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prase comments on Bayesian Epistemology vs Popper - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (226)
I have skimmed through the comments here and smelled a weak odour of a flame war. Well, the discussion is still rather civil and far from a flame war as understood on most internet forums, but it somehow doesn't fit well within what I am used to see here on LW.
The main problem I have is that you (i.e. curi) have repeatedly asserted that the Bayesians, including most of LW users, don't understand Popperianism and that Bayesianism is in fact worse, without properly explaining your position. It is entirely possible, even probable, that most people here don't actually get all subtleties of Popper's worldview. But then, a better strategy may be to first write a post which explains these subtleties and tells why they are important. On the other hand, you don't need to tell us explicitly "you are unscholarly and misinterpret Popper". If you actually explain what you ought to (and if you are right about the issue), people here will likely understand that they were previously wrong, and they will do it without feeling that you seek confrontation rather than truth - which I mildly have.
Upvoted and agreed. I feel at this point like further addressing the discussion on present terms would be simply irresponsible, more likely to become adversarial than productive. If curi wrote up such a post, it would hopefully give a meaningful place to continue from.
Edit: It seems that curi has created such a post. I'm not entirely convinced that continuing the discussion is a good idea, but perhaps it's worth humoring the effort.
For what it's worth, I have that feeling more than mildly and consequently stopped paying attention to the curi-exchange a while ago. Too much heat, not enough light.
I've been considering downvoting the whole thread on the grounds that I want less of it, but haven't yet, roughly on the grounds that I consider it irresponsible to do so without paying more careful attention to it and don't currently consider it worth paying more attention to.
By "properly explaining my position" I'm not sure what you want. Properly understanding it takes reading, say, 20 books (plus asking questions about them as you go, and having critical discussions about them, and so on). If I summarize, lots of precision is lost. I have tried to summarize.
I can't write "a (one) post" that explains the subtitles of Popper. It took Popper a career and many books.
Bayesianism has a regress/foundations problem. Yudkowsky acknowledges that. Popperism doesn't. So Popperism is better in a pretty straightforward way.
But they were propagating myths about Popper. They were unscholarly. They didn't know wtf they were talking about, not even the basics. Basically all of Popper's books contradict those myths. It's really not cool to attribute positions to someone he never advocated. This mistake is easy to avoid by the method: don't publish about people you haven't read. Bad scholarship is a big deal, IMO.
Any system with axioms can be infinitely regressed or rendered circular if you demand that it justify the axioms. Critical Rationalism has axioms, and can be infinitely regressed.
You were upvoted in the beginning for pointing out gaps in scholarship and raising ideas not in common circulation here. You yourself, however, have demonstrated a clear lack of understanding of Bayesianism, and have attracted frustration with your own lack of scholarship and confused arguments, along with failure to provide good reasons for us to be interested in the prospect of doing this large amount of reading you insist is necessary to properly understand Popper. If doing this reading were worthwhile, we would expect you to be able to give a better demonstration of why.
I acknowledge that, although I would have prefered if you did that before you have written this post.
Could be five posts.
Even if such a defense can be sometimes valid, it is too often used to defend confused positions (think about theology) to be much credible.
It would need to be 500 posts.
But anyway, they are written and published. By Popper not me. They already exist and they don't need to be published on this particular website.
One thing you could do is write a post highlighting a specific example where Bayes is wrong and Popper is right. A lot of people have asked for specific examples in this thread; if you could give a detailed discussion of one, that would move the discussion to more fertile ground.
Can you give me a link to a canonical essay on Bayesian epistemology/philosophy, and I'll pick from there?
Induction and justificationism are examples but I've been talking about them. I think you want something else. Not entirely sure what.
It's not at all canonical, but a paper that neatly summarizes Bayesian epistemology is "Bayesian Epistemology" by Stephan Hartmann and Jan Sprenger.
Found it.
http://www.stephanhartmann.org/HartmannSprenger_BayesEpis.pdf
Will take a look in a bit.
Excellent, thanks.
Following your advice expressed elsewhere, isn't the fact that the basics of Popperianism cannot be explained in five posts a valid criticism of Popperianism, which should be therefore rejected?
Why is that a criticism? What's wrong with that?
Also maybe it could be. But I don't know how.
And the basics could be explained quickly, to someone who didn't have a bunch of anti-Popperian biases, but people do have those b/c they are built into our culture. And without the details and precision then people complain about 1) not understanding how to do it, what it says 2) it not having enough precision and rigor
Actually I don't know what constitutes a criticism in your book (since you never specified), but you have also said that there are no rules for criticism, so I suppose that it is a criticism. If not, then please say why it is not a criticism.
I am not going to engage in a discussion about my and your biases, since such debates rarely lead to an agreement.
You can conjecture standards of criticism, or use the ones from your culture. If you find a problem with them, you can change them or conjecture different ones.
For many purposes I'm pretty happen with common sense notions of standards of criticism, which I think you understand, but which are hard to explain in words. If you have a relevant problem with the, you can say it.