I am surprised that nobody wrote about it—on lesswrong, but… Bayes theorem. I remember the story how it was lying in a drawer and found only after Bayes’ death.
Per Grok:
Thomas Bayes developed the core idea in the 1740s (published posthumously in 1763), framing inverse probability to update beliefs given evidence. Pierre-Simon Laplace independently rediscovered and significantly extended it starting in 1774, giving it much of its modern form and broad applications—without apparently knowing of Bayes’ work. This is a classic case of independent rediscovery, but with a key caveat: the gap was substantial (roughly 30+ years from Bayes’ work to Laplace’s publication).
In this case, I’m mildly skeptical, because probability before Laplace bore a lot less resemblance to today’s probability IIUC (though I have not personally read source texts, so don’t update too hard on my understanding). Bayes did discover the theorem, but I don’t know if he conceptually thought of it like we do today or would have used it like we do today; I view that as largely coming from Laplace. On the flip side, that means Laplace’ work on probability theory was maybe highly counterfactual.
I am surprised that nobody wrote about it—on lesswrong, but… Bayes theorem. I remember the story how it was lying in a drawer and found only after Bayes’ death.
Per Grok:
In this case, I’m mildly skeptical, because probability before Laplace bore a lot less resemblance to today’s probability IIUC (though I have not personally read source texts, so don’t update too hard on my understanding). Bayes did discover the theorem, but I don’t know if he conceptually thought of it like we do today or would have used it like we do today; I view that as largely coming from Laplace. On the flip side, that means Laplace’ work on probability theory was maybe highly counterfactual.