That’s definitely one of the problems with this post, and while rudeness is generally undesirable it’s slightly more forgiveable when there’s some evidence of the thing that “justifies” it.
“Content like this should include specific, uncontroversial examples of all the claimed intellectual bankruptcy, and not include a bunch of random (and wrong) snipes.”
I did in fact include empirical metrics of Dirichlet’s superiority and how Bayes’ Theorem fails in contrast: industry uses it, after they did their own tests, which is empiricism at work. I also showed how Dirichlet Process allows you to compute Confidence Intervals, while Bayes’ Theorem is incapable of computing Confidence Intervals. I also explained how, due to the median of the likelihood function being closer to an equal distribution than Bayes would expect, Bayes is persistently biased toward whichever extrema might be observed in the sample. Thus, Bayes’ Theorem will consistently mis-estimate; it’s persistently wrong, and Dirichlet was developed as the necessary adjustment. So, I did give explicit reasons why Bayes’ Theorem is inadequate compared to the modern, standard approach which has empirical backing in industry.
It seems like you want to rate-limit me for an unspecified duration? What are the empirical metrics for that rate-limit being removed? And, the fact that you claim I “didn’t provide specific, uncontroversial examples,” when I just showed you those specifics again here, implies that you either weren’t reading everything very carefully, or you want to mischaracterize me to silence any opposition of your preferred technique: Bayes’-Theorem-by-itself.
The Rationalists repeatedly rely upon sparse evidence, while claiming certainty
They have self-selected for a community of people who call Bayes the be-all-end-all, all of them agreeing they’re right, and they don’t know that they’re horribly wrong… because they don’t check!
...then you DON’T know the be-all-end-all statistical technique — and neither do Scott Alexander or Eliezer Yudkowski, as much as they’d like you to believe otherwise.
I would not be surprised if some random “rationlist” you ran into somewhere was sloppy or imprecise with their usage of Bayes. I would also not be surprised if you misinterpreted some offhand comment as an unjustified claim to statistical rigor. Maybe it was some third, other thing.
As an aside, all the ways in which you claim that Bayes is wrong are… wrong? Applications of the theorem gives you wrong results insofar as the inputs are wrong, which in real life is ~always, and yet the same is true of the techniques you mention (which, notably, rely on Bayes). There is always the question of what tool is best for a given job, and here we circle back to the question of where exactly this grevious misuse of Bayes is occurring.
It seems like you want to rate-limit me for an unspecified duration? What are the empirical metrics for that rate-limit being removed? And, the fact that you claim I “didn’t provide specific, uncontroversial examples,” when I just showed you those specifics again here, implies that you either weren’t reading everything very carefully, or you want to mischaracterize me to silence any opposition of your preferred technique: Bayes’-Theorem-by-itself.
Deeply uncharitable interpretations of others’ motives is not something we especially tolerate on LessWrong.
Ah, first: you DID claim that I “didn’t provide specific, uncontroversial examples” and I HAD given such for why Bayes’ Theorem is inadequate. Notice that you made your statement in this context:
<<”Bayes is persistently wrong”—about what, exactly?
Content like this should include specific, uncontroversial examples>>
In that context, where you precede “this” with my statement about Bayes, I naturally took “content like this” to be referring to my statement that “Bayes is persistently wrong.” I hope you can see how easy it would be for me to conclude such a thing, considering “this” refers to… the prior statement?
You now move your goal-posts by insisting that my statement “Rationalists repeatedly rely upon sparse evidence, while claiming certainty” was ACTUALLY the argument I had to support with specifics… while if I were to give such specifics, I would have betrayed individual confidences, which is unethical. So, no, I’ll continue to assert without specifics, for the sake of confidences, that “Rationalists repeatedly rely upon sparse evidence, while claiming certainty” because MULTIPLE rationalist over the past YEAR have done so, NOT an isolated incident or an off-hand joke, as you assume.
Your assumption that my “amalgam of rationalists I’ve met over the last year” was somehow a one-off or cursory remark is your OWN uncharitable interpretation; you are dismissing my repeated interactions with your community; such has been the norm. Similarly, in the EA Forum post “Doing EA Better”—a group of risk analysts had been spending a year trying to tell EA that “you’re doing risk-assessment wrong; those techniques are out-dated,” and EA members kept insisting their way was fine and right. Eventually, that nearly-dozen folks sat down and scribed an essay to EA… and EA pointedly ignored that fact they mentioned! “EA dismisses experts when experts tell EA they’re using out-dated techniques.” I’m seeing a similar pattern across the Rationalist community, NOT a one-off event or a casual remark; they were using Bayes’ Theorem improperly, as the substance of arguments made in response to me.
“As an aside, all the ways in which you claim that Bayes is wrong are… wrong?”
Bayesian Inference is a good and real thing. And, Bayes’ Theorem is an old formula, used in Bayesian Inference. AND Bayes’ Theorem cannot produce Confidence Intervals, nor will it allocate to minimize the cost of being wrong, nor does it make adjustments for samples’ bias toward the extrema. Those are all specific ways where “I just plug it into Bayes’ Theorem” is factually wrong. You keep claiming that my critique is wrong—but you only do so vaguely! You skip right past these failures of Bayes’ Theorem, each time I mention them. Check the math books: there is NO “question of what tool is best for a given job,” as you say—rather, Bayes’ Theorem alone is NEVER the tool. You’ll have to adjust in many ways, not just one. And if you don’t do so, you are in fact using an obsolete technique during your Bayesian Inference.
That’s definitely one of the problems with this post, and while rudeness is generally undesirable it’s slightly more forgiveable when there’s some evidence of the thing that “justifies” it.
“Content like this should include specific, uncontroversial examples of all the claimed intellectual bankruptcy, and not include a bunch of random (and wrong) snipes.”
I did in fact include empirical metrics of Dirichlet’s superiority and how Bayes’ Theorem fails in contrast: industry uses it, after they did their own tests, which is empiricism at work. I also showed how Dirichlet Process allows you to compute Confidence Intervals, while Bayes’ Theorem is incapable of computing Confidence Intervals. I also explained how, due to the median of the likelihood function being closer to an equal distribution than Bayes would expect, Bayes is persistently biased toward whichever extrema might be observed in the sample. Thus, Bayes’ Theorem will consistently mis-estimate; it’s persistently wrong, and Dirichlet was developed as the necessary adjustment. So, I did give explicit reasons why Bayes’ Theorem is inadequate compared to the modern, standard approach which has empirical backing in industry.
It seems like you want to rate-limit me for an unspecified duration? What are the empirical metrics for that rate-limit being removed? And, the fact that you claim I “didn’t provide specific, uncontroversial examples,” when I just showed you those specifics again here, implies that you either weren’t reading everything very carefully, or you want to mischaracterize me to silence any opposition of your preferred technique: Bayes’-Theorem-by-itself.
The missing examples are for claims of the form:
I would not be surprised if some random “rationlist” you ran into somewhere was sloppy or imprecise with their usage of Bayes. I would also not be surprised if you misinterpreted some offhand comment as an unjustified claim to statistical rigor. Maybe it was some third, other thing.
As an aside, all the ways in which you claim that Bayes is wrong are… wrong? Applications of the theorem gives you wrong results insofar as the inputs are wrong, which in real life is ~always, and yet the same is true of the techniques you mention (which, notably, rely on Bayes). There is always the question of what tool is best for a given job, and here we circle back to the question of where exactly this grevious misuse of Bayes is occurring.
Deeply uncharitable interpretations of others’ motives is not something we especially tolerate on LessWrong.
Ah, first: you DID claim that I “didn’t provide specific, uncontroversial examples” and I HAD given such for why Bayes’ Theorem is inadequate. Notice that you made your statement in this context:
<<”Bayes is persistently wrong”—about what, exactly?
Content like this should include specific, uncontroversial examples>>
In that context, where you precede “this” with my statement about Bayes, I naturally took “content like this” to be referring to my statement that “Bayes is persistently wrong.” I hope you can see how easy it would be for me to conclude such a thing, considering “this” refers to… the prior statement?
You now move your goal-posts by insisting that my statement “Rationalists repeatedly rely upon sparse evidence, while claiming certainty” was ACTUALLY the argument I had to support with specifics… while if I were to give such specifics, I would have betrayed individual confidences, which is unethical. So, no, I’ll continue to assert without specifics, for the sake of confidences, that “Rationalists repeatedly rely upon sparse evidence, while claiming certainty” because MULTIPLE rationalist over the past YEAR have done so, NOT an isolated incident or an off-hand joke, as you assume.
Your assumption that my “amalgam of rationalists I’ve met over the last year” was somehow a one-off or cursory remark is your OWN uncharitable interpretation; you are dismissing my repeated interactions with your community; such has been the norm. Similarly, in the EA Forum post “Doing EA Better”—a group of risk analysts had been spending a year trying to tell EA that “you’re doing risk-assessment wrong; those techniques are out-dated,” and EA members kept insisting their way was fine and right. Eventually, that nearly-dozen folks sat down and scribed an essay to EA… and EA pointedly ignored that fact they mentioned! “EA dismisses experts when experts tell EA they’re using out-dated techniques.” I’m seeing a similar pattern across the Rationalist community, NOT a one-off event or a casual remark; they were using Bayes’ Theorem improperly, as the substance of arguments made in response to me.
“As an aside, all the ways in which you claim that Bayes is wrong are… wrong?”
Bayesian Inference is a good and real thing. And, Bayes’ Theorem is an old formula, used in Bayesian Inference. AND Bayes’ Theorem cannot produce Confidence Intervals, nor will it allocate to minimize the cost of being wrong, nor does it make adjustments for samples’ bias toward the extrema. Those are all specific ways where “I just plug it into Bayes’ Theorem” is factually wrong. You keep claiming that my critique is wrong—but you only do so vaguely! You skip right past these failures of Bayes’ Theorem, each time I mention them. Check the math books: there is NO “question of what tool is best for a given job,” as you say—rather, Bayes’ Theorem alone is NEVER the tool. You’ll have to adjust in many ways, not just one. And if you don’t do so, you are in fact using an obsolete technique during your Bayesian Inference.