khafra comments on Open thread, Sept. 29 - Oct.5, 2014 - Less Wrong

6 Post author: polymathwannabe 29 September 2014 01:28PM

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Comment author: khafra 10 October 2014 02:43:59PM 0 points [-]

To implement Bayes' Theorem, the prior of something must be known

Not quite the way I'd put it. If you know the exact prior for the unique event you're predicting, you already know the posterior. All you need is a non-pathologically-terrible prior, although better ones will get you to a good prediction with fewer observations.