The Bayesian Conspiracy: “What matters is that Bayes is cool, and if you don’t know Bayes, you aren’t cool.”

Yudkowsky offers to decode the secret:

Maybe you see the theorem, and you understand the theorem, and you can use the theorem, but you can’t understand why your friends and/or research colleagues seem to think it’s the secret of the universe.  Maybe your friends are all wearing Bayes’ Theorem T-shirts, and you’re feeling left out.  Maybe you’re a girl looking for a boyfriend, but the boy you’re interested in refuses to date anyone who “isn’t Bayesian”.  What matters is that Bayes is cool, and if you don’t know Bayes, you aren’t cool.

Why does a mathematical concept generate this strange enthusiasm in its students?  What is the so-called Bayesian Revolution now sweeping through the sciences, which claims to subsume even the experimental method itself as a special case?  What is the secret that the adherents of Bayes know?  What is the light that they have seen?

Soon you will know.  Soon you will be one of us.

This officially eclipses my own efforts at an introduction. (Gains due to trade, indeed.)