Lars P. Syll

Why Bayesianism doesn’t resolve scientific disputes The occurrence of unknown prior probabilities, that must be stipulated arbitrarily, does not worry the Bayesian anymore than God’s inscrutable designs worry the theologian. Thus Lindley (1976), one of the leaders of the Bayesian school, holds that this difficulty has been ‘grossly exaggerated’. And he adds: ‘I am often asked if the [Bayesian] method gives the right answer: or, more particularly, how do you...

Although Bayes’ theorem is mathematically unquestionable, that doesn’t qualify it as indisputably applicable to scientific questions. Science is not reducible to betting, and scientific inference is not a branch of probability theory. It always transcends mathematics. The unfulfilled dream of constructing an inductive logic of probabilism — the Bayesian Holy Grail — will always remain unfulfilled. Bayesian probability calculus is far from the automatic inference engine that...

Bayesianism — the new positivism No matter how atheoretical their inclination, scientists are interested in relations between properties of phenomena, not in lists of readings from dials of instruments that detect those properties … Here as elsewhere, Bayesian philosophy of science obscures a difference between scientists’ problems of hypothesis choice and the problems of prediction that are the standard illustrations and applications of probability theory....

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Aluhüten, Verschwörungstheorien und Coronaskepsis .[embedded content]

Bayes and the ‘old evidence’ problem Among the many achievements of Newton’s theory of gravitation was its prediction of the tides and their relation to the lunar orbit. Presumably the success of this prediction confirmed Newton’s theory, or in Bayesian terms, the observable facts about the tides e raised the probability of Newton’s theory h. But the Bayesian it turns out can make no such claim. Because the facts about the tides were already known when...

Does MMT have an inflationary bias? A view yours truly often encounters when debating MMT is that there is an inflationary bias in MMT and that its framework ignores expectations. It is extremely difficult to recognize that description. Given its roots in the writings of Keynes, Lerner, and Minsky, it is — to say the least — rather amazing to attribute that view to MMT. Let me just quote one source to show how ill-founded the critique is on this issue: MMT...

Grow up and get vaccinated!

P-values vs. Bayes factors (student stuff) .[embedded content]

The power and poison of MMT MMT includes both problematic propositions and perfectly reasonable — even highly useful — positions. In the latter category, the idea that stands out is essentially functional finance theory. Proposed by Abba Lerner in 1943, FFT holds that, because governments borrowing in their own currency can always print money to service their debts, but still face inflation risks, they should aim to balance supply and demand at full...