dxu comments on Rationality Quotes December 2014 - Less Wrong

8 Post author: Salemicus 03 December 2014 10:33PM

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Comment author: dxu 17 December 2014 04:58:45AM 3 points [-]

I do not need correlations for probabilities -- where did you get that strange idea?

In that case, I'll repeat my earlier question:

if you don't know how much phenomenon A correlates with phenomenon B, how are you supposed to calculate the conditional probabilities P(A|B) and P(B|A)?

Comment author: Lumifer 17 December 2014 05:44:34AM 3 points [-]

There is no general answer -- this question goes to why do you consider a particular data point to be evidence suitable for updating your prior. Ideally you have causal (structural) knowledge about the relationship between A & B, but lacking that you probably should have some model (implicit or explicit) about that relationship. The relationship does not have to be linear and does not have to show up as correlation (though it, of course, might).