#bayes' theorem

[liskantope]

I keep noticing this thing happening where I'm introduced to something brand new that comes in many installments (often a musical artist or TV show) through one example/sample, really love it, and get into the the new thing as a whole, and come away with the feeling that the first bit of it I became familiar with is my favorite that it has to offer.

Most recently, it was the musical group Men I Trust, whose track "The Landkeeper" from its very new album was playing on the radio, and I stopped transfixed (having been about to leave my car) to listen to the whole thing and made a mental note to myself that I had to follow up on days later to look up what song was playing on that station at that time (as it wasn't announced afterwards). I found the whole album it came from, all of which I consider very good, but my favorite track on it is still "The Landkeeper" (with "All My Candles", which I caught on the radio again sometime later in the week, and "Girl (2025)" being close contenders. Interestingly, I've tried their other albums and didn't particularly like them.)

I'm pretty sure this has happened with more musical creators, albums, and TV shows than I can think of right now. To give a weird book example, my first glimpse at Lewis Carroll's Sylvie and Bruno books (published much later than his Alice books and with much less acclaim) was a passage very far into them, which I found delightfully and refreshingly hilarious in the typical Carroll fashion. I then enthusiastically plunged into reading the full Sylvie and Bruno books, which are not short -- one should be warned that each of them is about the length of Wonderland and Looking Glass combined! -- and found that they weren't quite that good and in fact the passage that I had randomly stumbled upon beforehand was probably my very favorite bit of dialog in the whole thing.

And heck, my introduction to Scott Alexander (and thus to the whole rationalist community) was his post "A Response to Apophemi on Triggers", and while I immediately liked the rest of his stuff a lot, for a long time almost none of it had quite the same charm to me as that Response to Apophemi piece, to the point that I clearly remember filling out a survey (maybe one of the early annual SSC readership surveys) where I had to select my favorite SSC post and chose that one as my favorite. I wouldn't say that it's stayed my favorite -- my tastes have evolved, and having like a thousand more Scott essays in existence does muddy things a lot -- but I still consider it in certain ways some of Scott's best classic stuff.

What's going on here? One possibility is that I tend to prefer first samples of things because emotions coming from the novelty of it in the first experience remain associated with that sample (i.e. musical track, episode, article, etc.).

But I think the more likely explanation that the whole history of dozens of small works by a single creator, averaged together as a single unit, is (1) unlikely to score outstandingly highly in my preferences and (2) unlikely to grab my attention in the first place unless I have the luck of encountering a unit of that set of creations that is an outlier in how much I like it. There's a sort of Bayes / conditional probability thing going on here where the creators I wind up consciously exposing myself to are disproportionately going to be ones whose sample I randomly came across really really made me happy, at an extreme level that it's very hard for a prolific creator's average work to impress me.

In other words, if I'd heard, say, "I Don't Like Music" on the radio from that same album of Men I Trust, I might have nodded and said, "That's pretty good stuff" and then not remembered long afterwards when back at home that I should look up what was playing on the radio at that time. Or if I'd first run across a different post of Scott's in early 2014, I would have probably said to myself, "That was really good and interesting" but then not successfully made a mental note to investigate the blog it came from four months later when my spring semester would be over, as I did singlehandedly due to the Response to Apophemi post.

[window-on-the-west]

I should play Mass Effect....

[psycheapuleius]

[stephaniedola]

damn i didnt even notice frank is officially dead

F

she will be missed

[aurora-uwu]

Look up Baye's Theorem.

Open the Wikipedia page.

Scroll down to "interpretations".

[thahxa]

not seeing a doctor and instead googling an open source ddx tool. call that putting your faith in a theorem called bayes

[mlembug]

the tumblr "experts": the probability of winning is 50/50 because either I win or I don't win

the monty hall problem is something i find interesting and i wish there was also a term to describe the way people respond to the monty hall problem. like, "i don't understand this explanation of statistics (a thing i obviously know little about) so i'm going to assume you're just lying to me". the monty-hall-problem problem

[vasanthasworld]

WBCHSE Solutions For Class 12 Maths Bayes Theorem And Its Applications

[vijayadworld]

WBCHSE Solutions For Class 12 Maths Bayes Theorem And Its Applications

[alphachamber]

BAYES: DER WAHRHEIT NÄHER

Continue reading Untitled

[usunezukoinezu]

''Suppose the police pull someone over at random at a drunk-driving checkpoint and administer a Breathalyzer test that indicates they are drunk. Further, suppose the test is wrong on average 5 percent of the time, saying that a sober person is drunk. What is the probability that this person is wrongly accused of drunk driving?

Your first inclination might be to say 5 percent. However, you have been given the probability that the test says someone is drunk given they are sober, or P(Test=drunk | Person=sober) = 5 percent. But what you have been asked for is the probability that the person is sober given that the test says they are drunk, or P(Person=sober | Test=drunk). These are not the same probabilities!

What you haven’t considered is how the results depend on the base rate of the percentage of drunk drivers. Consider the scenario where everyone makes the right decision, and no one ever drives drunk. In this case the probability that a person is sober is 100 percent, regardless of what the Breathalyzer test results say. When a probability calculation fails to account for the base rate (like the base rate of drunk drivers), the mistake that is made is called the base rate fallacy.''

-Gabriel Weinberg and Lauren McCann, Super Thinking

[existentialterror]

every single scp author I ever met is on tumblr is this a requirement

You know I could say something about SCP site culture having just really swung tumblrwards over the years and how this is a pretty good place for writers with creepy/surreal tastes, since I'm sure there is actually a disproportionate number of SCP authors on tumblr (vs. other social media sites) -

But I'm also a rationalist, so I must take Bayes' theorem into account: is tumblr maybe the main place you meet internet strangers? Like, where else would you be meeting them?

[max1461]

I guess I just feel like nobody appreciates physical things enough. Like, there's your concept people, right, your concept lovers who think about everything as a concept. Like what if everything was Geist from Hegel, or what if everything Bayes Theorem from math book, and so on. Your concept lover. And then you've got your drama lovers where everything is drama. Like everything is, you know, individuals, characters. There's this guy and that guy and what do they think, how do they feel about each other? And this guy said to that guy blah blah and then he said to the other guy blah blah blah and was that fair? Was it right? Or should he have told the first guy first that's drama, that's monkey business, you know, chimps, they love that shit, good thing we don't usually tear each others limbs off like the chimps do.

Well so I think concepts are important, and I think interpersonal relationships are important. I mean I'm a human, I'm a chimp with a math brain, I'm a zoon politikon. I think about concepts and relationships all the time. Two of the most important types of thing to me for sure!

But I do feel like the culture at large has insufficient appreciation for objects. You know, things, specific things, that you can hold, feel, do this and that with. Objects. It's like crass or something to be into objects as such. But objects are great! I spend so much of my life dealing with objects, you know, and I like it. I'm happier when I'm dealing with a good object and less happy when I'm dealing with a bad one. I like natural objects and man-made objects, all kinds of objects, and I think objects are important. Too many have forgotten the joys and virtues of objects. You know, internet lives are not lacking in concepts nor in drama, but they are lacking in objects. I think this is what touch grass is about. I think it's desirable to spend time physically interacting with the world, you know, everyone should spend more time doing objects.

[psycheapuleius]

[g1rlken]

hi dolly! 💕i just discovered ur blog n i love ur writing sooo much! 🙈💞 can u pls do 2 or 16 for nate!! 💗💗

you’re so freaking nice woah I love u sm 😠🫶🏼

Prompt: 2. Sunshine x grumpy + 16. Help get out of a toxic relationship

Nate Jacobs x fem!reader

2.7k words

-

Just the ninth if not the tenth party of the month. Another house party, on a school night, way past her usual bedtime and really overwhelming that it just won’t near its end. Y/n couldn’t bare it sometimes but she had to attended because her boyfriend Ryan did. It was fun though, driving him home as he’d be piss drunk and the party itself had the most obnoxious teenage charm. In order to block out on the godawful bass and flickering lights y/n guided herself into the kitchen when Ryan most probably didn’t even notice.

“Oh what have we here!” Nate exclaimed as he followed in some time after, she jumped down from the kitchen counter where she previously sat with an awkward smile. She’d known of Nate and him partially. They were supposed friends ever since that one term last year where she had to tutor him. Though they didn’t really reconnect after that once she started seeing Ryan. It was somewhat majorly due to him that y/n didn’t see a lot of her friends who seemed potential threats to him.

“Hi” she greeted him awkwardly looking out the door to see if Ryan was coming, she was scared he’d cause a scene if he saw her with Nate. Even if it was just a conversation, two of them at a reasonable distance with a probable small talk following. Ryan wouldn’t have it, he’d loose his shit over her even breathing in the direction of some other guy.

Nate could tell that she was a bit frantic over something and he was fast to connect it was a ‘someone’ rather. “What are you doing here all alone?” He asked pouring himself a glass of water.

“Nothing really just uh-“ she tried thinking of proper words to say. But the soft dread of Ryan walking in any minute made her mind preoccupied.

Nate interrupted her pause, “Beer pong’s too boring for you? Already calculated the probability of winning?” He joked, when she had helped him with math and there were similar questions as such counting probably of winning a coin toss. So it was a small jab from something between them.

A small laugh seemed to escape her genuinely as he correlated their previous connection through maths, “I didn’t think about that wow…” she trailed off, “one throw amongst ten glasses”

“One in ten probability of winning.” He answered his instant calculation.

“I don’t know the glasses are set up like a triangle and they’re not all equally probable to get in, maybe we take like one row at a time and then apply bayes theorem for each-“ she was going off about the self curated math problem between the two of them as he listened intently but looked absolutely clueless so she stopped herself “oh wait I’m rambling aren’t I? Sorry” she cringed to herself letting out a soft chuckle.

“It’s alright sweetheart” he added with a shrug, “I like hearing you talk.”

“Surely because math is so fun isn’t it?” She said sarcastically rolling her eyes at him.

“It’s not. But when you talk like that, it’s fun to watch.” Nate replied just mildly, contrary to his chance making intentions out of this conversation. Even apart from that he did mean that, he’d missed it, her.

“Like what?”

“That…” he pointed to her face vaguely, unable to describe how her eyes lit up and a cheery tone followed her voice whenever she talked about something she liked without being made felt like it was a chore to the listener “You get all smiley...happy. When you talk about something you love”

“Well I don’t necessarily love math.” She told him, it was true. Despite of being good at something, having a passion for it was unilateral to it.

“I guess you love being heard then.” It might just have been a note as Nate mentioned it so casually but as she thought about it, she couldn’t help but wander back to Ryan and how he never listened.

No. That couldn’t be, everyone’s a different lover perhaps “Yeah…” she trailed off with a small smile as her expression fell. Comprehending those moments where talking to Ryan about something in her life would just feel like talking to a wall.

“What’s wrong?” Nate asked catching on her fallen expression.

“What?” She asked confused, nonchalant because surely he wouldn’t fix anything “Nothing…”

“It doesn’t seem like nothing, what’s wrong?”

“What?” She frowned but couldn’t help laugh when she saw his ever so concerned face like her smile falling was that big of a deal. “Nothing’s wrong!” As a joke, she splashed some of the tap water on his flickering it on him through her fingers. She laughed as he took the attack of tiny droplets.

“You did not just-“ if it were some one else he would’ve most probably said the worst cusses in the book but with her he just let out a small huff.

“Did what?” She attempted to sprinkle his face once again but this time he got a hold of her wrists with one of his hands, she couldn’t contain her laughter. It was infectious to him as well, this light hearted moment was flooded all over like a forest fire with an irking voice.

“What the fuck’s going on here?” Ryan seethed, y/n immediately pulled her hands away from Nate’s as that boy strided in.

“W-we uh were just talking” y/n spoke frantically, it was disheartening to Nate to see her all panicky and frantic again, when she was just laughing and at peace a few moments ago.

“That’s what you’ve come up with?” Ryan questioned as he aggressively walked towards her “Why do you always have to slut your way about, everywhere I take you huh?”

“I wasn’t doing anything I swear-we were just talking, I used to tutor him math and we were just reconnecting over it I-“ y/n jumped rapidly to explain herself before Nate could intervene for her.

“Over math huh?” Ryan scoffed “Someone dumb like you? You were talking about math?”

“Hey calm the fuck down alright” Nate interjected before y/n could. “She said we were just talking so we were just talking.” He added authority to her words but it just made things worse.

“This is our matter so can you fuck off?” Ryan barked at Nate, the two weren’t friends but just distant acquaintances. Ryan naturally couldn’t stand anyone trying to talk to her because it was all ‘flirting’ and Nate couldn’t naturally stand y/n because that boy made his sun rays embodied girl feel awful.

“No.” Nate said adamantly “How about you grow a pair and stop being a little bitch about everyone who looks in her direction? Do you not think yourself man enough to keep her or do you have to berate her to have her around?” Nate was poking at him purposely because he himself wanted a go at this guy but he didn’t want y/n to think Nate was the guy who’d throw first punch, even though he wanted to.

But that was it, Nate received the punch he was asking for but he barely flinched very overpowered with his own urge of showing Ryan his place they two were at each other’s throats. This was the exact scene y/n was worried about Ryan creating, she tried to soothe the fight pleading them both but it didn’t work.

“Get off of him!” She kept on trying as she held Ryan from his arm, trying to tug him away but it was distracting him so much from throwing his hands at Nate. Her constant nagging and tugging.

“Get the fuck off me!” Ryan roared at y/n pushing her off of him very aggressively, intently pushing her so hard she fell to the ground and that was when Nate no longer held his punches. He beat the boy bloody red. By now the others had gathered too to help escalate the situation but it was of no help, Nate was like an animal unleashed.

-

A week since that, y/n couldn’t even meet Nate’s eye. She ignored him in hallways, changing her direction, she sat far across him in class always hurrying out before he could talk. She wouldn’t reply to his messages, not even see them. He hadn’t seen her around with Ryan either in their designated spots around the school so that was a good sign but he just wanted to talk this out with her because he couldn’t understand the relentless feeling of having lost her. Even as a friend. He never regretted having beaten Ryan, he deserved it. Nate was so certain of it. But y/n. He hated thinking she saw him differently after that, his obnoxious rage to protect that he wanted to cherish. Did it repel her? He felt entitled to at least find that out, he’d leave her be to just glance from the sidelines and wait till she’ll finally look his way if that made her happy but he’d like to know.

Another house party after that one with a facade, Nate as he lounged with his friends overheard a group of girls behind him gossiping about how y/n and Ryan are back together. Eavesdropping as his blood boiled he found out that she’ll probably be around here since Ryan’s here. When he heard that he immediately rose to his feet setting down his beer without a care to respond to his mates who asked about his sudden leave, they kept asking where he was going before he was lost in the crowd. He could barely register anything at this point.

As he walked through the crowd in disbelief and anger he finally did find y/n, out in the garden with some other girls he simple pulled her by her arm to himself without a word or explanation to others he received a few woahs he didn’t care for.

Nate would’ve pulled her aside to talk to her if she was standing with Ryan if that boy weren’t to busy getting piss drunk. “Hey!” Y/n resisted trying to walk herself but he continued to drag her with a tight grip on his arm getting to a quieter place by the small space between the backward and out shed. “Nate what are you-“

“What’s wrong with you?” He asked her, brows furrowed.

“What? What are you talking about…” y/n trailed off as some embarrassment and regret creeped within her but she full well knew what he was talking about.

“How are you even seeing Ryan again? Are you out of your mind?!” He exclaimed. He had so much to demand about, Nate swallowed his pride with timid hurt whenever she ignored him. He could bare her dismissiveness but not her sadness.

“Look…” She breathed unable to meet his gaze, “it’s different-“

“It’s different is it? What is tell me, has he come up with more ways to make you feel shitty?”

Remaining silent as she looked to the ground like it was the most interesting thing ever she felt horrible. Even more horrible of the life she could be otherwise leading but the life she was afraid of leaving. Afraid of the change leaving ryan would bring, afraid of its consequence the emotional weight.

“And you’ve been ignoring me this entire time. Do you think I can’t see that?” Nate spoke and this time she looked up increasingly confused at how he could see through her that much “You don’t look at me, always hurry away even right now you can’t even meet my eyes what are you so afraid of?!”

“It’s just…it’s difficult to explain” y/n tried to reply mildly as she sighed on the verge of tears.

“As long as you can explain it to yourself right?” He scoffed, really agitated how she couldn’t see what he could. Nate was an intense lover too, ferocious one that. But he’d never make her feel this miserable if she was his. She wouldn’t even have to be his he just wanted Ryan to leach away from her because she’d be happier exactly like she was before that boy. Constantly governing her and disrespectful. Nate had a bad temper and he was difficult but he’d never be difficult enough to the extent of hurting her.

Now tears brimmed her eyes and he instantly held back from his words realising just how distressing it must be for her “Hey…hey” he urged her raising her chin with his fingers to make him look at him “I shouldn’t have said that I’m sorry…” he apologised but it didn’t stop the tears streaming down her face. “Y/n…it’s alright” he brought her to himself enlacing her into his arms and he rubbed her back letting her cry it out.

“I just don’t know what to do-he—he apologised and he said he’d change and this is the second time this has happened and I-i felt embarrassed to see you because you did so much and yet I went back to him…I keep on doing this, I just, I’m very lost on that account” she wept “He’s my first-first everything and I do really like him but he just makes me miserable and awful. Every second I’m with him I just feel horrible I don’t even want to be here at this party but I am…because of him.”

“Look at me” he said pulling away from the hug to face her but she still kept looking down so Nate cupped her face in his hands “Look” he urged “It’s okay…it’s difficult. You’re learning to love and you’re too attached to him right now. You will get out of it only if you get out of it. You have gotten over much difficult things and you have been okay. You’ll be okay this time around too.”

“How do you know that?” She asked as her voice broke but her tears composed.

“Because I love you.” Nate blurted and didn’t even regret it, almost felt free of letting out a feeling so intense in him whether or not she reciprocated “I love you. I love all of you and I’m not embarrassed to admit it but I want you whole. I want you happy, I promise you i will maintain it and I don’t want you to think of it now” he said wiping her tears “we’re going to go home. I’ll drop you home. You’re not answerable to anyone if you don’t want to be at a place you don’t want to be. You think about Ryan, break up, sort your head out yeah? You deserve better than him because love shouldn’t make you feel awful and miserable. it doesn’t necessarily have to be me or anyone, your own self needs you the most right now. Act right by you.”

Nate drove her home after that, she was truly glad. The car ride was full of a comfortable silence and the genuine serene smile which adorned her face when she told him good night after dropping her off was all worth it to Nate.

Following two days were a bit long as Nate didn’t hear from y/n in any way. She wasn’t even at school. The game day was on the weekend so people rarely came from class these days. Regardless on the game day when he had to play himself he searched for her in the crowd full of people but couldn’t find her. That’s what he told himself weighing light on the fact that she might not have showed up.

He played his well that game, where they won. But he still felt like he had lost somewhat. Since he didn’t have y/n, or a sign of her that could bring his heart some peace. It’s as if his wish was turned alive, he saw y/n come rushing towards the team where everyone was congratulating each other.

He dropped his helmet to the floor when she came running and picked her up in his arms, feeling won, feeling at home. Nate hugged her as if she wouldn’t exist if he let go and likewise. Y/n finally felt liberated, happy, like herself again. Following his word of advise.

Y/n had broken up with Ryan, with a lot of comprehension and conversations with her feelings y/n had reciprocated Nate’s. “I love you too” she replied to what she couldn’t that night at the party and he smiled so hugely kissing her as she was still lifted up into his arms. She kissed him back wrapping her arms around him and like he’d promised, she felt alright again.

HEY!!!! Please let me know your thoughts I will think about it twice a week if you commented a smile face even. Anyways, THANK YOU for reading I love you and go drink water

+is my nate semi non toxic? Yes as a descendant of bob the builder family I fixed him

[canmom]

for my sins (being too fascinated by a complicated toy) i end up somewhere near this guy (big yud) again.

i think if you say "we have to drag in Bayes' Theorem and measure the relationship quantitatively" your next line should better be a fucking equation, or a description of how you acquired some data, or basically anything that would be that thing you just said you would do and not fucking rhetoric about what would happen if you did. trivial in this case but the 'invocation of (an essentially completely intractable) mathematical calculation that you will never actually perform for rhetorical force' is so fucking annoying as a rhetorical tic once you start noticing it. just don't fucking mention bayes if you aren't going to be using bayes, you're literally just doing it for the vibes bittccchhhhh