
Bayesianism - AndrewDucker
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=4127
======
pc2g4d
This really doesn't make sense. He's treating all possible theories as if
they're disjoint events in a single random variable, but most of them would be
better modeled jointly as separate variables, most pairs of which would be
considered either independent or conditionally independent. It seems to me
like this leads the math in a very different direction, one where even
infinite theories don't drive any probabilities toward an asymptotic zero.

So, what was the author's point? That Bayesian statistics are irrational? Or
that they can be misinterpreted and misapplied in ridiculous ways?

------
plafl
Why should all events have non-zero probability? So that you don't divide by
zero when applying Bayes theorem? Why would you condition on a zero
probability event to start with? I find all the arguments between
bayesianism/frequentist quite boring. If you want to use a prior go ahead, if
not, good for you. Whatever.

PD: I actually love SMBC

~~~
radu_floricica
I'm assuming it's simple common sense. After all, a Boltzmann brain is always
a possibility.

------
daveguy
Amusing, but if you add up an infinite number of infinitely small quantities
what do you get?

~~~
nerdponx
I know this one! An integral!

~~~
daveguy
Haha. Good point. Of course, integration requires a continuous function. I
expect it would be very difficult to validate that assumption over the field
of hypothesis probabilities.

An integral is the _function_ of doing that. Whether or not you can get a
valid answer depends on the domain.

------
banach
It's OK he's just taking a nap.

