I disagree: Bayes is a big part of Less Wrong, and this is an excellent worked out example of how one could try to apply it in practice. If my pretty-poorly-written, qualitative-claims-only Applied Bayes’ Theorem: Reading People got promoted, so should this.
Reading people is a task far more common than figuring out whether a leaked script for a movie is authentic, and many more people will be interested in the former.
Look, this is certainly a interesting post, and I enjoyed reading it. But that is not a sufficient criterion for a post being in Main. Compare this to the other recent posts in Main, and you will see a big stylistic difference. A worked out example of using Bayes is very interesting and insightful, but it is not anything “new”. To use an analogy, if the other posts in Main are the content of a textbook, this is one of the worked-out sample exercises to show you how the exercises in the book are actually done. That is no less valuable, but it is simply not the same class, and a distinction is necessary.
I think it does. Bayes gets mentioned a lot around here, but there are not that many clear and accessible examples on how to go and analyze a real question; I recently read Proving History, despite no particular interest in the topic (Jesus’ historicity), just to get a better idea of how people do it in practice.
I don’t think this belongs in Main.
I disagree: Bayes is a big part of Less Wrong, and this is an excellent worked out example of how one could try to apply it in practice. If my pretty-poorly-written, qualitative-claims-only Applied Bayes’ Theorem: Reading People got promoted, so should this.
Reading people is a task far more common than figuring out whether a leaked script for a movie is authentic, and many more people will be interested in the former.
Look, this is certainly a interesting post, and I enjoyed reading it. But that is not a sufficient criterion for a post being in Main. Compare this to the other recent posts in Main, and you will see a big stylistic difference. A worked out example of using Bayes is very interesting and insightful, but it is not anything “new”. To use an analogy, if the other posts in Main are the content of a textbook, this is one of the worked-out sample exercises to show you how the exercises in the book are actually done. That is no less valuable, but it is simply not the same class, and a distinction is necessary.
I’ve never seen this distinction before, and I don’t think my essay is remotely like the usual fare of Discussion.
EDIT: especially if something like http://lesswrong.com/lw/g7y/morality_is_awesome/ gets 3x the net upvotes...
I think it does. Bayes gets mentioned a lot around here, but there are not that many clear and accessible examples on how to go and analyze a real question; I recently read Proving History, despite no particular interest in the topic (Jesus’ historicity), just to get a better idea of how people do it in practice.
Agreed.