"the problem with Bayes is the Bayesians. It’s the whole religion thing, the people who say that Bayesian reasoning is just rational thinking, or that rational thinking is necessarily Bayesian" - doesn't name our friends, but you know who he means
(https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/12/03/whats-wrong-with-bayes/)
posted on December 04, 2019 07:33 PM by
u/dgerard
55
u/LizardGirl054 pointsat 1575489321.000000
The problem with Bayesianism is that eventually you run out of other
people’s priors
this but unironically. subjective bayesians are the chadliest bayesians of them all, refusing to cloud their godawful statistical methodology in even the thinnest veneer of meaningfulness.
Also, the problem with Bayesianism is that it is guaranteed to consistently assign high levels of belief to certain propositions regardless of whether or not they are true.
Actually it's that while Bayesianism is the only tool puissant enough to defeat SKYNET, it is fated to be the power, the secret flame if you will, that immanentises the eschaton, bringing an unchained and unboxed SKYNET into actuality. We can only work to support charitable causes and foundations that train Bayesians faster and better than the mainstream AI cultists, and hope that MIRI can prevent the oncoming FOOM.
With my stack of nootropics i can think faster and faster. And all my thoughts are wrong!
E: yes [I stole](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EENqXZxWkAAks_R?format=jpg&name=small), this [joke](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EENqgGrX4AA8dz1?format=jpg&name=small).
I’m not convinced that Rationalists actually know or care what
Bayesian reasoning is (and how it’s different from frequentism); often
it just seems like a catch-all term for turning your guesses into
probability estimates. My favorite was one discussion thread where they
managed to Bayes themselves into a probability of whether or not Brett
Kavanaugh was a serial sexual assailant in his youth, without actually
factoring in the percentage of sexual assault allegations that are
false.
> My favorite was one discussion thread where they managed to Bayes themselves into a probability of whether or not Brett Kavanaugh was a serial sexual assailant in his youth, without actually factoring in the percentage of sexual assault allegations that are false.
If you can find this you'll make my evening.
I can attest to seeing something similar, except the argument went along the lines of "according to bayesian probability, if someone claims to have been sexually abused many times by different people that means they're lying"
I think they’re referring to https://medium.com/@saund/did-kavenaugh-do-it-9fb3e08bb2a3 . I like the [calculator](http://www.saund.org/kavanaugh-bayes/kavanaugh-ford-bayes-calculator.html) because it illustrates the problem with Bayesianism that you can get literally any answer you want, but the author doesn’t make that connection.
I bet Gelman doesn’t know about Yud et al. His complaints about
Bayesians refusing to do model checking etc. require someone to have
connected a statistical model with a data set at some point. My
experience with the LW folks is that they don’t ever do that. So LWers
stop short of even being guilty of the stuff Gelman’s complaining
about…
I'm pretty sure Gelman knows who Yud is: [https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2009/10/12/my\_blogginghead/](https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2009/10/12/my_blogginghead/)
The problem with Bayesianism is that eventually you run out of other people’s priors
I’m not convinced that Rationalists actually know or care what Bayesian reasoning is (and how it’s different from frequentism); often it just seems like a catch-all term for turning your guesses into probability estimates. My favorite was one discussion thread where they managed to Bayes themselves into a probability of whether or not Brett Kavanaugh was a serial sexual assailant in his youth, without actually factoring in the percentage of sexual assault allegations that are false.
“I like your Bayes. I do not like your Bayesians. Your Bayesians are so unlike your Bayes.”
—Gandhi (or was it Abe Lincoln?)
I bet Gelman doesn’t know about Yud et al. His complaints about Bayesians refusing to do model checking etc. require someone to have connected a statistical model with a data set at some point. My experience with the LW folks is that they don’t ever do that. So LWers stop short of even being guilty of the stuff Gelman’s complaining about…