ciphergoth comments on What Bayesianism taught me - Less Wrong

62 Post author: Tyrrell_McAllister 12 August 2013 06:59AM

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Comment author: gothgirl420666 11 August 2013 05:06:19AM *  2 points [-]

Honestly, I feel like if Eliezer had left out any mention of the math of Bayes' Theorem from the sequences, I would be no worse off. The seven statements you wrote seem fairly self-evident by themselves. I don't feel like I need to read that P(A|B) > P(A) or whatever to internalize them. (But perhaps certain people are highly mathematical thinkers for whom the formal epistemology really helps?)

Lately I kind of feel like rationality essentially comes down to two things:

  1. Recognizing that as a rule you are better off believing the truth, i.e. abiding by the Litany of Tarski.

  2. Having probabilistic beliefs, i.e. abiding by the Bayesian epistemology and not the Aristotelian or the Anton-Wilsonian as Yvain defined in his reaction to Chapman, or having an many-color view as opposed to a two-color view or a one-color view as Eliezer defined in the Fallacy of Gray.

Once you've internalized these two things, you've learned this particular Secret of the Universe. I've noticed that people seem to have their minds blown by the sequences, not really learn all that much more by spending a few years in the rationality scene, and then go back to read the sequences and wonder how they could have ever found them anything but obvious. (Although apparently CFAR workshops are really helpful, so if that's true that's evidence against this model.)

Comment author: [deleted] 11 August 2013 06:59:30PM 6 points [-]

Honestly, I feel like if Eliezer had left out any mention of the math of Bayes' Theorem from the sequences, I would be no worse off. The seven statements you wrote seem fairly self-evident by themselves. I don't feel like I need to read that P(A|B) > P(A) or whatever to internalize them.

For me, reading the first chapter of Probability Theory by Jaynes showed me that what thus far had only been a vague intuition of mine (that neither what Yvain calls Aristotelianism nor what Yvain calls Anton-Wilsonism were the full story) actually had a rigorous quantitative form that can be derived mathematically from a few entirely reasonable desiderata, which did put it on a much more solid ground in my mind.