AndySimpson comments on The Trouble With "Good" - Less Wrong

83 Post author: Yvain 17 April 2009 02:07AM

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Comment author: AndySimpson 17 April 2009 11:39:24AM 0 points [-]

I'm not sure this is always a bad thing.

It may be useful shorthand to say "X is good", but when we forget the specific boundaries of that statement and only remember the shorthand, it becomes a liability. When we decide that the statement "Bayes' Theorem is valid, true, and useful in updating probabilities" collapses into "Bayes' Theorem is good," we invite the abuse of Bayes' Theorem.

So I wouldn't say it's always a bad thing, but I'd say it introduces unnecessary ambiguity and contributes to sub-optimal moral reasoning.

Comment author: janos 17 April 2009 02:22:00PM 2 points [-]

Do you have some good examples of abuse of Bayes' theorem?

Comment author: AndySimpson 17 April 2009 03:15:32PM 0 points [-]

That is a good question for a statistician, and I am not a statistician.

One thing that leaps to mind, however, is two-boxing on Newcomb's Problem using assumptions about the prior probability of box B containing $1,000,000. Some new work using math that I don't begin to understand suggests that either response to Newcomb's problem is defensible using Bayesian nets.

There could be more trivial cases, too, where a person inputs unreasonable prior probabilities and uses cargo-cult statistics to support some assertion.

Also, it's struck me that a frequentist statistician might call most Bayesian uses of the theorem "abuses."

I'm not sure those are really good examples, but I hope they're satisfying.