I’m not calling for tests to confirm some rare condition, I’m calling for tests to possibly disprove (or, since we’re dealing with probabilities, make a whole lot less likely) the currently hypothesized condition.
It’s exactly this which confirmation bias is all about: It’s not that you should be trying to prove anything, it’s that you should search for signs that might disprove your currently upheld hypothesis.
Suppose there are a hundred possible conditions Y_0 to Y_99 which all have the symptoms X.Y_0 is your current most likely hypothesis (P>0.5), and the others are equally unlikely. Then the test that you want to perform isn’t 99 tests T_1 toT_99 such that for test T_i,
) is high, you want to conduct only one test T_0 s.t.
) is very low, while
)) is moderate to high.
I didn’t do the actual math here, so am not sufficiently certain (though I am quite confident) that such a test can actually exist (given the priors for contitions and symptoms), but checking for breath alcohol probably is such a test.
Also, please note that in the original post, it hasn’t been indicated whether or not the girl has been to a party.
TL;DR: When you hear hooves, think horses, not zebras, but take a breath to check whether they have another feature all horses share, which other animals don’t (in this case, perhaps neighing? Might not exclude zebras, but other animals).
Yes; the way I’ve seen this work out in practice is that the tests whose results do best at disproving your hypothesis are incidentally often the ones actively testing for the best alternative hypothesis. This is certainly domain specific. That effect arises out of the fuzziness of medical conditions and the availability of tests; e.g. low breath alcohol would not rule out (/yield a lower posterior for) intoxication in general, while a hemi-paresis would.
Even then, once your certainty in your main hypothesis reaches a certain level, it’s hard to get any action-justifiable cost-benefit analysis for even breath alcohol testing (which due to legal reason would probably not be permissive anyways: “so you suspected it may not have been intoxication? and you didn’t go with the lege artis test? also, you didn’t document your worries on form A412”).
Not to argue that specific story, it may well be that the best course of action hinges on precisely that additional “party” information.
Potatoe potahtoh. Point being, when you have a highly favored hypothesis, forgoing glances into the dark may be the rational course of action when epistemological resources are in short supply..
I’m not calling for tests to confirm some rare condition, I’m calling for tests to possibly disprove (or, since we’re dealing with probabilities, make a whole lot less likely) the currently hypothesized condition.
It’s exactly this which confirmation bias is all about: It’s not that you should be trying to prove anything, it’s that you should search for signs that might disprove your currently upheld hypothesis.
Suppose there are a hundred possible conditions Y_0 to Y_99 which all have the symptoms X.Y_0 is your current most likely hypothesis (P>0.5), and the others are equally unlikely. Then the test that you want to perform isn’t 99 tests T_1 toT_99 such that for test T_i,
I didn’t do the actual math here, so am not sufficiently certain (though I am quite confident) that such a test can actually exist (given the priors for contitions and symptoms), but checking for breath alcohol probably is such a test.
Also, please note that in the original post, it hasn’t been indicated whether or not the girl has been to a party.
TL;DR: When you hear hooves, think horses, not zebras, but take a breath to check whether they have another feature all horses share, which other animals don’t (in this case, perhaps neighing? Might not exclude zebras, but other animals).
Yes; the way I’ve seen this work out in practice is that the tests whose results do best at disproving your hypothesis are incidentally often the ones actively testing for the best alternative hypothesis. This is certainly domain specific. That effect arises out of the fuzziness of medical conditions and the availability of tests; e.g. low breath alcohol would not rule out (/yield a lower posterior for) intoxication in general, while a hemi-paresis would.
Even then, once your certainty in your main hypothesis reaches a certain level, it’s hard to get any action-justifiable cost-benefit analysis for even breath alcohol testing (which due to legal reason would probably not be permissive anyways: “so you suspected it may not have been intoxication? and you didn’t go with the lege artis test? also, you didn’t document your worries on form A412”).
Not to argue that specific story, it may well be that the best course of action hinges on precisely that additional “party” information.
Potatoe potahtoh. Point being, when you have a highly favored hypothesis, forgoing glances into the dark may be the rational course of action when epistemological resources are in short supply..