Douglas_Knight comments on Open Thread, Jun. 22 - Jun. 28, 2015 - Less Wrong

6 Post author: Gondolinian 22 June 2015 12:01AM

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Comment author: Douglas_Knight 25 June 2015 10:22:56PM 0 points [-]

When it comes to an action you must structure your knowledge in Bayesian terms to use to compute an expected utility. It is only when discussion detached knowledge that other options become available.

Comment author: jsteinhardt 26 June 2015 04:42:24AM 0 points [-]

??? This isn't true unless I misunderstood you. There are frequentist decision rules as well as Bayesian ones (minimax is one common such rule, though there are others as well).

Comment author: Douglas_Knight 26 June 2015 06:40:36AM 0 points [-]

In what sense is minimax frequentist?

Comment author: jsteinhardt 26 June 2015 07:38:12AM *  0 points [-]

From Wikipedia:

Consider the problem of estimating a deterministic (not Bayesian) parameter...

ETA: While that page talks about estimating parameters, most of the math holds for more general actions as well.

Comment author: Douglas_Knight 26 June 2015 04:45:07PM 0 points [-]

I don't think that "non-bayesian" is a common definition of "frequentist." In any event, it's not a useful category.