wnoise comments on What is Bayesianism? - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (211)
Well, I said shaded into the lines of decision theory...
Yes, it absolutely is dangerous, and thinking about it more I agree it should not be done this way. Probability penalties do not scale correctly with the data collected: they're essentially just a fixed offset. Modified utility of using a particular method really is different. If a method is unusable, we shouldn't use it, and methods that trade off accuracy for manageability should be decided at that level, once we can judge the accuracy -- not earlier.
EDIT: I suppose I was hoping for a valid way of justifying the fact that we throw out models that are too hard to use or analyze -- they never make it into our set of hypotheses in the first place. It's amazing how often conjugate priors "just happen" to be chosen...