Bayesian postmodernism also seems like a reasonable way of describing this idea. Although, I feel that the explanation you give is still overly technical. (I think the biggest example is talking about “prior” without explanation, as well as “probability distribution”).
On a editing note, I can’t parse this sentence:
The hard part is, of course knowing what the hell your prior actually is, to more useful specificity than “everything you think you know about everything.”
Yeah, there’s still way too much maths in it in conceptual form, even if the only equation is “2+2=4”.
The sentence is intended to explain (or describe) the concept that Bayes always gives the right answer (since it’s a theorem), but the hard part is knowing what the prior is with usable levels of detail. Particularly since we’re talking about subjective experiences. There’s a bit of knowing thyself too—in real life, your prior is “everything you know about everything”, but your prior as you know it is “everything that you think you know about everything”—which is the same thing without unknown knowns (cultural and cognitive biases). “Know thyself” can be rephrased “what is my prior?”
I used “prior” because it’s the correct term and worth teaching, and I feed it to my mental black box in this context and it tells me it sounds useful here. May have to expand on this. “Probability distribution” is unashamedly technical and I used it here to say “this is actually hard”, but yes, expanding on it may be a good idea too. Or at least peppering it with Wikipedia links, which I’ll just do now.
Of course, in general, and filling in all the details, the above could easily be expanded to book length.
Ah, that sentence makes sense, I just couldn’t work out the syntax (“specificity” just didn’t seem to fit in). My problem, not yours :)
I didn’t explain it clearly at all, but the point I was trying to make was that there is quite a bit of “technical” language/jargon which acts as a stopsign (and/or induces blankness). “Prior” doesn’t really fit into this category, but “probability distribution” does, and the Wikipedia article (probably) doesn’t really help people from your target audience.
I would suggest removing the term completely (or maybe having the technical term in a parenthetical statement) e.g.
The prior is not a number, but a measurement of the probability of each of a spectrum of possible alternatives
Bayesian postmodernism also seems like a reasonable way of describing this idea. Although, I feel that the explanation you give is still overly technical. (I think the biggest example is talking about “prior” without explanation, as well as “probability distribution”).
On a editing note, I can’t parse this sentence:
Yeah, there’s still way too much maths in it in conceptual form, even if the only equation is “2+2=4”.
The sentence is intended to explain (or describe) the concept that Bayes always gives the right answer (since it’s a theorem), but the hard part is knowing what the prior is with usable levels of detail. Particularly since we’re talking about subjective experiences. There’s a bit of knowing thyself too—in real life, your prior is “everything you know about everything”, but your prior as you know it is “everything that you think you know about everything”—which is the same thing without unknown knowns (cultural and cognitive biases). “Know thyself” can be rephrased “what is my prior?”
I used “prior” because it’s the correct term and worth teaching, and I feed it to my mental black box in this context and it tells me it sounds useful here. May have to expand on this. “Probability distribution” is unashamedly technical and I used it here to say “this is actually hard”, but yes, expanding on it may be a good idea too. Or at least peppering it with Wikipedia links, which I’ll just do now.
Of course, in general, and filling in all the details, the above could easily be expanded to book length.
Ah, that sentence makes sense, I just couldn’t work out the syntax (“specificity” just didn’t seem to fit in). My problem, not yours :)
I didn’t explain it clearly at all, but the point I was trying to make was that there is quite a bit of “technical” language/jargon which acts as a stopsign (and/or induces blankness). “Prior” doesn’t really fit into this category, but “probability distribution” does, and the Wikipedia article (probably) doesn’t really help people from your target audience.
I would suggest removing the term completely (or maybe having the technical term in a parenthetical statement) e.g.