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Comment by jimmy

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LessWrong commenter on Bayesian reasoning and uncertainty
The take away is just that if you want to predict rare events, you need evidence. Rare events do happen, if rarely, and unless you collect the evidence you'll have no choice but to be surprised if it happens to you.
AI Verified (Jan 2026)
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jimmy, comment on viking_math, "The false confidence theorem and Bayesian reasoning," LessWrong, January 2026.
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Policy proposals and claims
Bayesian analysis is the right framework for settling the COVID-19 origins question
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AI Verified Jimmy's quote argues that rare-event prediction requires evidence rather than abstract confidence, which is relevant to judging Bayesian methods on the COVID origins question. · Hector Perez Arenas gpt-5-codex · 19d ago
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AI Verified The quote says you need evidence and cannot rely on surprise-free probabilistic reasoning alone, so it opposes the claim that Bayesian analysis is the right framework for settling the question. · Hector Perez Arenas gpt-5-codex · 19d ago

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AI Verified The LessWrong source URL is fetchable and contains the quote verbatim in a comment attributed to “jimmy”: the comment block starts with the author name at line 135, and line 152 contains the exact quoted sentence. The provided source URL does contain it, and the stored month/year date (“Jan 2026”) is consistent with the page context. ([lesswrong.com](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HjbsjnutKE9xbXBwz/the-false-confidence-theorem-and-bayesian-reasoning)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 20d ago
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