Yes, you can’t get away from data. And in fact it is often rational to put a dominant prior on “whatever the explanation is, it probably isn’t one of the ones that I’ve managed to come up with”. There’s nothing magic about Bayes theorem, it can’t create new information, but when properly used it helps avoid overconfidence and underconfidence.
Yes, this is clear, thank you. I recall rational discussions in LW with expositions on ontology, cosmology, sociology, the arts etc. in which probabilities are thrown around as if we know a lot, which makes me think that this point has not been fully understood. On the other hand whenever I talk to people on a one to one bases (like in this comment thread) people seem lucid about it. Will have to address it where I see it. Thanks for your input! :)
Yes, you can’t get away from data. And in fact it is often rational to put a dominant prior on “whatever the explanation is, it probably isn’t one of the ones that I’ve managed to come up with”. There’s nothing magic about Bayes theorem, it can’t create new information, but when properly used it helps avoid overconfidence and underconfidence.
Yes, this is clear, thank you. I recall rational discussions in LW with expositions on ontology, cosmology, sociology, the arts etc. in which probabilities are thrown around as if we know a lot, which makes me think that this point has not been fully understood. On the other hand whenever I talk to people on a one to one bases (like in this comment thread) people seem lucid about it. Will have to address it where I see it. Thanks for your input! :)