, and probably also monotheism, substance dualism, the illusion of the self, the use of the correspondence theory of truth in moral questions... how many more?

I think you're being too hard on the English professor, though. I suspect literary labels do have something to do with the contents of a book, no matter how much nonsense might be attached to them. But I've never experienced a college English class; perhaps my innocent fantasies will be shaken then.

Michael V, you could say that mathematical propositions are really predictions about the behavior of physical systems like adding machines and mathematicians. I don't find that view very satisfying, because math seems to so fundamentally underly everything else - mathematical truths can't be changed by changing anything physical, for instance - but it's one way to make math compatible with anticipation.

It's amazing how many forms of irrationality failure to see the map-territory distinction

Should have been "how many forms of irrationality result from failure...". Sorry.

I agree with those who say it's okay to figure things out later. If my music professor says a certain composer favors the Aeolian mode, I may not be able to visualize that on the spot but who cares? I can remember that statement and think about it later. Likewise with phlogiston, I have a vague concept of what it is and someday the alchemists will discover more precisely what's going on there.

Too much cognitive effort would be spent if, every time I thought about linear algebra, I had to visualize the myriad concrete instances in which it will be applied. I bet thinking in abstractions results in way more economical use of thinking time and thinking-matter.

In what way is the belief that beliefs should be grounded not a free-floating belief itself?

Mark: Believing that beliefs should be grounded anticipates that there is absolutely no change in anticipation if one were to change these free floating ideas. Of course this doesn't really answer your question because it just restates the definition of 'free floating beliefs' in different words. This belief actually follows from Eliezers belief in Occam's Razor, which predicts that when faced with unexplained events, if one creates a set of theories explaining these events, any predictions made by the simple theories are more likely to actually happen than predictions made by complex theories. I'm not quite sure if Occam's Razor is an axiom of science or just yet another belief. At least there is quite a bit of support for this belief, if you look into the history of science.

Another point: I think phlogiston is a bit of a poor example. Phlogiston actually corresponds very closely with something currently believed as real: phlogiston is the absence of oxygen. Seeing it this way, it's very well possible to build a theory of phlogiston explaining and predicting nearly all observations of fire, e.g. fire releases phlogiston, and if you burn something in a confined space the air gets saturated with phlogiston and cannot take in any more, so the fire goes out. A very important argument in the debate between phlogistionians and oxygants was when experiments were done to measure the weight of phlogiston and oxygen, and phlogiston turned out to have a negative weight.

Jan: Occam's razor is not so much a rule of science but an operating guideline for doing science. It could be reduced to "test simple theories first". In the past this has been very useful in keeping scientific effort productive, the 'belief' is that it will continue to be useful in this way.

This led to a fun read of "occam's razor" wikipedia entry. Hickum's dictum in particular was a great find (generalized beyond medicine, it could be that explanations for unexplained events can be as complex as they damn well please). As a practical corrective, it seems to me that probability theory suggests that the best accessible explanation to us for unexplained events is in the set of simpler theories, but is probably not one of the absolute simplest.

Eliezer once wrote that "We can build up whole networks of beliefs that are connected only to each other - call these "floating" beliefs. It is a uniquely human flaw among animal species, a perversion of Homo sapiens's ability to build more general and flexible belief networks.

The rationalist virtue of empiricism consists of constantly asking which experiences our beliefs predict - or better yet, prohibit."

I can't see how nearly all of the beliefs expressed in this post predict or prohibit any experience.

"Alchemists believed that phlogiston caused fire"

How is that different than our current belief that oxygen causes fire?

I loved this post, but I have to be a worthless pedant.

If you drop a ball off a 120-m tall building, you expect impact in t=sqrt(2H/g)=~5 s. But that would be when the second-hand is on the 1 numeral.

What about knowledge for the sake of knowledge? For instance I don't anticipate that my belief that The Crusades took place will ever directly affect my sensory experiences in any way. Does that then mean that this belief is completely worthless and on the same level as the belief in ghosts, psychics, phlogiston, etc.?

Wouldn't taking your chain of reasoning to its logical conclusion require one to "evict" all beliefs in everything that one has not, and does not anticipate to, personally see, hear, smell, taste, or touch? After all, how much personal sensory experience do you have that confirms the existence of atoms, for example?

DP

You write, “suppose your postmodern English professor teaches you that the famous writer Wulky Wilkinsen is actually a ‘post-utopian’. What does this mean you should expect from his books? Nothing.”

I’m sympathetic to your general argument in this article, but this particular jibe is overstating your case.

There may be nothing particularly profound in the idea of ‘post-utopianism’, but it’s not meaningless. Let me see if I can persuade you.

Utopianism is the belief that an ideal society (or at least one that's much better than ours) can be constructed, for example by the application of a particular political ideology. It’s an idea that has been considered and criticized here on LessWrong. Utopian fiction explores this belief, often by portraying such an ideal society, or the process that leads to one. In utopian fiction one expects to see characters who are perfectible, conflicts resolved successfully or peacefully, and some kind of argument in favour of utopianism. Post-utopian fiction is written in reaction to this, from a skeptical or critical viewpoint about the perfectibility of people and the possibility of improving society. One expects to see irretrievably flawed characters, idealistic projects turn to failure, conflicts that are destructive and unresolved, portrayals of dystopian societies and argument against utopianism (not necessarily all of these at once, of course, but much more often than chance).

Literary categories are vague, of course, and one can argue about their boundaries, but they do make sense. H. G. Wells’ “A Modern Utopia” is a utopian novel, and Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” is post-utopian.

How is this not just a simple arguement on semantics (on which I believe a vast majority of arguements are based)?

They both accept that the tree causes vibrations in the air as it falls, and they both accept that no human ear will ever hear it. The arguement appears to be based solely on the definition, and surrounding implications, of the word "sound" (or "noise" as it becomes in the article) - and is therefore no arguement at all.

See also the movie version of this post.

"Or suppose your postmodern English professor teaches you that the famous Wulky Wilkinsen is actually a "post-utopian". What does this mean you should expect from his book? Nothing."

When I first read this I thought, "Huh? Surely it tells you something, because I already have beliefs about what 'utopian' probably means, and what the 'post' part of it probably means, and what context these types of terms are usually used in... That sounds like a whole bag of reasons to expect certain things/themes/ideas in his book!"

But I think this missed the point Eliezer is making; a point I suggest would be more clear if he said:

"Or suppose your postmodern English professor teaches you that the famous Wulky Wilkinsen is actually a "barnbeanbaggle". What does this mean you should expect from his book? Nothing."

Darn right. I have no idea what a "barnbeanbaggle" is. It creates no anticipations about what I"ll find in his book; it's free-floating.

But why do beliefs need to pay rent in anticipated experiences? Why can’t they pay rent in utility?

If some average Joe believes he’s smart and beautiful, and that gives him utility, is that necessarily a bad thing? Joe approaches a girl in a bar, dips his sweaty fingers in her iced drink, cracks a piece of ice in his teeth, pulls it out of his mouth, shoves it in her face for demonstration, and says, “Now that I’d broken the ice—”

She thinks: “What a butt-ugly idiot!” and gets the hell away from him.

Joe goes on happily believing that he’s smart and beautiful.

For myself, the answer is obvious: my beliefs are means to an end, not ends in themselves. They’re utility producers only insofar as they help me accomplish utility-producing operations. If I were to buy stock believing that its price would go up, I better hope my belief paid its rent in correct anticipation, or else it goes out the door.

But for Joe? If he has utility-pumping beliefs, then why not? It’s not like he would get any smarter or prettier by figuring out he’s been a butt-ugly idiot this whole time.

This post probably changed the way I regulate my own thoughts more than any other. How many arguments I have heard never would have happened if everyone involved read this...

Based on this, I would very much like to make a variant of Monopoly, with beliefs/theories in place of properties, and evidence for money. Invest a large chunk to establish a belief, with its rent determined by sophistication and usefulness of prediction, ranging from Aristotelian physics to relativity, spermatists & ovists to Darwinian evolution, and so on. Other players would have to give you some credit when they land on your theories, and admit that they give results.
This would also be a great way to teach some history of science, if well designed.
Of course, the analogy becomes interesting when you consider what corresponds to the cutthroat capitalism...

I don't understand how the examples given illustrate free-floating beliefs: they seem to have at least some predictive powers, and thus shape anticipation - (some comments by others below illustrate this better).

• The phlogiston theory had predictive power (e.g. what kind of "air" could be expected to support combustion, and that substances would grow lighter when they burned), and it was falsifyable (and was eventually falsified). It had advantages over the theories it replaced and was replaced by another theory which represented a better understanding. (I base this reading on Jim Loy's page on Phlogiston Theory.

• Literary genres don't have much predictive powers if you don't know anything about them - if you do, then they do. Classifying a writer as producing "science fiction" or "fantasy" creates anticipations that are statistically meaningful. For another comparison, saying some band plays "Death Metal" will shape our anticipation; somewhat differently for those who can distinguish Death Metal from Speed Metal as compared to those who merely know that "Metal" means "noise".

I can imagine beliefs leading to false anticipations, and they're obviously inferior to beliefs leading to more correct ones. That doesn't mean they're free-floating.

One example for the free-floating belief is actually about the tree falling in the forest: to believe that it makes a sound does not anticipate any sensory experience, since the tree falls explicitly where nobody is around to hear it, and whether there is sound or no sound will not change how the forest looks when we enter it later. However, to let go of the belief that the tree makes a sound does not seem to me to be very useful. What am I missing?

I understand that many beliefs are held not because they have predictive power, but because they generalize experiences (or thoughts) we have had into a condensed form: a sort of "packing algrithm" for the mind when we detect something common; and when we understand this commonality enough, we get to the point where we can make prediction, and if we don't yet, we can't, but may do so later. There is no belief or thought we can hold that we couldn't trace back to experiences; beliefs are not anticipatory, but formed from hindsight. They organize past experience. Can you predict which of these beliefs is not going to be helpful in organizing future experiences? How?

I think that this is really a discussion of explanatory power, of which scientific causation is one example. All theories attempt to explain a set of examples. Scientific theories attempt to explain causation in natural phenomena, thus their "explanatory power" is proportional to their predictive power. A unified theory of forces at the planetary and subatomic levels would explain more examples than any do now, thus it would have great explanatory power.

Yet causation isn't the only type of explanatory relationship. Causation implies time and events, whereas these are only one type of explanation. For example, the Pythagorean theorem explains why physical right triangles in reality have the lengths that they do. It doesn't "cause" them to have the properties they do. It would be foolish to say that any property of physical triangles "explains" or "proves" the Pythagorean theorem, because mathematical truths exist independent of practicalities. Plato's dialogue The Euthyphro beautifully explains why even if the set of things which are x and the set of things which are y are equivalent (in that case, the set of pious actions and the set of god loved actions,) they are not the same quality if one (god loved) explains the other (piety) and not vice versa. Similarly, the total number of hydrogen atoms in a glass of water is always even, but it is the quality of evenness (any number which is a multiple of two must be even) that explains this, not any quality of hydrogen. The one "explains" (but does not "cause") the other.

Thus, I think some parts of this post would be better understood as being stated as thus: any theory which provides no additional explanatory power should be ignored.

So, looking at the case of Phlogiston, the OP is not saying it is "wrong," but that it lacks the explanatory power that justifies it as a useful theory. If I take the Neils Bohr model of the atom, and say that there are extra invisible subatomic particles, and that these particles are "god," you would be hard pressed to prove me wrong. But this theory does not predict any new phenomena, nor is it falsifiable, nor, most importantly, does it have an explanatory relationship with any other known truth about atoms: none of them explain this theory, and it explains none of them. It exists completely independent from any other aspect of atomic theory, thus it lacks any explanatory power as a theory.

Yet there are theories which have great explanatory power but not empirical predictive power. Lets say I'm a simplistic deontologist who says that killing is wrong because human life is good. Along comes a utilitarian who says, I have a theory which explains, in all the cases where you're right, why you are right, and in those cases where you aren't, why you aren't, according to your own first principle. In terms of my very simplistic ethical theory, the utilitarian would absolutely be "less wrong" than me, for he has provided a theory which better explains the hard cases my theory failed to (justified killings, kill 1 save 2 etc.)

In the case of the post-utopian author, I think that we again are getting wrapped up in "prediction" when we should concern ourselves with explanation.

What is a plumber? Is it a man who comes to your house, sits on your couch, eats your food, watches your TV, and flirts with your wife? Even if this is true of all plumbers, it is not the definition of plumber. Definitions should be proscriptive, such that they give you the means to determine what counts as an x, and what a good x is. If a plumber fixes pipes, anyone who fixes pipes is a plumber, a good plumber fixes them well, and no one who doesn't fix pipes is a plumber.

Thus, hold literary labels to the same standard. Don't ask, "is this label true"? Because as we saw earlier with the god particle example, many theories cannot be proven false but still have greater or lesser explanatory power (see economics, ethical theories etc). The better standard is explanatory power. Is there a definition of the quality "post-utopian" such that any book with quality x is post-utopian, x explains why it counts as post utopian, and the more x it is, the more it is post-utopian it is? Saying post-utopian is a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h, but failing to provide a single explanation of the aforementioned form is like calling the plumber a man who eats your food and flirts with your wife: it is a descriptive definition, not a proscriptive definition. It may be true of the every plumbers, but it is not the thing that makes plumbers count as plumbers.

I think the OP meant to say that literary labels like post-utopianism fail to meet this standard. Sure, you can come up with descriptive statements of the terms which may be true (post-utopian books do not portray utopian societies as possible) but this is not a definition because it is not this quality that a. makes post-utopian books count as utopian, b. without which a book cannot be post-utopian, and c. designates a clear set of books which either are, or are not, post-utopian. Textual analysis perhaps can be more wrong and "less wrong," but literary theories are just not the sorts of truth-bearing statements that mathematical, scientific, or philosophical theories are.

Compare "post-utopian" to "even". Even numbers are a set of specific numbers, but there is a single quality they have (being multiples of 2) which explains why they are in the set. Without that quality, they would, "by definition", not be even. This is the standard we should be looking for in definitions and theories. Not just that they are "true" (plumbers do steal your food, watch your tv, and flirt with your wife) but that they have the sort of explanatory power we've isolated.

Thus, I think the larger point of the post stands. There are better theories and worse theories, and we should prefer the better ones.

Wonderful exposition of versificationism (I meant verificationism lol, but I won't change it cause I like the reply bellow). I do have a question though. You said:

It's tempting to try to eliminate this mistake class by insisting that the only legitimate kind of belief is an anticipation of sensory experience. But the world does, in fact, contain much that is not sensed directly.

Well yes, we don't directly observe atoms (actually we do now but we didn't have to). But it is still save to say that if a belief doesn't make predictions about future sensory experiences it is meaningless, or at least unverifiable. Those predictions may be about the shape of ink squiggles on a piece of paper after some rules are applied, or they may be a prediction about the pattern that a monitor's many pixels will form after reacting to some instrument in an experiment. In either case, the hypothesis is always linked to the world by the senses, or are you claiming something different?

Good article. Some thoughts:

I probably constrain my experiences in lots of ways that I don't even know about, but I don't think there's always a way to know whether a belief will constrain your experiences, even if it is based on empirical (or even scientific) observation. Isaac Newton's beliefs constrained all of our beliefs for centuries. Scholars were so unwilling to question classical mechanics that they came up with this "ether" stuff that could never be observed directly, and thus didn't further constrain their experience, but had the nice side effect of resolving inconsistencies in their previously held theories. However, even though Einstein's theory was more correct than Newton's, without Newton's theory mechanical engineering wouldn't exist, and without Einstein's, the Bomb wouldn't exist. I mean this is obviously a gross oversimplification of the development of the Bomb, but I'm just saying there's not much use for relativity outside of a classroom/particle accelerator.

I understand that having beliefs that are falsifiable in principle and make predictions about experience is incredibly important. But I have always wondered if my belief in falsifiability was itself falsifiable. In any possible universe I can imagine it seems that holding the principle of falsifiability for our beliefs would be a good idea. I can't imagine a universe or an experience that would make me give this up.

How can I believe in the principle of falsifiability that is itself unfalsifiable?! I feel as though something has gone wrong in my thinking but I can't tell what. Please help!

I have read this post before and have agreed to it. But I read it again just now and have new doubts.

I still agree that beliefs should pay rent in anticipated experiences. But I am not sure any more that the examples stated here demonstrate it.

Consider the example of the tree falling in a forest. Both sides of the argument do have anticipated experiences connected to their beliefs. For the first person, the test of whether a tree makes a sound or not is to place an air vibration detector in the vicinity of the tree and check it later. If it did detect some vibration, the answer is yes. For the second person, the test is to monitor every person living on earth and see if their brains did the kind of auditory processing that the falling tree would make them do. Since the first person's test has turned out to be positive and the second person's test has turned out to be negative, they say "yes" and "no" respectively as answers to the question, "Did the tree make any sound?"

So the problem here doesn't seem to be an absence of rent in anticipated experiences. There is some problem, true, because there is no single anticipated experience where the two people anticipate opposite outcomes even though one says that the tree makes a sound and the other one says it doesn't. But it seems like that's because of a different reason.

Say person A has a set of observations X, Y, and Z that he thinks are crucial for deciding whether the tree made any sound or not. For example, if X is negative, he concludes that the tree did make a sound otherwise it didn't, if Y is negative, he concludes it did not make a sound and so on. Here, X could be "cause air vibration" for example. For all other kinds of observations, A has a don't care protocol, i.e., the other observations do not say anything about the sound. Similarly, person B has a set X', Y', Z' of crucial observations and other observations lie in the set of don't cares. The problem here is just that X,Y, Z are completely disjoint from X', Y', Z'. Thus even though A and B differ in their opinions about whether the tree made a sound, there is no single aspect where they would anticipate completely opposite experiences.

Suppose someone, on inspecting his own beliefs to date, discovers a certain sense of underlying structure; for instance, one may observe a recurring theme of evolutionary logic. Then while deciding on a new set of beliefs, would it not be considered reasonable for him to anticipate and test for similar structure, just as he would use other 'external' evidence? Here, we are not dealing with direct experience, so much as the mere belief of an experience of coherence within one's thoughts.. which may be an illusion, for all we know. But then again, assuming that the existing thoughts came from previous 'external' evidence, could one say that the anticipated structure is indeed well-rooted in experience already?

I was reading those 'what good is math?' and 'what good is music' comments. You can determine what if any 'system' is good or bad based on the understanding or misunderstanding of the variables involved.

i.e: one does not have any use for math if they do not understand any of the vast variables associated with the concepts of math. Math cannot be any good to this person who doesn't understand.

This principle applies to any 'system' whether it be math, music, love, life... etc.

If a belief turns deadbeat, evict it.

This might be challenging because our beliefs tend to shape the world we live in thus masking their error. Does anyone have any practical tips for discovering erroneous beliefs?

What about things I remember from long ago, which no one else remembers and for which I can find no present evidence or record of besides those memories themselves?

Then what does this belief not allow to happen—what would definitely falsify this belief? A null answer means that your belief does not constrain experience; it permits anything to happen to you.

What if I had the belief that a certain coin was unfair, with a 51% chance of heads and only 49% chance of tails? Certainly I could observe an absurd amount of coin flips, and each bunch of them could nudge my belief -- but short of an infinite number of flips, none would "definitely" falsify it. Certainly in this case, I could come to believe with an arbitrary level of certainty in the falsehood of the belief. But I don't believe that would apply in general -- what if to reach any arbitrary level of testing a belief, I'd need to think up and apply an indefinite number of unique tests? For example, a belief concerning the state of mind of another person -- I can't think of a definite test, nor can I repeat any test indefinitely to increase certainty.

On a related note, why abandon Bayes in this case for Popper, without any disclaimer? Eg falsificationism is useful because it fights magic explanations and positive bias, but it is still a predictive belief if observation causes you to slightly shift your probability for that belief.

Another example of these types of questions: "If a man who cannot count finds a four-leaf clover, is he lucky?" (Stanisław Jerzy Lec)

Or suppose your postmodern English professor teaches you that the famous writer Wulky Wilkinsen is actually a "post-utopian".

Suppose you, an invisible man, overheard 1,000,000 distinct individual humans proclaim "I believe that Velma Valedo and Wulky Wilkinsen are post-utopians based on several thorough readings of their complete bibliographies!"

Must there be some correspondence (probably an extremely complex connection) between the writings, and, quite possibly, between some of the 1,000,000 brains that believe this? The subjectively defined "post-utopian" does not hold much evidential weight when simply mentioned by one informed English professor, but when the attribute "post-utopian" is used to describe two distinct authors by many blind and informed subjects, does this (even a little bit) allow us to anticipate any similarities between (some of) the subjects' brains or between (some of) the authors' writings?

What evidence is there for floating beliefs being uniquely human? As far as I know, neuroscience hasn't advanced far enough to be able to tell if other species have floating beliefs or not.

Edit: Then again, the question of if floating beliefs are uniquely human is practically a floating belief itself.

Interesting post. However, I do not agree completely in the conclutions on the end.

I am a student in math science, what involves me into an enviroment of researchers of this area. In this way, I am able to see that this people's work is based on beliefs that 'does not exists', I mean, they work on abstract ideas that generally only exists in their minds. And now I wonder, does their efforts 'does not pay rent'? They live from structures and stuff that, in the most of the cases, cannot be found in 'real life', and so, according to the article's conclution, this would not be worth thinking, as is not flowing from a question of anticipation (what were we anticipating if it does not exists?).

Maybe I'm missunderstanding the post, or maybe it is just focus in other life experiences.

If we extend the concept of making beliefs pay rent to structures in computer memory, then AIs could better choose which structures are more valuable than they cost when many objects are shared in an acyclic network. Each object at the bottom could cost 1, and any objects pointing at x equally share the cost of x plus 1 for themself. If beliefs are stored in these memory structures, then a belief would be evicted when its objective cost exceeds some measure of its value, and total value would be in units of memory available. When some beliefs are evicted, those they depended on would become more expensive to others who depend on them because the number of beliefs sharing the cost decreases. On the other hand, if many beliefs depend on a certain structure in memory, those many sharing the cost each pay less.

This is enlightening.

Wulky Wilkinsen is a “post-utopian.” What does this mean you should expect from his books? Nothing. The belief, if you can call it that, doesn’t connect to sensory experience at all.

I don't believe this is a good example. That information actually can change your anticipation.

By knowing that information you can expect the book will be set in a post-utopian world. By anticipating that you can maybe take better notice at the setting and how exactly the world is post-utopian.

But a great article nevertheless.

I dont get it.Any belief could be said to "pay rent" if you can conceive a situation where it will be useful later on.

A general situation that I made up was.

Given any belief X and at least 2 people believe X,I always have utility in believing X(I think it should be knowing) as it helps me predict the actions of the other 2 people that believe in X.

Even in the example where the student regurgitates it onto the upcoming quiz-the belief had utility for him as he could use that to improve his grades(constraining reality in a way he wants it to be).

I believe you should judge your beliefs based on expected utility in the future(extremely hard to calculate).

PS:This is my first comment/post.Forgive me if is a bit rough

Yes! And another way to think about the arguments about beliefs that aren’t predicting anything is that they are really about definitions. When I listen to people talk and argue, I often find myself thinking “well, this depends on how you define X”. For example, is sound something that a living creature perceives, or is it vibrations in the air?

Why is 'constraining anticipation' the only acceptable form of rent?

What if a belief doesn't modify the predictions generated by the map, but it does reduce the computational complexity of moving around the map in our imaginations? It hasn't reduced anticipation in theory, but in practice it allows us to more cheaply collapse anticipation fields, because it lowers the computational complexity of reasoning about what to anticipate in a given scenario? I find concepts like the multiverse very useful here - you don't 'need' them to reduce your anticipation as long as you're willing to spend more time and computation to model a given situation, but the multiverse concept is very, very useful in quickly collapsing anticipation fields about spaces of possibility outcomes.

Or, what if a belief just makes you feel really good and gives you a ton of energy, allowing you to more successfully accomplish your goals and avoid worrying about things that your rational mind knows are low probability, but which you haven't been able to un-stuck from your brain?   Does that count as acceptable rent? If not, why not?

Or, what if a belief just steamrolls over the 'predictive making' process and just hardwires useful actions in a given context?  If you took a pill that made you become totally blissed out, wireheading you, but it made you extremely effective at accomplishing your goals prior to taking the pill ,why wouldn't you take it?

What's so special about making predictions, over, say,  overcoming fear, anxiety and akrasia?

Then what is the difference between belief and assumption in our mental maps.

What about imagination? Is that belief or assumption or in-congruent map of reality. 

Can imagination be part of mental processing without making us wrong about reality.

For instance, if I imagine that all buses in my city are blue, though they are red, can I then walk around with this model of reality in my head without a false belief? After all its just imagination?

Or is this model going to corrupt my thinking as I walk about thinking it, knowing full well its not true.

Further more !what does the question really ask! 

Does the tree fall, first question? If it does, who is asking? 

Who knows the tree? Who knows where it fell and how far and so on.

The question is more so nonsensical that it assumes the question can be asked without cognitive bias.

The question it self is cognitive bias. 

If we tie down abstract thinking immediately to reality, there is no creative process to be had.

Imagination then leaves no room for us to abstract or use mental process, that bogs us down in every day life, thus we never form connections that allow us to think else.

Its either true or not, but result of sensory and thinking process such as logic is predictable, if done perfectly.

Even language can be cognitive bias.

So then if we translate the question of falling trees into reality, that is, you know what that looks like, the question is pointless. You have experienced a tree falling.

The question then makes zilch sense.

Its irrelevant.

You just know that there are no trees that fall and fail to make a sound.

There is no !if!.

There is no logic to be used.

Its like walking around and  seeing a tree falling and asking people !Did you hear that?! It made a sound?

If however we word the question as such: Do all trees make a sound, all the time, under all conditions, here on Earth. Do all trees fall and hit ground and make a sound then the question is what to make of that?

For instance do all matches burn? How can we know if we don't try them all out?

So in strict abstract sense we can be sure that our model is true, as long as all trees make a sound as we see them falling, but there is a chance that a tree falls, and we won't hear it make a sound. 

A couple of important limitations to the concept:

The concept assumes that beliefs should be tied to observable, testable phenomena. However, there are many important aspects of life and human experience (like emotions, subjective experiences, and certain philosophical or religious beliefs) that aren't easily observable or testable. The concept can be less applicable or useful in these areas. 

It also doesn't address truth value: The concept encourages beliefs to be tied to specific anticipations, but it doesn't necessarily address the truth value of those beliefs. A belief can generate specific anticipations and still be false, or not generate specific anticipations and still be true.

This concept doesn't explain why certain beliefs persist even when they don't lead to accurate anticipations. Factors such as cultural tradition, emotional comfort, cognitive biases, and lack of exposure to alternative viewpoints can all contribute to the persistence of beliefs, even when they don't "pay rent" in terms of generating accurate predictions

There's a risk that people might selectively interpret their experiences to confirm their existing beliefs. This can lead to a situation where beliefs seem to generate accurate anticipations, even when they're not actually based on valid reasoning or evidence.

It’s tempting to try to eliminate this mistake class by insisting that the only legitimate kind of belief is an anticipation of sensory experience. But the world does, in fact, contain much that is not sensed directly. We don’t see the atoms underlying the brick, but the atoms are in fact there. There is a floor beneath your feet, but you don’t experience the floor directly; you see the light reflected from the floor, or rather, you see what your retina and visual cortex have processed of that light. To infer the floor from seeing the floor is to step back into the unseen causes of experience. It may seem like a very short and direct step, but it is still a step.

Do we know the atoms are in fact there? All "rationality" has to start on irrational beliefs or axioms in order to get anywhere. Like I assume people here believe in external reality and other minds, as do I, if not well that's a whole other can of worms. I doubt folks here are solipsists. 

I would say you do experience the floor directly as it does take more than just your eyes and brain to make it, like you said you see the light reflected OFF something. It's also not really inferring the floor from seeing it, if I see a floor there is a floor unless something would cause me to doubt it. After all illusions are something that end up being disproven through testing.

Though my original point still stands, rationality can't telling you everything. Some stuff you just gotta believe and some things can't be determined rationally. External reality and atoms is just something you gotta believe since you cannot truly verify an external world or not. In matters of morality or taste rationality does nothing either. Choosing a flavor of ice cream doesn't really have any rational basis after all. 

There is a floor beneath your feet, but you don’t experience the floor directly; you see the light reflected from the floor, or rather, you see what your retina and visual cortex have processed of that light
 

But indeed, I experience the floor directly; the experience of the floor is not limited to visual perception but also involves direct sensory inputs. The sensation caused by gravitational pull and the counter-pressure from the floor are experienced directly. Additionally, the sound produced when stepping on the floor and the anticipation of the floor's existence contribute to the direct experience of the floor. Therefore, the floor is experienced directly through a combination of sensory inputs, including but not limited to, visual, tactile, auditory, and proprioceptive sensations.