She has joined the Conspiracy - Less Wrong

She has joined the Conspiracy

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 06:48:22 +1100

Submitted by Eliezer_Yudkowsky • 8 votes • 19 comments

I have no idea whether I had anything to do with this.

19 comments

chesh on She has joined the Conspiracy

2009-01-14T07:54:31+11:00

I'd be surprised if you didn't.

Tom_McCabe2 on She has joined the Conspiracy

2009-01-14T08:00:39+11:00

In case that wasn't a rhetorical question, you almost certainly did: your Introduction to Bayesian Reasoning is the fourth Google hit for "Bayesian", the third Google hit for "Bayes", and has a pagerank of 5, the same as the Cryonics Institute's main website.

Tom3 on She has joined the Conspiracy

2009-01-14T08:03:16+11:00

"I am 87% confident you will burst into flames"

Ah, at last a practical application of the observation that bayesians cannot agree to disagree.

Eliezer_Yudkowsky on She has joined the Conspiracy

2009-01-14T08:23:57+11:00

I was on a panel with Aaron Diaz (artist) so he certainly knows who I am; the question is whether I actually inspired this in any way. I would hope so, but there are other Bayesians and Diaz has been around for a while.

Cassandra2 on She has joined the Conspiracy

2009-01-14T08:41:00+11:00

That just made my day there. Very funny!

Gwern_Branwen on She has joined the Conspiracy

2009-01-14T11:24:56+11:00

Tom: I agree. The last _Dungeons & Discourse_ comic merely had Kimiko as a logical positivist.

Johnicholas on She has joined the Conspiracy

2009-01-14T13:50:57+11:00

Also, her costume has a hood now, which points pretty directly at "Bayesian Conspiracy" rather than Bayesian in general.

Silas on She has joined the Conspiracy

2009-01-14T14:10:05+11:00

When I saw the picture, I assumed she was the woman you described in one of your Bayesian conspiracy stories that you post here. But then, she was in a pink jumpsuit, and had, I think, blond hair.

Eliezer_Yudkowsky on She has joined the Conspiracy

2009-01-14T17:29:05+11:00

Silas, she's also described as non-beisutsukai, and pink isn't a Bayesian color.

Aaron_Diaz on She has joined the Conspiracy

2009-01-14T18:17:17+11:00

Sadly, I didn't know about the Bayesian conspiracy until after I wrote this comic. In fact, I've had the name "Bayesian Empirimancer" in my sketchbook for about a year now until I found an excuse to put it in something. Mainly I just wanted an RPG character that fought using probabilistic confidence.

Of course, Eliezer and I are both Mega Geniusesâ„˘, so it should come to no surprise when parallel ideas emerge.

Aron on She has joined the Conspiracy

2009-01-14T18:22:25+11:00

There still remains some probability that Aaron's recollection is wrong.

Zubon on She has joined the Conspiracy

2009-01-15T00:09:05+11:00

There are Bayesian and non-Bayesian colors? How confident are you of that?

Gregory_Lemieux on She has joined the Conspiracy

2009-01-15T09:52:07+11:00

In addition to Tom's analysis I would add the following: A search for "Yudkowski" at the Octogon returns 86 results (although only 23 for "Bayesian"). I was wondering when a Dresden Codak comic would make its way over here!

Jacob_Lyles on She has joined the Conspiracy

2009-01-15T16:59:23+11:00

As an aspiring applied mathematician, I often think of myself as a "wizard"(student) learning "spells"(mathematical models).

Perhaps I need to start referring to myself by a cooler word like "expirimancer", though my ear for word coinage has never been good.

CannibalSmith2 on She has joined the Conspiracy

2009-01-15T20:21:07+11:00

So I googled "Bayesian Conspiracy" and found a dozen blog posts all linking to http://yudkowsky.net/rational/bayes - an overlong article repeating the same thing with numerous examples. I skimmed it in search of the answer to the question "what's the fuss", but didn't find any. So I'll ask here: I get the equation, I get that it's hard to do in your head (what a surprise), but it's just an equation. What's so awe worthy about it? (It's the same with e=mc2, actually.)

Jacob_Lyles on She has joined the Conspiracy

2009-01-16T07:30:24+11:00

CannibalSmith,

I don't quite get it either. In my line of study, a "Bayesian approach" refers to modeling the conditional posterior probability of the evidence for an event along with the prior probability of the event instead of modeling the conditional likelihood of the event directly. I'm not sure why there is a conspiracy around such a concept.

Cyan2 on She has joined the Conspiracy

2009-01-16T10:05:38+11:00

CannibalSmith, JacobLyles,

The emphasis on Bayesian probability is because it is the simplest way to extend classical logic to propositions with varying degrees of plausibility. Just as all classical logic can be reduced to repeated applications of modus ponens, all manipulations of plausibility can be reduced to applications of Bayes' Theorem (assuming you want results that will line up with classical logic as the plausibilities approach TRUE and FALSE).

FiftyTwo on She has joined the Conspiracy

2011-12-20T07:19:14.628721+11:00

That is one of the best and simplest explanations I've ever heard.

seanearlyaug on She has joined the Conspiracy

2012-07-13T07:28:39.915023+10:00

I found this site by following a mangled quote in Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. Which is a wonderful fanfic.