orthonormal comments on You can't believe in Bayes - Less Wrong

4 Post author: PhilGoetz 09 June 2009 06:03PM

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Comment author: orthonormal 09 June 2009 11:33:40PM *  5 points [-]

The solution to this isn't to reject the very useful concept of belief (which is already generally used to mean "probability 1 minus epsilon" by many people), but to

  • get people to see the fatal error in preparing for only the most probable outcome each time, and
  • convince them it's sometimes OK to be unsure about which branch of a disjunction holds.
Comment author: PhilGoetz 10 June 2009 01:07:58AM 0 points [-]

Yes. Belief is still useful. It's mainly in situations where a low-probability outcome has a high cost or benefit that it causes problems.

Comment author: orthonormal 10 June 2009 01:32:03AM 2 points [-]

It looks like I agree with you but disagree with your original post. What's the problem with saying we believe Bayes' Theorem, and clarifying if asked that we ascribe probability 1 minus epsilon to it?

The rest of your post is of value, but the "You can't believe in Bayes' Theorem" hook goes awry.

Comment author: PhilGoetz 10 June 2009 04:02:39PM 0 points [-]

Fair enough.