Everything Is Predictable
How Bayes' Remarkable Theorem Explains the World
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
SHORTLISTED FOR THE ROYAL SOCIETY TRIVEDI SCIENCE BOOK PRIZE 2024
'Fascinating, witty and perspective-shifting' Oliver Burkeman
'A remarkable book about a remarkable theorem' Will Storr
'Witty, lively and best of all, extremely nerdy. I learned a lot and so will you' Tim Harford
Thomas Bayes was an eighteenth-century Presbyterian minister and amateur mathematician whose obscure life belied the profound impact of his work. Like most research into probability at the time, his theorem was mainly seen as relevant to games of chance, like dice and cards. But its implications soon became clear.
Bayes' theorem helps explain why highly accurate screening tests can lead to false positives, causing unnecessary anxiety for patients. A failure to account for it in court has put innocent people in jail. But its influence goes far beyond practical applications. A cornerstone of rational thought, Bayesian principles are used in modelling and forecasting. 'Superforecasters', a group of expert predictors who outperform CIA analysts, use a Bayesian approach. And many argue that Bayes' theorem is not just a useful tool, but a description of almost everything - that it is the underlying architecture of rationality, and of the human brain.
Fusing biography, razor-sharp science communication and intellectual history, Everything Is Predictable is a captivating tour of Bayes' theorem and its impact on modern life. From medical testing to artificial intelligence, Tom Chivers shows how a single compelling idea can have far-reaching consequences.
Customer Reviews
Numbers without explanations
I read this for a rationalist book club, so I came to this as a card-carrying Bayesian conspirator, but now I'm not so sure the label fits. For newcomers, Chivers gives a brisk, down-to-earth primer, so if you're in that camp it's worth the read. The book does a great job translating the math underlying probability into plain language, including those annoying hypotheticals designed to reveal that, yes, you really were dumb all along—like the Monty Hall problem. Chivers' neat little hand-drawn diagrams help a lot, and his intro to the history of probability was genuinely illuminating.
A lot of my doubts about the applicability of Bayes surfaced there, particularly around stretching Bayes’ beyond well-defined small worlds like the poker table. Chivers probably spends too long rehashing the Frequentism vs. Bayesianism debate as if it's still raging in academia. He rightly calls out psychology's statistical shortcomings, which might initially seem like a soft target... until you discover just how widespread the ignorance of statistical methods actually is in the field.
For rationalist types though, the book will feel familiar if derivative. It recycles examples from the usual suspects, and steers clear of the epistemological objections to Bayesianism with a drive-by rebuttal of Popperian ideas as being simply "bizarre." In fact, the book skates right over epistemology, which I figured would get an entire chapter of its own. Bayesianism is sold as the universal calculus that governs most of our lives slash reality, but the leap from the qualia of confidence to hard numbers is never really earned. The book never convincingly argues why tagging a belief with a number does any meaningful work when most discussions end up pivoting on "why," not "how much."