pnrjulius comments on Infinite Certainty - Less Wrong

32 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 09 January 2008 06:49AM

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Comment author: hairyfigment 20 April 2012 01:52:12AM -1 points [-]

First we'd have to attach a meaning to the claim, yes? I've seen evidence for various claims about Bayes' Theorem, including but probably not limited to 'Any workable extension of logic to deal with uncertainty will approximate Bayes,' and 'Bayes works better in practice than frequentist methods'. Decide which claim you want to talk about and you'll know what evidence against it would look like.

(Halpern more or less argues against the first one, but I'm looking at his article and so far he just seems to be pointing out Jaynes' most commonsensical requirements.)

Comment author: raptortech97 20 April 2012 09:29:20PM -1 points [-]

I intended the claim posed here about tests and priors. It is posed as
p(A|X) = [p(X|A)p(A)]/[p(X|A)p(A) + p(X|~A)*p(~A)]

But does it make sense for that to be wrong? It is a theorem, unlike the statement 2+2=4. Maybe some sort of way to show that the axioms and definitions that are used to prove Baye's Theorem are inconsistent, which is a pretty clear kind of proof. I'm not sure anymore that what I said has meaning. Well, thanks for the help.

Comment author: pnrjulius 27 May 2012 04:08:31AM 2 points [-]

It is a theorem, unlike the statement 2+2=4.

Uh, 2+2=4 is most definitely a theorem. A very simple and obvious theorem, yes. But a theorem.