Re: effective probability

From: Jacques M Mallah <jqm1584.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1999 13:59:49 -0500

On Sat, 30 Jan 1999, Wei Dai wrote:
> 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.

        Uncertainty is uncertainty. Why shouldn't you treat it the same
way? It's common sense, and unavoidable in practice. I don't see why you
need a reference. I looked in L&V but couldn't find much on resource -
limited decision making with estimates.
        If you want to ask someone, I'd suggest the well known internet
physics personality John Baez (http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/), who is a
Bayesian. He's not always right, especially on interpretation of QM, but
he's a smart guy and usually willing to correspond.
        BTW I don't think this has much to do with the doomsday argument.

                         - - - - - - -
              Jacques Mallah (jqm1584.domain.name.hidden)
       Graduate Student / Many Worlder / Devil's Advocate
"I know what no one else knows" - 'Runaway Train', Soul Asylum
            My URL: http://pages.nyu.edu/~jqm1584/
Received on Mon Feb 01 1999 - 11:03:33 PST

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Fri Feb 16 2018 - 13:20:06 PST