Re: effective probability

From: Wei Dai <weidai.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sat, 30 Jan 1999 14:17:47 -0800

On Sat, Jan 30, 1999 at 03:27:51PM -0500, Jacques M Mallah wrote:
> On the contrary, Bayesianism deals with uncertainties and with
> your beliefs about how likely things are, which is exactly what is
> involved. If you know an estimate is unreliable, you treat it as though
> the uncertainty is probabilistic, even if it is a flawed algorithm and you
> tried to calculate pi with it. How close do you think it came? Stick
> that in and update your prior probability estimates. That's the best you
> can do, and the right way to incorporate your beliefs into decisions.

If handling uncertanty caused by computational limitation is really a
standard part of Bayesianism, then show me a reference or textbook that
deals with this. None of the probability theory books I've read (for
example _Probability Theory: The Logic of Science_ by E. T. Jaynes
available online) talks about it. My understanding is that Bayesianism
only deals with uncertanties already present in one's prior information,
not ones introduced during one's reasoning process.
Received on Sat Jan 30 1999 - 14:19:20 PST