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On the other hand, nothing says that the China censorship mechanism has to be consistent, in fact I'd almost expect them to be arbitrary and capricious.

It might be that whatever individual decided to ban this book would also have wanted to ban other the things you mention if they had been aware of them.




If they try to ban Chinese citizens from international conferences and journals in anything related to Bayesian methods, I can tell you firsthand that a lot of math/CS/ML/AI conferences will shrivel up quite a bit. They won't die, but it'll be like the Cold War, where Russian mathematicians made advances that were insulated from the west for many years, and vice versa. A net loss for everyone, especially in a topic as fundamental as Bayesian methods.


You misunderstand, I'm very much not saying that there is or will be a general policy of banning things related to Bayesian methods. Rather, thats its quite possible one mid-level bureaucrat thought that Bayesian methods were unacceptable in this one instance. Maybe he (I think "he" is a safe assumption here) was confused and really thought that this sort of math was subversive. Maybe he was worried that he hadn't banned enough things this month and his supperiors would think he was lazy. Maybe the publisher failed to pay the customary bribe. In any of these cases, though, the official reason for the ban might very well be that "Bayesian Methods are subversive".


Seeing as this is a post on Bayesian statistics in China, I must ask: why are you sufficiently confident to assert that "he" is a safe assumption? Because it's political, because it's mathematical, because it's irrational, or because it's China?


Reviewing the evidence a bit more, it seems I shouldn't be. I imagined the gender ratio in the CCP was worse than what evidence I've been able to dig up suggests it is.


Ah, point taken.




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