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RichardKennaway comments on Psychologist making pseudo-claim that recent works "compromise the Bayesian point of view" - Less Wrong Discussion

2 Post author: p4wnc6 18 July 2011 02:06PM

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Comment author: RichardKennaway 18 July 2011 03:00:16PM *  17 points [-]

What Bayesian point of view is he saying is seriously compromised, and how? Is it:

  1. Bayesian reasoning as the mathematical foundation of probability?
  2. Bayesian methods in neuroscience (example 1, example 2)?
  3. Bayesian reasoning as a description of human reasoning?
  4. Bayesian reasoning as a normative standard of human reasoning?

ETA: Amplifying that, the cognitive flaws your friend refers to are evidence for not-3, evidence which I expect we would agree with, but this does not contradict 1 and 4, which I expect we also agree with. On the other hand, 2 and not-3 do not sit well together. If, according to 2, the brain is a machine for performing Bayesian computation, why are the results in humans so strikingly non-Bayesian?

Comment author: p4wnc6 18 July 2011 03:36:48PM 2 points [-]

I will reply to this a little more when I get some free time, but another paper which might be put into proposition 2 is here: < http://www.svcl.ucsd.edu/publications/journal/2009/pami09-Sal.pdf >. This, along with Bayesian surprise by Itti and Koch at USC, does a good job of showing how Bayesian models of focus-of-attention mechanisms in the mammalian brain actually perform well computationally and experimentally.

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