3 ms·
How is explicating the prior an advantage? If the prior is arbitrary anyways you could also stick to your unknown prejudice. This shouldn't change any results a
by edna314 6y ago
How is explicating the prior an advantage? If the prior is arbitrary anyways you could also stick to your unknown prejudice. This shouldn't change any results and if it does you are in trouble anyways, no matter if you explicitly state your prejudice. I'm still suspecting that Bayesian statistics is just kind of a hack to make results look more convincing.
- denzil_correa 6y ago> If the prior is arbitrary anyways you could also stick to your unknown prejudice One way to think about a prior is to make your prejudices transparent rather than unknown.
- edna314 6y agoBut, this might be negative, because you can’t consciously tweak an unknown prejudice. But, you can tweak a prior until your results support your hypothesis. In that sense, Baysian statistics might be more transparent, but less honest.
- denzil_correa 6y agoBayesian approaches are more transparent regardless of them being "honest" or not.
- edna314 6y agoTrue, but the question is if transparency is desirable. I would say it is dangerous for three reasons. First, you might be tempted to tweak your prior until your posterior confirms your hypothesis. Second, using Bayesian reasoning, you make it seem that the first procedure is justified. And third, if everyone does the tweaking for example within in a scientific community, nobody would complain, since everyone automatically would confirm their hypothesis with higher posterior probability.