Here is an article written for you! What is Bayesianism?
My personal struggle is where this differs from ‘clear-headedness.’ I think that much of this website is geared towards helping us get closer to the ideal Bayesian, though the connections are not mentioned specifically.
Can anyone give an example of where they explicitly used Bayesian reasoning? It makes sense that it is right, but … unlike other things on this website that can be transferred into skills or habits. My guess is that having a deeper understanding of Bayesian probability would help with understanding what evidence is and how much confidence should be placed in what.
A separate confusion of mine is that in Eliezer’s explanation of Bayes theorem----I was able to do the math problems correctly and so I didn’t make whatever the usual mistake was. Because of this, I have knowledge of the right way to solve probability problems (at least if I spend a long time thinking about them), buI never went down the wrong path got slapped by having an Incorrect Answer. That doesn’t mean I won’t notice a mistake, but I think that learning things the wrong way helps you understand why they are wrong later. So my confusion is that I am never very confident as to whether I am doing things the “Bayesian way” or not. I’ve found that the Law of Conservation of Expected Evidence has been the most helpful in understanding the consequences of Bayesian reasoning, beyond solving math problems.
My awareness of Bayesian reasoning doesn’t quite enable me to use it explicitly with success most of the time, or maybe the successes are not vivid and spectacular enough to be noticed, but it does make me aware of Bayes-stupid inferences committed by me and others.
Just yesterday my father proclaimed that a certain beggar who tends to frequent our street with a kid or two and claim to be a homeless is a liar, because, well, he’s not a homeless because he is also often seen in a company of drunkards and he probably drags around the kids for show and they aren’t even his. I asked my dad whether the beggar’s claim of homelessness makes him more or less likely to be homeless. He said less likely, but after that he denied that the beggar’s failure to claim so would make him more likely to be a homeless.
I’m not sure I understand—why would he deny that the beggar’s failure to claim so would make him less likely to be homeless? I have trouble imagining how the conversation you’re describing went.
I personally feel like a deeper understanding of Bayesian probability has mainly just helped me to formalize things that are already obvious (the goal being to replicate what is obvious to humans in a computer, e.g. computer vision, robotics, AI, etc.). There have been few instances where it has actually helped me weigh evidence more effectively. But maybe I am missing some set of practical techniques.
Also, I was unable to parse the final paragraph that you wrote, would you mind re-stating it?
I basically mean using probability theory when you deal with your own beliefs. With the understanding that you only have partial (and flawed) information about the world. Understanding what is evidence, what counts as evidence to you (that last one depends on the relationship between your prior knowledge and the piece of evidence you look at).
And most of all, understanding that Occam’s Razor (or Solomonov induction / Kolmogorov complexity) isn’t just a fancy trick to force atheism and manyworlds down people’s throats.
That said, my knowledge is still feels flaky. I may be a bit under-educated by my own standard.
This question might be worth a discussion post. I constantly use visuospatial and kinesthetic qualia when thinking, which to a non-negligible extent draw on intuitions begotten from understanding the basic concepts of algorithmic probability theory and its relations—information theory, probability theory, computer science, and statistical mechanics. That said, I almost never pull out pen and paper, and when I do pull out pen and paper it’s to help structure my Fermi calculations, not to plug numbers into Bayes’ theorem. It seems obvious to me both that there are large benefits to having Bayes-influenced intuitions firing all the time and also that there are few benefits of even remembering how to actually write out Bayes’ theorem.
Edited to separate the following trivial factoid from above less trivial factoids: (Formal use of Bayes is pretty popular among—and abused by—Christian apologists. User:lukeprog would know more about that though.)
(Formal use of Bayes is pretty popular among—and abused by—Christian apologists. User:lukeprog would know more about that though.)
This doesn’t seem to belong here. My guess is that you’re just inserting a fact for general knowledge because you found it interesting, but it looks like an argument of the form “X does Y, X tends to exhibit low levels of rationality, so don’t do Y”, which is fallacious. I might remove it for potential mind-killing potential.
Long-winded reply: I think it’s not uncommon for folk to have kinestheticly-experienced conceptual aesthetics or decision-making processes. “That doesn’t feel quite right” is commonly heard, as is the somewhat-ambiguous “Sorry, I just don’t feel like going out tonight”. Anyhow, others’ apparent confidence in seemingly inelegant ontologies very distincly activates a lot of my thinking qualia. For example, if I hear a person resignedly accepting a uniform prior over vaguely defined objects in the mathematical universe hypothesis. The really fundamental feeling there is that it’s just doesn’t fit… I picture it in my head as an ocean of improper prior-ness flooding the Earth because some stupid primordial being didn’t have enough philosophical aesthetics to realize that the mathematics shouldn’t look like that, objectively speaking. And it feels… it just feels wrong. Often an idea or a hypotheses feels grinding, and sometimes it feels awkward, but most of the time things just feel not-right, inharmonious, off-kilter, dukkha. Sorry, very little sleep this week, not particularly coherent.
Edit: Not sure if this matters at all, but I think that I wouldn’t be able to do clear timeful/timeless reasoning if I didn’t have access to those intuitions. I also doubt that I could grok the concepts of statistical mechanics. That said, I really don’t understand things like algebra or geometry… it must be something to do with implicit-movement, static things just don’t work. (Edit: Mixtures and measures, logarithms, symmetric limits, proportionality, physical dimensionality, raw stuff of creation, creation self-similarity, causal fluid, causal structure… it’s like crack.) I think that’s why I love ambient/timeless control so much, it lets me think about Platonic objects using my flow-structure intuitions, which is cool ’cuz the Forms are so metaphysically appealing. I’m getting an fMRI soon and doing a whole bunch of cognitive tests soon, maybe that’ll give a hint.
Can you elaborate on what you mean when you say you regard anyone who isn’t Bayesian as moronic? I’m not sure what it means to “be Bayesian”.
Here is an article written for you! What is Bayesianism? My personal struggle is where this differs from ‘clear-headedness.’ I think that much of this website is geared towards helping us get closer to the ideal Bayesian, though the connections are not mentioned specifically.
Can anyone give an example of where they explicitly used Bayesian reasoning? It makes sense that it is right, but … unlike other things on this website that can be transferred into skills or habits. My guess is that having a deeper understanding of Bayesian probability would help with understanding what evidence is and how much confidence should be placed in what.
A separate confusion of mine is that in Eliezer’s explanation of Bayes theorem----I was able to do the math problems correctly and so I didn’t make whatever the usual mistake was. Because of this, I have knowledge of the right way to solve probability problems (at least if I spend a long time thinking about them), buI never went down the wrong path got slapped by having an Incorrect Answer. That doesn’t mean I won’t notice a mistake, but I think that learning things the wrong way helps you understand why they are wrong later. So my confusion is that I am never very confident as to whether I am doing things the “Bayesian way” or not. I’ve found that the Law of Conservation of Expected Evidence has been the most helpful in understanding the consequences of Bayesian reasoning, beyond solving math problems.
Edited for clarity.
My awareness of Bayesian reasoning doesn’t quite enable me to use it explicitly with success most of the time, or maybe the successes are not vivid and spectacular enough to be noticed, but it does make me aware of Bayes-stupid inferences committed by me and others.
Just yesterday my father proclaimed that a certain beggar who tends to frequent our street with a kid or two and claim to be a homeless is a liar, because, well, he’s not a homeless because he is also often seen in a company of drunkards and he probably drags around the kids for show and they aren’t even his. I asked my dad whether the beggar’s claim of homelessness makes him more or less likely to be homeless. He said less likely, but after that he denied that the beggar’s failure to claim so would make him more likely to be a homeless.
I’m not sure I understand—why would he deny that the beggar’s failure to claim so would make him less likely to be homeless? I have trouble imagining how the conversation you’re describing went.
Uh, I mixed up a less likely and a more likely. Corrected.
In that case:
… the first bit should probably be “He said less likely”, in which case what you say makes much more sense.
I personally feel like a deeper understanding of Bayesian probability has mainly just helped me to formalize things that are already obvious (the goal being to replicate what is obvious to humans in a computer, e.g. computer vision, robotics, AI, etc.). There have been few instances where it has actually helped me weigh evidence more effectively. But maybe I am missing some set of practical techniques.
Also, I was unable to parse the final paragraph that you wrote, would you mind re-stating it?
I basically mean using probability theory when you deal with your own beliefs. With the understanding that you only have partial (and flawed) information about the world. Understanding what is evidence, what counts as evidence to you (that last one depends on the relationship between your prior knowledge and the piece of evidence you look at).
And most of all, understanding that Occam’s Razor (or Solomonov induction / Kolmogorov complexity) isn’t just a fancy trick to force atheism and manyworlds down people’s throats.
That said, my knowledge is still feels flaky. I may be a bit under-educated by my own standard.
What does it mean to “use probability theory to deal with your beliefs”? How do you use probability, and how does it change your conclusions?
This question might be worth a discussion post. I constantly use visuospatial and kinesthetic qualia when thinking, which to a non-negligible extent draw on intuitions begotten from understanding the basic concepts of algorithmic probability theory and its relations—information theory, probability theory, computer science, and statistical mechanics. That said, I almost never pull out pen and paper, and when I do pull out pen and paper it’s to help structure my Fermi calculations, not to plug numbers into Bayes’ theorem. It seems obvious to me both that there are large benefits to having Bayes-influenced intuitions firing all the time and also that there are few benefits of even remembering how to actually write out Bayes’ theorem.
Edited to separate the following trivial factoid from above less trivial factoids: (Formal use of Bayes is pretty popular among—and abused by—Christian apologists. User:lukeprog would know more about that though.)
This doesn’t seem to belong here. My guess is that you’re just inserting a fact for general knowledge because you found it interesting, but it looks like an argument of the form “X does Y, X tends to exhibit low levels of rationality, so don’t do Y”, which is fallacious. I might remove it for potential mind-killing potential.
I praise your right view, and will edit my comment accordingly.
I would be interested in reading such a post (it seems like it might even be worth a top-level post depending on how much you have to say).
Could you give an example of using visuospatial and kinesthetic qualia when thinking?
Long-winded reply: I think it’s not uncommon for folk to have kinestheticly-experienced conceptual aesthetics or decision-making processes. “That doesn’t feel quite right” is commonly heard, as is the somewhat-ambiguous “Sorry, I just don’t feel like going out tonight”. Anyhow, others’ apparent confidence in seemingly inelegant ontologies very distincly activates a lot of my thinking qualia. For example, if I hear a person resignedly accepting a uniform prior over vaguely defined objects in the mathematical universe hypothesis. The really fundamental feeling there is that it’s just doesn’t fit… I picture it in my head as an ocean of improper prior-ness flooding the Earth because some stupid primordial being didn’t have enough philosophical aesthetics to realize that the mathematics shouldn’t look like that, objectively speaking. And it feels… it just feels wrong. Often an idea or a hypotheses feels grinding, and sometimes it feels awkward, but most of the time things just feel not-right, inharmonious, off-kilter, dukkha. Sorry, very little sleep this week, not particularly coherent.
Edit: Not sure if this matters at all, but I think that I wouldn’t be able to do clear timeful/timeless reasoning if I didn’t have access to those intuitions. I also doubt that I could grok the concepts of statistical mechanics. That said, I really don’t understand things like algebra or geometry… it must be something to do with implicit-movement, static things just don’t work. (Edit: Mixtures and measures, logarithms, symmetric limits, proportionality, physical dimensionality, raw stuff of creation, creation self-similarity, causal fluid, causal structure… it’s like crack.) I think that’s why I love ambient/timeless control so much, it lets me think about Platonic objects using my flow-structure intuitions, which is cool ’cuz the Forms are so metaphysically appealing. I’m getting an fMRI soon and doing a whole bunch of cognitive tests soon, maybe that’ll give a hint.