paper-machine comments on How valuable is it to learn math deeply? - LessWrong

20 Post author: JonahSinick 02 September 2013 06:01PM

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Comment author: [deleted] 11 October 2013 01:01:22PM *  1 point [-]

I am nonplussed at your attempt to lull readers into agreeing with you by asking a lot of rhetorical questions. It'd have been less wrong to post just the last paragraph:

I am fairly confident that a close reading of my comments will find the interprentation [sic] of 'rational' to be synonymous with 'winning-strategy-implementation', and 'bayesian' to be synonymous with (in the case that it refers to a person) 'lesswrong-site-member/sequence-implementor/bayes-conspiracist' or (in the case that it refers to cognitive architectures) 'bayesian inference' and I am tempted to edit them as such.

The missing link in the argument here is how your examples are, in fact, winning strategies. You claimed some superficial resemblance to things in the sequences, and that you did better than some small sample of humans.

I disapprove of this expanded definition of "bayesian" on the basis that it conflates honest mathematics with handwaving and specious analogies. For example, "it all adds up to normality" is merely a paraphrase of the correspondence principle in QM and does not have any particular legislative force outside that domain.

Comment author: [deleted] 13 October 2013 12:48:15AM 0 points [-]

I'll concede the point, partially because I tire of this discourse.