Friday, February 24, 2023

Bayesianism as Responsibility Laundering

"I'm prepared to accept that the apparent strong positive correlation between Bayesianism and extreme mental illness is just an artifact -- but it's one hell of an impressive artifact."
https://nitter.unixfox.eu/Outsideness/status/1629169972659343366

Rain apparently strongly positively correlated with wet streets. Luckily here we're not obsessed with the reassuringly autistic positivism of pure statistical correlation.

Being insane causes thinking Eliezer Yudkowsky is worth listening to.

Listening to Yud makes you think you're a Bayesian. 

Hence it is very likely that if you call yourself a Bayesian or self-identify by using Bayes' rule all the time, you are insane. Selection effect.

Unless you independently came up with calling yourself a Bayesian, you are in fact a Yudkowskian but that sounded too proud (inEgalitarian!) so it's laundered as [Bayesianism]. You're just following A Procedure, not A Man, right?


"Hey...the sequences didn't work."

"Should...should we try something else?"

"Nah."

"Should....should we try anything at all?"

"That would be wrong. And very silly." 

 

In practice it's quite difficult to assess both priors and posteriors. Why, Yudkowsky says you screwed up all the time. With math and everything! And, like, Yudkowsky has already done all that pesky math, there's no reason for you to duplicate his effort, now is there? Just ask him what to think, you'll be fine. A foolproof plan.


Naturally, Satanists claim that Satan is the one who calls a spade a spade the most.
And then everyone is shocked when fanatical Satanists are dysfunctional. It's so very surprising. They lied so smoothly! How could anyone have seen this coming?
Don't trust: replicate.

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