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Lumifer comments on Open Thread, Feb 8 - Feb 15, 2016 - Less Wrong Discussion

4 Post author: Elo 08 February 2016 04:47AM

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Comment author: Lumifer 11 February 2016 06:41:06PM 0 points [-]

In general, hypothesis testing is overrated and hypothesis generation is underrated

Andrew Gelman

Comment author: Douglas_Knight 12 February 2016 07:10:52PM 1 point [-]

Did you mean to post this on the quotes thread? As a summary of the linked article, it's pretty misleading.

Is the statement true? I think it's pretty clearly true among academic scientists, which I think is all that Gelman meant, but probably the opposite is true more generally.

Comment author: Lumifer 18 February 2016 06:54:21PM 0 points [-]

No, this isn't really a "rationality quote" and shouldn't go into the quotes thread. I posted it here because it sounded interesting to me and because it points to a glaring weakness in the Bayesian approach -- it is entirely silent about hypothesis generation. The quote wasn't meant to represent the article.