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David Deutsch
Personal blog · daviddeutsch.org.uksciencephilosophy
David Deutsch's personal blog at daviddeutsch.org.uk covers science and philosophy. Since 2015, 5 different Hacker News readers have linked it 8 times, most often “Simple refutation of the ‘Bayesian’ philosophy of science”. The last post was in 2022, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (6) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Commenters cite his writing on probability, Bayesian philosophy of science, and explanation in physics and computation, usually as a source or counterpoint. None judge the writing itself.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 6 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Simple refutation of the ‘Bayesian’ philosophy of science3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2015-03-04
What Hacker News says?
Probability does not exist in reality as it's open ended. It does however exist in ex a deck of cards and a game that's defined. Probability is often being misused to say things about reality though. You see that especially in computer simulation whether used in economics, weather etc. Different initial conditions are put into the models and simulated. And the probability is calculated based on what the majority of…
Comment linking /2014/08/simple-refutation-of-the-bayesian-philosophy-of-science/
on “Probability (1963)”Submitted Simple refutation of the ‘Bayesian’ philosophy of science as a story · 1 points
HN discussionRelatedly, David Deutsch's "Simple refutation of the ‘Bayesian’ philosophy of science" > By ‘Bayesian’ philosophy of science I mean the position that (1) the objective of science is, or should be, to increase our ‘credence’ for true theories, and that (2) the credences held by a rational thinker obey the probability calculus. However, if T is an explanatory theory (e.g. ‘the sun is powered by nuclear fusion’), then…
Comment linking /2014/08/simple-refutation-of-the-bayesian-philosophy-of-science/
on “Bayesian Epistemology (2022)”Epistemology http://www.daviddeutsch.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Po... https://aeon.co/essays/how-close-are-we-to-creating-artifici...
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/2019/07/PossibleMinds_Deutsch.pdf
on “Why A.I. Moonshots Miss”David Deutsch opposes this view in his 'It from Qubit': https://www.daviddeutsch.org.uk/wp-content/ItFromQubit.pdf > [the view Deutsch opposes] entails giving up on explanation in science. It is in the very nature of computational universality that if we and our world were composed of software, we should have no means of understanding the real physics – the physics underlying the hardware of the Great Simulator itse…
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/2018/03/MathematiciansMisconception.pdf
on “The Universe as a Computer”+1 for David Deutsch http://www.daviddeutsch.org.uk/
Comment linking /
on “People”The Everett school of thought is that every time you flip a coin, you create a pair of parallel universes. That everything that could ever have happened did in fact happen somewhere in the multiverse. The Bayesians believe you can look at past results to make good guesses about what will happen in the future. I must be missing something, because I don't understand how anyone could disagree, but apparently Karl Poppe…
Comment linking /2014/08/simple-refutation-of-the-bayesian-philosophy-of-science/
on “My first-ever attempt to create a meme”