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"But even if you could, that is not a reasonable argument"

It may not be a reasonable argument to claim that it is impossible, but it is a totally fine argument to make that it is insanely unlikely and needs a mountain of evidence before we take the conclusions seriously.



That's an argument about priors. In the face of actual evidence of its reality, priors establish significance not believability.


No... priors are precisely about believability.

Any evidence can be explained either by the effect or by experimental error. Your prior is how relatively likely these two possibilities are.

If something is "significant" then it is surprising and requires stronger evidence.




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