Huh, interesting. I have to admit I’m not really familiar with the literature on this; I just inferred this from the use of point estimates. So you’re saying people recognized that the quantity to focus on was P(N>0) but used point estimates anyway? I guess what I’m saying is, if you ask “why would they do that”, I would imagine the answer to be, “because they were still thinking of the Drake equation, even though it was developed for a different purpose”. But I guess that’s not necessarily so; it could just have been out of mathematical convenience...
Definitely mathematical convenience. In many contexts people do sensitivity analysis instead of bayesian updates. It is good to phrase things as bayesian updates, if only as a different point of view, but when that is the better thing to do (which in this case I do not believe), trumpeting it as right and the other method as wrong is the worst kind of mathematical triumphalism that has destroyed modern science.
Huh, interesting. I have to admit I’m not really familiar with the literature on this; I just inferred this from the use of point estimates. So you’re saying people recognized that the quantity to focus on was P(N>0) but used point estimates anyway? I guess what I’m saying is, if you ask “why would they do that”, I would imagine the answer to be, “because they were still thinking of the Drake equation, even though it was developed for a different purpose”. But I guess that’s not necessarily so; it could just have been out of mathematical convenience...
Definitely mathematical convenience. In many contexts people do sensitivity analysis instead of bayesian updates. It is good to phrase things as bayesian updates, if only as a different point of view, but when that is the better thing to do (which in this case I do not believe), trumpeting it as right and the other method as wrong is the worst kind of mathematical triumphalism that has destroyed modern science.