The main reason people should stop saying, "That confirms my priors," is because it doesn't even make any sense. Any evidence you get at all should change your prior probability, unless you've gotten pieces of evidence that weigh both for and against the hypothesis and perfectly cancel each other out, in which case the net effect is no evidence. So it's by definition impossible to "confirm your priors": If your prior stayed the same, then you got no net evidence either way, and if you got evidence that confirms something, you should necessarily update your priors.
As you say in the article, what people really mean by "confirm my priors" is "confirm my beliefs." That can be done by simply finding evidence that weighs in favor of the hypotheses you already thought were more likely. This will make you more confident in your beliefs, but that's not the same thing as being more confident in your priors. By definition, becoming more confident in your beliefs means that you no longer agree with your old prior. People are just using the word "prior" wrong - to represent a proposition that you hold a binary attitude of belief or nonbelief towards, rather than to describe a degree of confidence in a proposition.
As a side note, I think the SMBC comic is wrong. The entire point of Bayesianism as a philosophy is to make you less confident in your beliefs by treating them as non-binary judgements that change over time, rather than just thinking in terms of "this claim is true/false," which tends to make people overconfident. And the Bayesians that I know of, Nate Silver among them, actually succeed at this and tend not to render overconfident judgements. They also don't pretend to use math unless they actually are doing the math. Meanwhile, other pundits tend to produce very overconfident judgements. To be fair, though, I might have a biased sample that includes a lot of Bayesians who do it right, rather than the ones who misuse Bayesian reasoning.
I'm pretty sure this article started as an anger towards jargon (literally an abbreviation for person's *prior beliefs* , Wiki "Klayman and Ha used Bayesian probability and information theory as their standard of hypothesis-testing, rather than the falsificationism used by Wason. According to these ideas, each answer to a question yields a different amount of information, which depends on the person's *prior beliefs.* ") which then bent its way into "I don't like these people, so they are Subjective Bayesians that don't even care about combatting this little thing called Confirmation Bias so I won't look at each X post and see it's all self-deprecating humor, and also overstep and say the elusive actual Subjective Bayesian in the Smbc comic does no math, rather than less math."
This is very silly. You don't subscribe to Bayesianism, so obviously *you* shouldn't say priors. Lots of people have different beliefs, so they do.
Was that really worth a post? Did this make a useful contribution to discourse? Why not just argue against Bayesianism, instead of this snarky 'you're not Nate Silver', shaming people for speaking in a way that more precisely communicates their beliefs?
You're not Nate Silver, so you shouldn't try to improve the way you talk and reason about things in the way that he does. You shouldn't try to reason in a quantitative way, because that would be "pretending to do math", and no doubt, implicitly, *pretentious*.
I can't fathom why Bentham's Bulldog liked this, inflicting upon me the substack version of bullying nerds because they care about stuff.
Meh. Seems like you just don’t like people talking this way. Which is totally fine.
However, there is a specific reason to use the term priors.
One of the biggest struggles in any argument or disagreement is figuring out what the actual argument is. Most disagreements on the internet are pointless and stupid because two strangers are talking past each other and arguing from completely different premises.
When somebody uses the term priors, the reader immediately knows that they are approaching the topic with a specific mindset, and that any disagreements can (and should) be framed in a specific way in order to be received and understood properly. That is very useful for a lot of people.
If it’s not useful for you, or it just sounds like pseudo intellectual bs for dorks, well, that’s a perfectly reasonable prior to have.
Everyone talks about their beliefs. Relatively few people talk about out their priors. If someone is talking about their priors, you know you are dealing with someone from that relatively small group, who approach problems in a specific way.
I'm curious what the "specific way" and "specific mindset" are that allow disagreements to be understood and received properly?
I'll actually grant a little more than Matt here, I do think that some people, some times, use "prior" to convey something like belief + orientation toward as a preliminary position. But I believe you've given the primary reason it's lately used in your reply.
Well, I don't know know if Matt's assertion that Nate Silver popularized the term is accurate or not - maybe it is. But I associate it with rationalist groups and all the Bayesian stuff.
There is a culture of debate and discourse in those circles that differs from how most people argue in person or online. Signaling to strangers that you share at least some of those values and approach problems in that manner can be useful in attracting like-minded folks.
I guess my point is that I think Matt dislikes the word because it comes across as pseudo-intellectual - it's a jargony way of referring to something that already has plenty of normal ways that people reference it.
That's fair, and I'm sure that there are folks online who throw it around because they think it makes them sound smart. I'm just saying that by using that one word, you communicate about 50 other things at the same time, which is a pretty efficient use of language.
Tldr: "Some/many people use this term incorrectly/unnecessarily/annoyingly" is not the same as "no one should use this term" or "there is no value to this term".
Good article overall, but the use of priors and Bayesian reasoning is downstream of the rationalism community rather than Nate Silver
Sure, but I think Silver made it go mainstream.
So saying 'don't say priors because you're not Nate Silver' wouldn't make much sense then?
In thee political arena that’s fair
The main reason people should stop saying, "That confirms my priors," is because it doesn't even make any sense. Any evidence you get at all should change your prior probability, unless you've gotten pieces of evidence that weigh both for and against the hypothesis and perfectly cancel each other out, in which case the net effect is no evidence. So it's by definition impossible to "confirm your priors": If your prior stayed the same, then you got no net evidence either way, and if you got evidence that confirms something, you should necessarily update your priors.
As you say in the article, what people really mean by "confirm my priors" is "confirm my beliefs." That can be done by simply finding evidence that weighs in favor of the hypotheses you already thought were more likely. This will make you more confident in your beliefs, but that's not the same thing as being more confident in your priors. By definition, becoming more confident in your beliefs means that you no longer agree with your old prior. People are just using the word "prior" wrong - to represent a proposition that you hold a binary attitude of belief or nonbelief towards, rather than to describe a degree of confidence in a proposition.
As a side note, I think the SMBC comic is wrong. The entire point of Bayesianism as a philosophy is to make you less confident in your beliefs by treating them as non-binary judgements that change over time, rather than just thinking in terms of "this claim is true/false," which tends to make people overconfident. And the Bayesians that I know of, Nate Silver among them, actually succeed at this and tend not to render overconfident judgements. They also don't pretend to use math unless they actually are doing the math. Meanwhile, other pundits tend to produce very overconfident judgements. To be fair, though, I might have a biased sample that includes a lot of Bayesians who do it right, rather than the ones who misuse Bayesian reasoning.
I'm pretty sure this article started as an anger towards jargon (literally an abbreviation for person's *prior beliefs* , Wiki "Klayman and Ha used Bayesian probability and information theory as their standard of hypothesis-testing, rather than the falsificationism used by Wason. According to these ideas, each answer to a question yields a different amount of information, which depends on the person's *prior beliefs.* ") which then bent its way into "I don't like these people, so they are Subjective Bayesians that don't even care about combatting this little thing called Confirmation Bias so I won't look at each X post and see it's all self-deprecating humor, and also overstep and say the elusive actual Subjective Bayesian in the Smbc comic does no math, rather than less math."
"If this sounds a bit silly, that’s because it is."
It actually sounds completely reasonable.
I think saying "prior" sounds cool and smart and stylish, so I will continue to do so and celebrate those who feel similarly
This is very silly. You don't subscribe to Bayesianism, so obviously *you* shouldn't say priors. Lots of people have different beliefs, so they do.
Was that really worth a post? Did this make a useful contribution to discourse? Why not just argue against Bayesianism, instead of this snarky 'you're not Nate Silver', shaming people for speaking in a way that more precisely communicates their beliefs?
You're not Nate Silver, so you shouldn't try to improve the way you talk and reason about things in the way that he does. You shouldn't try to reason in a quantitative way, because that would be "pretending to do math", and no doubt, implicitly, *pretentious*.
I can't fathom why Bentham's Bulldog liked this, inflicting upon me the substack version of bullying nerds because they care about stuff.
Meh. Seems like you just don’t like people talking this way. Which is totally fine.
However, there is a specific reason to use the term priors.
One of the biggest struggles in any argument or disagreement is figuring out what the actual argument is. Most disagreements on the internet are pointless and stupid because two strangers are talking past each other and arguing from completely different premises.
When somebody uses the term priors, the reader immediately knows that they are approaching the topic with a specific mindset, and that any disagreements can (and should) be framed in a specific way in order to be received and understood properly. That is very useful for a lot of people.
If it’s not useful for you, or it just sounds like pseudo intellectual bs for dorks, well, that’s a perfectly reasonable prior to have.
Why not just say "beliefs" in that situation?
Signaling.
Everyone talks about their beliefs. Relatively few people talk about out their priors. If someone is talking about their priors, you know you are dealing with someone from that relatively small group, who approach problems in a specific way.
Some people find that useful. YMMV.
In other words: it communicates useful information. Matt doesn't like that, because he disagrees with the beliefs that the word implies.
I wish he'd just said that.
I'm curious what the "specific way" and "specific mindset" are that allow disagreements to be understood and received properly?
I'll actually grant a little more than Matt here, I do think that some people, some times, use "prior" to convey something like belief + orientation toward as a preliminary position. But I believe you've given the primary reason it's lately used in your reply.
Well, I don't know know if Matt's assertion that Nate Silver popularized the term is accurate or not - maybe it is. But I associate it with rationalist groups and all the Bayesian stuff.
There is a culture of debate and discourse in those circles that differs from how most people argue in person or online. Signaling to strangers that you share at least some of those values and approach problems in that manner can be useful in attracting like-minded folks.
I guess my point is that I think Matt dislikes the word because it comes across as pseudo-intellectual - it's a jargony way of referring to something that already has plenty of normal ways that people reference it.
That's fair, and I'm sure that there are folks online who throw it around because they think it makes them sound smart. I'm just saying that by using that one word, you communicate about 50 other things at the same time, which is a pretty efficient use of language.
Tldr: "Some/many people use this term incorrectly/unnecessarily/annoyingly" is not the same as "no one should use this term" or "there is no value to this term".