Dresden, Germany: 1945 (credit: Wikimedia Commons) 

The point to be drawn from this chapter is that the Bayesian model of human thinking still holds. Bayesianism can explain why humans hold on to backward, obsolete ideas. Deeply held beliefs and morés do get changed, sometimes even by entire nations, by the Bayesian way, but nearly always in the past this change has come by famine, plague, or war, i.e. by national-scale pain. In modern times, we must learn to do better. 

I will have more to say on these matters in later chapters. The first big criticism of Bayesianism has been dealt with. The Bayesian model, when it is applied at the tribal/societal level of human behavior, can fully account for the apparently un-Bayesian behaviours of individuals. 

I now must go on to deal with the second big criticism of Bayesianism, the theoretical one.

And perhaps this is the point at which I should also say that the next chapter is fairly technical, and it isn’t essential to my case. If you want to skip a chapter, the next chapter is one you can skip and still not lose the train of thought leading to the conclusion of the full argument.

   

                   Dresden, Germany: 2011 (credit: Jiuguang Wang via Wikimedia Commons)

Notes

1. Jan Degenaar, “Through the Inverting Glass: First-Person Observations on Spatial Vision and Imagery,” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 12, No. 1 (March 2013). http://www.academia.edu/4029955/Degenaar2013_Through_the_Inverting_Glass.

2. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 3rd ed., 1996).

3. John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women (1869 essay). The Constitution Society website. http://www.constitution.org/jsm/women.htm.

4. Albert North Whitehead, Symbolism: Its Meaning and Effect (University of Virginia: Barbour-Page Lectures, 1927).

5. Biography of Yukio Mishima, Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Accessed April 8, 2015. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukio_Mishima.

6. John F. Kennedy, Address to the United Nations General Assembly, New York, NY, September 25, 1961. http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/DOPIN64xJUGRKgdHJ9NfgQ.aspx.