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Probabilities Without Measurements | Vaden Masrani

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The second in a series with Mauricio on critical rationalism and bayesian epistemology. See one, two, three, four, five, six, and seven. So I thought a good place to start would be to quickly summarize my concerns with how Bayesianism is being used in the Effective Altruism community, before responding to your points in detail. I think the simplest way to express my concern would be the following: I am extremely worried about the widespread use (within the EA community, but more generally) of probabilities without measurements. This seems to be a temptation unique to the Bayesian, who always has an extra move available to them - they can replace datasets with “beliefs”, swap objective probabilities for subjective ones, and carry on with their analysis. The probability calculus is so powerful because it can be used to learn about the world by abstracting and aggregating information from complex phenomena which are often too difficult to analyze by other means. But this always requires t

Probabilities Without Measurements | Vaden Masrani Probabilities Without Measurements The second in a series. The second in a series with Mauricio on critical rationalism and bayesian epistemology. See one , two , three , four , five , six , and seven . So I thought a good place to start would be to quickly summarize my concerns with how Bayesianism is being used in the Effective Altruism community, before responding to your points in detail. I think the simplest way to express my concern would be the following: I am extremely worried about the widespread use (within the EA community, but more

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