Re: practical reasoning and strong SSA

From: <hal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Thu, 3 Jun 1999 13:18:19 -0700

Wei Dai, <weidai.domain.name.hidden>, writes:
> > I'm not sure I am on the right track here...
>
> You are. :) Now the point I was trying to make was that without the strong
> SSA, P(I observe "N[Pi]=3.14159" | PI == 3.14159) would be ill-defined, so
> we could not conclude that P(PI == 3.14159 | I observe "N[Pi]=3.14159")
> is high. Do you agree?

I think when most people do this, they implicitly assume that they are
themselves, so to speak; that they are doing what they are doing and seeing
what they are seeing.

They would reason something like:

P (I observe "N[Pi]=3.14159" | PI == 3.14159 AND I am here/now, doing this)
is very high.
P (I observe "N[Pi]=3.14159" | PI != 3.14159 AND I am here/now, doing this)
is very low.

>From this they conclude:

P (PI == 3.14159 | I observe "N[Pi]=3.14159" AND I am her/now, doing this)
is very high.

Does this seem like legitimate reasoning? I'm not sure if the math works
out formally but it so this would seem to be an OK way to work it.

Hal
Received on Thu Jun 03 1999 - 13:38:37 PDT