From: Brian D Williams (talon57@well.com)
Date: Thu Oct 28 1999 - 11:25:12 MDT
From: James Wetterau <jwjr@ignition.name.net>
>Assuming that the probability is in fact uncertainty, do we not
>still have a circularity in the definition? Let's take coin
>flipping. Let's pretend that we have good historical data showing
>close to 50% heads / 50% tails, with no apparent correlation to
>any other factor. So we hypothesize that the state sets that lead
>to heads or tails are both about equal in size. We've received
>the 50/50 results *up until now* due to the flip occurring in a
>world state that leads to heads half the time and tails half the
>time.
>Now consider future flipping. Just because the state sets are
>roughly equal in size, why do we believe that future flips will be
>roughly equally divided between those that produce heads and
>tails? Because the probability of the flipper being in any
>particular state from among the state space that leads to a
>particular result is about 50%. So we're back to appealing to
>probability. We've moved the probability, not explained it.
I'll make it more interesting.
I was watching a show about math, and there was a mathematician who
studied probability, and who was also an amateur magician. Bottom
line, he could stand there flipping a coin and produce any result
he wanted, he demonstrated flipping 10 consecutive heads for the
camera.
His point was about making sure you have a random process, I also
got out of it not to bet on coin flips with this guy...
Arthur "the brain" Rothstein would have been proud....
Brian
Member, Extropy Institute, www.extropy.org
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