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Comment by spxtr | Hacker News Reader

Do you disagree with ET Jaynes then?

You'll have to be more specific: what are you asking me whether I disagree with?

I'm pretty sure the parent comment just dunked on you by demonstrating a deep well-read understanding of the underpinnings of both logic and statistics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Thompson_Jaynes

"Jaynes strongly promoted the interpretation of probability theory as an extension of logic. "

>> I'm pretty sure the parent comment just dunked on you

Oh, sorry, I didn't realise this was a dick-waving competition.

You're commenting on the wrong site (or just ignoring the rules & spirit of discussion) if you thought it necessary to tell someone they got "dunked on".

ET Jaynes has a book "Probability Theory: The Logic of Science". It's a nice book, and I was wondering if you had any thoughts on it.

I haven't read the book. What does it say?

On the matter of probability and science, I like how Karl Popper put it, although I can't find the text now so I must report it from memory. His point was that scientific hypothesis formation is an instance of inductive generalisation while probabilistic inference is a form of abductive reasoning, and so using probability to support an inductively derived hypothesis is basically supporting a guess, with another guess.

Statistics of course is not the same as probability. Personally I think statistics is a bunch of hooey.

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