djcb comments on What is Bayesianism? - Less Wrong

81 Post author: Kaj_Sotala 26 February 2010 07:43AM

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Comment author: PlatypusNinja 26 February 2010 11:03:52PM 0 points [-]

A brain tumor always causes a headache, but exceedingly few people have a brain tumor. In contrast, a headache is rarely a symptom for cold, but most people manage to catch a cold every single year. Given no other information, do you think it more likely that the headache is caused by a tumor, or by a cold?

Given no other information, we don't know which is more likely. We need numbers for "rarely", "most", and "exceedingly few". For example, if 10% of humans currently have a cold, and 1% of humans with a cold have a headache, but 1% of humans have a brain tumor, then the brain tumor is actually more likely.

(The calculation we're performing is: compare ("rarely" times "most") to "exceedingly few" and see which one is larger.)

Comment author: SilasBarta 27 February 2010 01:09:18AM *  2 points [-]

I thought Truly Part of you is an excellent introduction to rationalism/Bayesianism/Less Wrong philosophy that avoids much use of numbers, graphs, and technical language. So I think it's more appropriate for the average person, or for people that equations don't appeal to.

Does anyone who meets that description agree?

And could someone ask Alicorn if she prefers it?

Comment author: djcb 27 February 2010 05:23:57PM 2 points [-]

Hmmmm.... that's an interesting article too, but it focuses on a different question, the question what knowledge really means, and uses AI concepts to discuss that (somewhat related to Searle's Chinese Room gedankenexperiment.)

However, I think the article discussed here is a bit more directly connected to Bayesianism. It's clear what Bayes Theorem means, but what many people today mean with Bayesianism, is somewhat of a loose extrapolation of that -- or even just a metaphor.

I think the article does a good job at explaining the current use.

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