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 Geniuses™, so it should come to no surprise when parallel ideas emerge.
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.)
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.
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).
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!