But we don’t. MetaMed did come out of a certain kind of thinking. The project had a motivation.
I do know about B and F a little bit, and about causality a little bit.
Just because you know what the people in the statistic community mean when they say “Bayesian” doesn’t automatically mean that you know what someone on LW means when he says Bayesian.
If you look at the “What Bayesianism taught me”, there a person who changed their beliefs through learning about Bayesianism. Do the points he makes have something to do with Frequentism vs. Bayesianism? Not directly.
On the other hand he did change major beliefs about he thinks about how the world and epistemology.
That means that the term Bayesianism as used in that article isn’t completely empty.
It’s about being sensible
Sensiblism might be a fun name for a philosophy. On the first LW meetup where I attended one of the participants had a scooter. My first question was about his traveling speed and how much time he effectively wins by using it. On that question he gave a normal answer.
My second question was over the accident rate of scooters. He replied something along the lines: “I really don’t know, I should research the issue more in depth and get the numbers.” That not the kind of answer normal people give when faced with the question for safety of the mode of travel.
You could say he’s simply sensible while 99% of the population that out there that would answer the question differently isn’t. On the other hand it’s quite difficult to explain to those 99% that they aren’t sensible.
If you prod them a bit they might admit that knowing accident risks is useful for making a decision about one’s mode of travel but they don’t update on a deep level.
Then people like you come and say: “Well of course we should be sensible. There no need to point is about explicitly or to give it a fancy name. Being sensible should go without saying.”
The problem is that in practice it doesn’t go without saying and speaking about it is hard. Calling it Bayesianism might be a very confusing way to speak about it but it seems to be an improvement over having no words at all. Maybe tabooing Bayesianism as word on LW would be the right choice. Maybe the word produces more problems than it solves.
It’s like wikipedia—the first sentence in the article on confounders is wrong on wikipedia.
“In statistics, a confounding variable (also confounding factor, a confound, or confounder) is an extraneous variable in a statistical model that correlates (directly or inversely) with both the dependent variable and the independent variable.” is at the moment that sentence. How would you change the sentence? There no reason why we shouldn’t fix that issue right now.
How would you change the sentence? There no reason why we shouldn’t fix that issue right now.
Counterexamples to a definition (this example is under your definition but is clearly not what we mean by confounder) are easier than a definition. A lot of analytic philosophy is about this. Defining “intuitive terms” is often not as simple as it seems. See, e.g.:
If you think you can make a “sensible” edit based on this paper, I will be grateful if you did so!
re: the rest of your post, words mean things. B is a technical term. I think if you redefine B as internal jargon for LW you will be incomprehensible to stats/ML people, and you don’t want this. Communication across fields is hard enough as it is (“academic coordination problem”), let’s not make it harder by not using standard terminology.
Maybe tabooing Bayesianism as word on LW would be the right choice. Maybe the word produces more
problems than it solves.
I am 100% behind this idea (and in general taboo technical terms unless you really know a lot about it).
But we don’t. MetaMed did come out of a certain kind of thinking. The project had a motivation.
Just because you know what the people in the statistic community mean when they say “Bayesian” doesn’t automatically mean that you know what someone on LW means when he says Bayesian.
If you look at the “What Bayesianism taught me”, there a person who changed their beliefs through learning about Bayesianism. Do the points he makes have something to do with Frequentism vs. Bayesianism? Not directly. On the other hand he did change major beliefs about he thinks about how the world and epistemology.
That means that the term Bayesianism as used in that article isn’t completely empty.
Sensiblism might be a fun name for a philosophy. On the first LW meetup where I attended one of the participants had a scooter. My first question was about his traveling speed and how much time he effectively wins by using it. On that question he gave a normal answer.
My second question was over the accident rate of scooters. He replied something along the lines: “I really don’t know, I should research the issue more in depth and get the numbers.” That not the kind of answer normal people give when faced with the question for safety of the mode of travel.
You could say he’s simply sensible while 99% of the population that out there that would answer the question differently isn’t. On the other hand it’s quite difficult to explain to those 99% that they aren’t sensible. If you prod them a bit they might admit that knowing accident risks is useful for making a decision about one’s mode of travel but they don’t update on a deep level.
Then people like you come and say: “Well of course we should be sensible. There no need to point is about explicitly or to give it a fancy name. Being sensible should go without saying.”
The problem is that in practice it doesn’t go without saying and speaking about it is hard. Calling it Bayesianism might be a very confusing way to speak about it but it seems to be an improvement over having no words at all. Maybe tabooing Bayesianism as word on LW would be the right choice. Maybe the word produces more problems than it solves.
“In statistics, a confounding variable (also confounding factor, a confound, or confounder) is an extraneous variable in a statistical model that correlates (directly or inversely) with both the dependent variable and the independent variable.” is at the moment that sentence. How would you change the sentence? There no reason why we shouldn’t fix that issue right now.
Counterexamples to a definition (this example is under your definition but is clearly not what we mean by confounder) are easier than a definition. A lot of analytic philosophy is about this. Defining “intuitive terms” is often not as simple as it seems. See, e.g.:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1304.0564
If you think you can make a “sensible” edit based on this paper, I will be grateful if you did so!
re: the rest of your post, words mean things. B is a technical term. I think if you redefine B as internal jargon for LW you will be incomprehensible to stats/ML people, and you don’t want this. Communication across fields is hard enough as it is (“academic coordination problem”), let’s not make it harder by not using standard terminology.
I am 100% behind this idea (and in general taboo technical terms unless you really know a lot about it).
But they don’t solve the problem of Wikipedia being in your judgement wrong about this point.
If you look at the dictionary you will find that most words have multiple meanings.They also happen to evolve meaning over time.
Let’s see if I can precommit to not posting here anymore.