orthonormal comments on Bayes' rule =/= Bayesian inference - Less Wrong

37 Post author: neq1 16 September 2010 06:34AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (70)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: orthonormal 16 September 2010 11:57:08PM 7 points [-]

On the other hand, in summaries for a broad readership, the posteriors are the most important result to report. Now most readers don't have the expertise to bring their own priors, so you have to give them yours. And then do the calculation for them.

Good point. It would be irresponsible to publish a news item that "the Prime Minister's support for this bill is three times more likely if he is, in fact, a lizard alien than if he is a human" without noting that the prior probability for him being a lizard alien is pretty low.

Comment author: pozorvlak 10 June 2011 10:39:51AM 0 points [-]

And yet they do this all the frigging time in medical stories, as documented extensively on, for instance, Bad Science.