Re: tautology

From: <GSLevy.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1999 23:33:00 EDT

In a message dated 99-09-13 16:05:02 EDT, Jacques Mallah writes:

> No, if you did that you would miss the boat. The boat that allows
>predictions of stuff like the observed laws of physics.

>> One way out for Jacques is to assume that humans are the only sentient
>> creatures in the whole universe... actually the whole plenitude.

> Why did you even write such bullshit and try to tar me with it?

Jacques, what you call bullshit is just the logical extension of ASSA, and I
am tarring your crackpot ideas, not you. If ASSA predicts that the
probability of being Chinese is high because there are more Chinese, then it
is also true that the probability of being non-chinese is higher because
there are more non-Chinese. ASSA also predicts that the probability of being
a sentient Centaurian is higher because there are more Centaurian, or maybe
the reverse is true: there are more non-Centaurian, therefore we should be
non-Centaurian. The predictive ability of ASSA is zero, zilch, nada.

If you deal with well defined sets then there is no problem. For example, If
you try to compute the probability that a sentient being is chinese given the
fact that this being is human you may come up with a number like 1/3.
However, (for most of us in this group) this is not a Self Sampling process.

However, if you apply the Self Sampling condition, for example, of being
caucasian, then the probability of being chinese is zero, and the probability
of being caucasian is one.

The Self Sampling process is one in which a frame of reference is being
defined. This frame of reference is simply the condition of being the self.
It also leads to the RSSA

For this reason, I assert that the Absolute Self Sampling (ASS) Assumption is
a contradiction in terms. It cannot be both Absolute and Self Sampling.

That leaves us with the Relative Self Sampling Assumption.

Jacques, you yourself admit to an element of relativity:
 
>A piece of evidence is surprising if it would cause a big shift in
> our Bayesian probability distribution. This is relative, of course.


George Levy
Received on Wed Sep 15 1999 - 20:39:30 PDT