Cyan2 comments on When Science Can't Help - Less Wrong

16 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 15 May 2008 07:24AM

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Comment author: Cyan2 15 May 2008 05:39:53PM 3 points [-]

...none of them involve or have any use for "logic" or "reason" or Bayesian probability theory; none of these things are taught, used or applied by scientists...

Logic and reason are not taught, used, or applied by scientists -- what!? I'm not sure what the scare-quotes around "logic" and "reason" are supposed to convey, but on its face, this statement is jaw-dropping.

As a working scientist, I can tell you I have fruitfully applied Bayesian probability theory, and that it has informed my entire approach to research. Don't duplicate Eliezer's approach and reduce science to a monolithic structure with sharply drawn boundaries.

I have a colleague who is not especially mathematically inclined. He likes to mess around in the data and try to get the most information possible out of it. Although it would surprise him to hear it, all of his scientific inferences can be understood as Bayesian reasoning. Bayesian probability theory nothing more that an explicit formulation of one of the tasks that good working scientists are trained to do -- specifically, learning from data.