OK. I don’t recall hearing any Bayesian praising low probability theories, but no doubt you’ve heard more of them than me.
It seems obvious that low probability theories are good. Since probabilities must add up to 100%, there can be only a few high-probability theories and, when one is true, there is not much work to be done in finding it, since it is already so likely. telling someone to look among low-probability theories is like telling them to look among nonapples when looking for possible products to sell, and it provides no way of distinguishing good low-prior theories, like quantum mechanics, from bad ones, like astrology.
Unfortunately, I cannot read that article, as it is behind a paywall. If you have access to it, perhaps you could email it to me at endoself (at) yahoo (dot) com .
ETA:
Yes but that only helps you deal with wishy washy theories. There’s plenty of theories which predict stuff with 100% probability. Science has to deal with those. This doesn’t help deal with them.
I was only talking about Popper’s idea of theories with high content. That particular analysis was not meant to address theories that predicted certain outcomes with probability 1.
It seems obvious that low probability theories are good. Since probabilities must add up to 100%, there can be only a few high-probability theories and, when one is true, there is not much work to be done in finding it, since it is already so likely. telling someone to look among low-probability theories is like telling them to look among nonapples when looking for possible products to sell, and it provides no way of distinguishing good low-prior theories, like quantum mechanics, from bad ones, like astrology.
Unfortunately, I cannot read that article, as it is behind a paywall. If you have access to it, perhaps you could email it to me at endoself (at) yahoo (dot) com .
ETA:
I was only talking about Popper’s idea of theories with high content. That particular analysis was not meant to address theories that predicted certain outcomes with probability 1.