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> The theory isn't that "statistics are the ultimate language of the brain". That's not the theory of this specific paper, but the says that this researcher co
by haberman 11y ago
> The theory isn't that "statistics are the ultimate language of the brain".
That's not the theory of this specific paper, but the says that this researcher considers this paper a "first step" towards this more general theory.
> This theory is falsifiable, because you can ask people their confidence in the original measurements, their confidence in a decision depending on that, and then use Bayes' rule to see if those confidences have propagated.
If your standard is that humans will apply Bayes' theorem correctly, completely intuitively, as more evidence becomes available, I think it will be very easy to falsify that.
- nl 11y agoIf your standard is that humans will apply Bayes' theorem correctly, completely intuitively, as more evidence becomes available, I think it will be very easy to falsify that. Yes. And there is increasing evidence that this is correct. See[1]. If you can find a copy, I think [2] will address many of your concerns about seemingly irrational behavior being supported by statistical reasoning. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_approaches_to_brain_function https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_approaches_to_brain_f... [2] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19477333 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19477333
- haberman 11y agoI disagree. I think this is evidence to the contrary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjunction_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjunction_fallacy https://www.dartmouth.edu/~nyhan/nyhan-reifler.pdf https://www.dartmouth.edu/~nyhan/nyhan-reifler.pdf