Outstanding 🧵 by @The_Lagrangian explains what is wrong with probabilistic/Bayesian rationalism, and what is so attractive about it that so many people adopt it despite its defects.
Start here:
Start here:
https://twitter.com/The_Lagrangian/status/1373695256013721600?s=20
@The_Lagrangian Probabilistic analysis can be extremely powerful, but technically it has prerequisites that are *never* satisfied in macroscopic reality.
You have to make a small-world idealization in which you pretend it applies, and then do all this stuff meaningfully:
You have to make a small-world idealization in which you pretend it applies, and then do all this stuff meaningfully:
https://twitter.com/The_Lagrangian/status/1373695260862382085?s=20
@The_Lagrangian You can always make up arbitrary numbers and hope that’s better than nothing, and sometimes it is, but it’s more likely garbage-in/garbage-out, and a way of fooling yourself into greater confidence than is warranted:
https://twitter.com/The_Lagrangian/status/1373697162920525824?s=20
@The_Lagrangian Bayesian rationalism is spuriously attractive for multiple reasons. The best is that it gestures in the direction of important truths:
https://twitter.com/The_Lagrangian/status/1373695256999428099?s=20
@The_Lagrangian Unfortunately, since the technical conditions for probability theory to generate actually-truly-true truths essentially never apply, Bayesian reasoning should be regarded in most cases as metaphorical, poetical, mythological, in the fantasy land of As-If:
https://twitter.com/The_Lagrangian/status/1373695258924580876?s=20
@The_Lagrangian Adam’s extraordinary thread operates at three levels interwoven: the technical level of the limitations of probability theory, the psychology of its attractiveness, and the social dynamics of its use in geeky subcultures:
https://twitter.com/The_Lagrangian/status/1373699302074253318?s=20
@The_Lagrangian Adam’s starting point and ending point is the misuse of Bayesian jargon as an in-group shibboleth.
Subcultures always have in-group jargon, which is fine.
It can be detrimental when it confuses members about the technical meaning and use of the terms.
Subcultures always have in-group jargon, which is fine.
It can be detrimental when it confuses members about the technical meaning and use of the terms.
https://twitter.com/The_Lagrangian/status/1373702624218865666?s=20
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