[unabst]

I agree with the first part. We get by fine for the most part by our own intuitions driven by fear and risk aversion. We are constantly triggered into action, not persuaded -- not by ourselves or anyone. But I think the blog here is a call to be more rational. I would consider Bayes another tool out of many. Unfortunately that doesn't change how we are though. We're still hungry and trigger driven at the end of the day.

Which is why I disagree with the other thing you said. People are pretty stupid. To think you know anything without prior research is stupid. Priors need to be deliberately created (act of learning and understanding and internalizing) for a guess to be educated. Anything without we default to stupid, so most of us are stupid with most things.

But just getting by is an incredibly low bar. We have been tested however with the covid situation. But take covid. Mask wearing isn't a "priors" issue. It's the understanding of what a mask does and how it influences risk that is important. You don't need authority to understand the benefits of a mask, though once understood, it would definitely fall under "staying on the safe side with large margins".

At least that is my take.

[new2628]

That's an interesting response, thanks! I think where I disagree is that I think people are pretty smart, at least in one thing, which is survival -- the proof of that is that those who were not, quickly exited the gene pool. That is a powerful filtering that tunes our estimators.

I agree with your last paragraph, but I think it supports my point. I wear a mask because it has zero cost, and it may save my life. When I took this decision, I didn't estimate any probabilities and I haven't used Bayes theorem. Understanding what a mask does exactly and how aerosol transmission of viruses work precisely is almost irrelevant to my decision -- I could be improving my knowledge ("my priors") by studying virology, but there would still be so many uncertainties, that it would hardly influence my decision.