If I wanted to tell people what I thought they ought to do, I’d have written about decision theory instead. Depending on your decision theory, it might tell you to do something non Bayesian, because you might not have a Bayesian technique right in front of you, but maybe you have a good heuristic that you know from experience works well. All I’m saying is that, probably, your reasoning approximates Bayesian reasoning, even when the “methods” you are using don’t look Bayesian. The way you model those methods as a whole probably does though.
Even if I were writing about decision theory, I don’t really see why making an argument for a particular way of thinking is equivalent to “telling people what to do”, though. Everything that gets written on Less wrong are either arguments or proposals, never commands. Eliezer isnt a statistician either, and yet here we are on his site dedicated to trying to figure out the right way to think. Besides that, I’m pretty sure there are tons of low hanging fruit in my essay that you could easily argue against, without going directly to argument from authority.
I certainly agree with you that Eliezer isn’t a statistician. I may disagree with you on the implications of this.
“All I’m saying is that, probably, your reasoning approximates Bayesian reasoning, even when the “methods” you are using don’t look Bayesian.”
If by “my reasoning” you mean me as a human using my brain, I don’t really see in what sense this is true. I do lots of things with my brain that aren’t Bayesian. If by “my reasoning” you mean stuff I do with data as a statistician, that’s simply false. For example, stuff I do with influence functions has no Bayesian analogue at all.
edit: there is probably some way I could set up some semi-parametric influence function stuff in a Bayesian way—I am not sure.
Funny thing though. If Ilya ever used an argument from authority on me, I’d thank him and start thinking hard about where I went wrong. You’ve read the sequences, right? Remember the praise for Judea Pearl? Well, Ilya is his student and coauthor. If he disagrees with you, it’s strong evidence.
If I wanted to tell people what I thought they ought to do, I’d have written about decision theory instead. Depending on your decision theory, it might tell you to do something non Bayesian, because you might not have a Bayesian technique right in front of you, but maybe you have a good heuristic that you know from experience works well. All I’m saying is that, probably, your reasoning approximates Bayesian reasoning, even when the “methods” you are using don’t look Bayesian. The way you model those methods as a whole probably does though.
Even if I were writing about decision theory, I don’t really see why making an argument for a particular way of thinking is equivalent to “telling people what to do”, though. Everything that gets written on Less wrong are either arguments or proposals, never commands. Eliezer isnt a statistician either, and yet here we are on his site dedicated to trying to figure out the right way to think. Besides that, I’m pretty sure there are tons of low hanging fruit in my essay that you could easily argue against, without going directly to argument from authority.
I certainly agree with you that Eliezer isn’t a statistician. I may disagree with you on the implications of this.
“All I’m saying is that, probably, your reasoning approximates Bayesian reasoning, even when the “methods” you are using don’t look Bayesian.”
If by “my reasoning” you mean me as a human using my brain, I don’t really see in what sense this is true. I do lots of things with my brain that aren’t Bayesian. If by “my reasoning” you mean stuff I do with data as a statistician, that’s simply false. For example, stuff I do with influence functions has no Bayesian analogue at all.
edit: there is probably some way I could set up some semi-parametric influence function stuff in a Bayesian way—I am not sure.
Funny thing though. If Ilya ever used an argument from authority on me, I’d thank him and start thinking hard about where I went wrong. You’ve read the sequences, right? Remember the praise for Judea Pearl? Well, Ilya is his student and coauthor. If he disagrees with you, it’s strong evidence.