ArisKatsaris comments on What Bayesianism taught me - Less Wrong

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

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Comment author: Viliam_Bur 24 August 2013 01:31:51PM 2 points [-]

We have some misunderstanding here. My best guess is that you think evidence makes something likely, while the typical usage here is that evidence makes things more likely. An example: Imagine that according to your best knowledge, some thing X has a probability 0.000001. Now you get some new information E, and based on all the knowledge you have now, the probability of X is 0.000001001.

On one hand, the information E increased the probability of X from 0.000001to 0.000001001. This is what we mean by saying that E is an evidence for X. It made it more likely.

On the other hand, even the increased probability is pretty close to zero. Therefore, more likely does not imply likely or even worth considering seriously (you can imagine even more zeroes before the first nonzero digit).

Similarly, probability of Ygafalkufeoinencfhncfc is pretty close to zero, but not exactly zero. Mentioning it on a discussion forum (choosing this specific topic instead of other millions of topic that could have been chosen) slightly increases the probability (at the cost of those other topics that were not chosen to be mentioned). The change is very small, but technically it is an increase. That's why we call it evidence for Ygafalkufeoinencfhncfc.

Comment author: Lumifer 27 August 2013 04:57:53PM -1 points [-]

I understand the argument. I don't accept it.