Wow, this is honestly baffling. It sounds as if Deutsch doesn’t know about the generalised form of Bayes’ theorem (I’m sure he does know, which makes me feel worse).
P(Hi|E)=P(E|Hi)P(Hi)ΣjP(E|Hj)P(Hj)
You make an excellent point. Bayes’ theorem can be applied to all possible hypotheses, not just H and ¬H.
If a top physicist can be this biased, then I cannot be surprised by anything anymore.
Deutsch’s objection is not to Bayes’ theorem itself but to the idea that updating numbers is what science is about. In his Popperian picture, knowledge grows through explanatory creativity and critical elimination, and the notion that evidence confirms or raises the probability of a sweeping theory is, literally, impossible.
Wow, this is honestly baffling. It sounds as if Deutsch doesn’t know about the generalised form of Bayes’ theorem (I’m sure he does know, which makes me feel worse).
P(Hi|E)=P(E|Hi)P(Hi)ΣjP(E|Hj)P(Hj)You make an excellent point. Bayes’ theorem can be applied to all possible hypotheses, not just H and ¬H.
If a top physicist can be this biased, then I cannot be surprised by anything anymore.
Thank you very much for your response Yoav Ravid.
Deutsch’s objection is not to Bayes’ theorem itself but to the idea that updating numbers is what science is about. In his Popperian picture, knowledge grows through explanatory creativity and critical elimination, and the notion that evidence confirms or raises the probability of a sweeping theory is, literally, impossible.
Partly. But you can use Bayes to support induction, which is another problem for Popperians.