Yorick_Newsome comments on Open Thread: November 2009 - Less Wrong

3 [deleted] 02 November 2009 01:18AM

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Comment author: Yorick_Newsome 26 November 2009 08:15:15AM 1 point [-]

I may be the only one of my kind here, but I know absolutely nothing about probabilistic reasoning (I am envious of all you Bayesians and assume you're right about everything. Down with the frequentists!); thus, I think Jaynes would be too far over my head. Maybe there's a dichotomy between philosophy / psychology / highschool Lesswrongers and computer science / physics / math Lesswrongers that make the group of people at Jaynes-level a small group.

Comment author: AdeleneDawner 26 November 2009 12:42:40PM 0 points [-]

You're not the only one. I'm not bad at math and logic, but very rusty, and almost completely uneducated when it comes to probabilities. (Oddly enough, the junior high school I went to did offer a probabilities course - to the students who were in the track below me. We who tested highest were given trigonometry a year earlier, instead.)

You might be right about the divide, too - I'm more in the former category than the latter, for all that I'm a programmer, and it doesn't seem like I'd have much opportunity to use the math even if I took the time to learn it, so there's very little motivation for me to do so.