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Vladimir_M comments on Bayesian Doomsday Argument - Less Wrong Discussion

-5 Post author: DanielLC 17 October 2010 10:14PM

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Tags: disaster bayesian philosophy probability logic statistics doomsday

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Comment author: Vladimir_M 17 October 2010 11:31:35PM *  2 points [-]

In frequentist statistics, they'd tell you that, no other information being given, the probability of each possibility is equal.

I don't think that's a correct summary, certainly not in the context of this discussion. You might be confusing frequentist probability with classical probability.

Andrew Gelman wrote a critique of the Doomsday Argument, in which he dismisses it as a bad frequentist argument misrepresented as a Bayesian one. (He elaborates on the same idea in this paper.) If I understand correctly what Gelman says (which may not be the case), I agree with him. DA is nothing more than a mathematical sleight of hand in which a trivial mathematical tautology is misleadingly presented as a non-trivial claim about the real world.

Comment author: DanielLC 18 October 2010 01:20:50AM *  0 points [-]

I don't think that's a correct summary, certainly not in the context of this discussion. You might be confusing frequentist probability with classical probability.

Fixed.

This is a variation on the argument I've heard. I can assure you it's Bayesian. I looked at the Bayesian one linked to in your link. I didn't see anything about justifying the prior, but I might have missed it. How do they make an explanation for such a simple argument so long?

I doubt I can focus long enough to understand what he's saying in that, also very long, rebuttal. If you understand it, can you tell me where you think the error is? At the very least, please narrow it down to one of these four:

  1. My prior is unreasonable
  2. My evidence is faulty
  3. I'm underestimating the importance of other evidence
  4. Something else I haven't thought of
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