thomblake comments on Well-Kept Gardens Die By Pacifism - Less Wrong

104 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 21 April 2009 02:44AM

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Comment author: thomblake 22 April 2009 02:59:10PM 0 points [-]

I think it's funny that the observation that it's "non-Bayesian" is being treated here as a refutation, and got voted up. Not terribly surprising though.

Comment author: ciphergoth 23 April 2009 01:07:05PM 0 points [-]

Could you be more explicit here? I would also have considered that if the charge of non-Bayesianness were to stick, that would be tantamount to a refutation, so if I'm making a mistake then help me out?

Comment author: thomblake 23 April 2009 03:50:52PM 0 points [-]

The charge was not that the idea is not useful, nor that it is not true, either of which might be a mark against it. But "non-Bayesian"? I can't unpack that accusation in a way that makes it seem like a good thing to be concerned about. Even putting aside that I don't much care for Bayesian decision-making (for humans), it sounds like it's in the same family as a charge of "non-Christian".

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 23 April 2009 04:06:12PM *  3 points [-]

One analogy: non-mathematical, not formalized, not written in English, and attempts to translate generally fail.

See [*] for a critique of null hypothesis and related techniques from a Bayesian perspective. To cite:

My work in power analysis led be to realize that the nil hypothesis is always false. [...] If it is false, even to a tiny degree, it must be the case that a large enough sample will produce a significant result and lead to its rejection. So if the null hypothesis is always false, what's the big deal about rejecting it?

[*] J. Cohen (1994). `The Earth Is Round (p < .05)'. American Psychologist 49(12):997-1003. [pdf].

Comment author: Nominull 23 April 2009 04:06:20PM 0 points [-]

Being non-Bayesian is one particular type of being untrue.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 23 April 2009 04:13:37PM 1 point [-]

Being non-Bayesian is one particular type of being untrue.

Now, what does this mean? Sounds horribly untrue.

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