Hmm, would this be that you need priors for both the relative frequency of people saner than you, and the relative frequency of monkey-at-typewriter random apparent sanity, before you know whether this is evidence of sanity or insanity?
That’s right—the problem isn’t that you need priors and don’t have them, but that you need those two particular priors, and getting them probably involves enough work to raise your own sanity level quite a bit.
“Spot the Bayesian problem, anyone?”
Hmm, would this be that you need priors for both the relative frequency of people saner than you, and the relative frequency of monkey-at-typewriter random apparent sanity, before you know whether this is evidence of sanity or insanity?
Priors are not for grabs—you can’t “require” priors, and you can’t change them.
The above comment is one more piece of evidence that I’m unreliable in real-time, and shouldn’t take actions without explicitly rethinking them.
You can require priors in order to make a computation. Your requirement doesn’t cause the priors to magically appear; but you still require them.
I think Benquo means that you need enough observations to have reliable priors.
That’s right—the problem isn’t that you need priors and don’t have them, but that you need those two particular priors, and getting them probably involves enough work to raise your own sanity level quite a bit.