This is a linkpost for http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2017/01/dominic-cummings-brexit-referendum-won/
I didn't mean 'similar'. I meant that it is equivalent to Bayesian updating with a lot of noise. The great thing about recursive Bayesian state estimation is that it can recover from noise by processing more data. Because of this, noisy Bayes is a strict subset of noise-free Bayes, meaning pure rationality is basically noise-free Bayesian updating. That idea contradicts the linked article claiming that rationality is somehow more than that.
There is no plausible way in which the process by which this meme has propagated can be explained by Bayesian updating on truth value.
An approximate Bayesian algorithm can temporarily get stuck in local minima like that. Remember also that the underlying criterion for updating is not truth, but reward maximization. It just happens to be the case that truth is extremely useful for reward maximization. Evolution did not achieve to structure our species in a way that makes it make it obvious for us how to balance social, aesthetic, …, near-term, long-term rewards to get a really good overall policy in our modern lives (or really in any human life beyond multiplying our genes in groups of people in the wilderness). Because of this people get stuck all the time in conformity, envy, fear, etc., when there are actually ways of suppressing ancient reflexes and emotions to achieve much higher levels of overall and lasting happiness.
Let's taboo "identical".
In the limit of time and information, natural selection, memetic propagation, and Bayesian inference all converge on the same result. (Probably(?))
In reality, in observable timeframes, given realistic conditions, neither natural selection nor memetic propagation will converge on Bayesian inference; if you try to model evolution or memetic propagation with Bayesian inference, you will usually be badly wrong, and sometimes catastrophically so; if you expect to be able to extract something like a Bayes score by observing the ...