My awareness of Bayesian reasoning doesn’t quite enable me to use it explicitly with success most of the time, or maybe the successes are not vivid and spectacular enough to be noticed, but it does make me aware of Bayes-stupid inferences committed by me and others.
Just yesterday my father proclaimed that a certain beggar who tends to frequent our street with a kid or two and claim to be a homeless is a liar, because, well, he’s not a homeless because he is also often seen in a company of drunkards and he probably drags around the kids for show and they aren’t even his. I asked my dad whether the beggar’s claim of homelessness makes him more or less likely to be homeless. He said less likely, but after that he denied that the beggar’s failure to claim so would make him more likely to be a homeless.
I’m not sure I understand—why would he deny that the beggar’s failure to claim so would make him less likely to be homeless? I have trouble imagining how the conversation you’re describing went.
My awareness of Bayesian reasoning doesn’t quite enable me to use it explicitly with success most of the time, or maybe the successes are not vivid and spectacular enough to be noticed, but it does make me aware of Bayes-stupid inferences committed by me and others.
Just yesterday my father proclaimed that a certain beggar who tends to frequent our street with a kid or two and claim to be a homeless is a liar, because, well, he’s not a homeless because he is also often seen in a company of drunkards and he probably drags around the kids for show and they aren’t even his. I asked my dad whether the beggar’s claim of homelessness makes him more or less likely to be homeless. He said less likely, but after that he denied that the beggar’s failure to claim so would make him more likely to be a homeless.
I’m not sure I understand—why would he deny that the beggar’s failure to claim so would make him less likely to be homeless? I have trouble imagining how the conversation you’re describing went.
Uh, I mixed up a less likely and a more likely. Corrected.
In that case:
… the first bit should probably be “He said less likely”, in which case what you say makes much more sense.