Martin Brown abagooba zoink larblortch
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In message , Bryan J.
Maloney
writes
Martin Brown abagooba zoink
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However, as a Bayesian I have a methodology that allows me to use
every
last shred of evidence - including our own existence. Our existence
is
perfectly good evidence that there is at least one planet in the

At least one. Absolutely true. Now show me evidence that there are at
least TWO.

I can't. And equally you cannot prove to me that a second does not
exist.

Quote where I claimed that it did not.

But I can still compute a function describing the probability
distribution of believing in the probability of a second example being
found P(P(life)) given all the available data. That is in essence what
Bayesian statistics does. And it is not hamstrung by the N=1 situation.

And how, given N=1 is this substantially better than a wild-ass guess?

It has certain nasty properties with such very limited data. Most
notably that it cannot be normalised so the variance in any individual
estimate P(life) is infinite. However, it represents accurately our
current state of knowledge.

So does "We've only had one observation, so no meaningful inference can
be drawn." I hadn't realized that Bayesians could be so cultlike.