Another useful thing for qualitative Bayes from Jaynes - always include a background information I in the list of information you're conditioning on. It reminds you that your estimates are fully contextual on all your knowledge, most of which is unstated and unexamined.
Actually, this seems like a General Semantics meets Bayes kind of principle. Surely Korzybski had a catchy phrase for a similar idea. Anyone got one?
Actually, this seems like a General Semantics meets Bayes kind of principle. Surely Korzybski had a catchy phrase for a similar idea. Can anyone got one?
Korzybski did "turgid" rather than "catchy", but this seems closely related to his insistence that characteristics are always left out by the process of abstraction, and that one can never know "all" about something. Hence his habitual use of "etc.", to the degree that he invented abbreviations for it.
David Chapman criticizes "pop Bayesianism" as just common-sense rationality dressed up as intimidating math[1]:
What does Bayes's formula have to teach us about how to do epistemology, beyond obvious things like "never be absolutely certain; update your credences when you see new evidence"?
I list below some of the specific things that I learned from Bayesianism. Some of these are examples of mistakes I'd made that Bayesianism corrected. Others are things that I just hadn't thought about explicitly before encountering Bayesianism, but which now seem important to me.
I'm interested in hearing what other people here would put on their own lists of things Bayesianism taught them. (Different people would make different lists, depending on how they had already thought about epistemology when they first encountered "pop Bayesianism".)
I'm interested especially in those lessons that you think followed more-or-less directly from taking Bayesianism seriously as a normative epistemology (plus maybe the idea of making decisions based on expected utility). The LW memeplex contains many other valuable lessons (e.g., avoid the mind-projection fallacy, be mindful of inferential gaps, the MW interpretation of QM has a lot going for it, decision theory should take into account "logical causation", etc.). However, these seem further afield or more speculative than what I think of as "bare-bones Bayesianism".
So, without further ado, here are some things that Bayesianism taught me.
What items would you put on your list?
ETA: ChrisHallquist's post Bayesianism for Humans lists other "directly applicable corollaries to Bayesianism".
[1] See also Yvain's reaction to David Chapman's criticisms.
[2] ETA: My wording here is potentially misleading. See this comment thread.