Re: tautology

From: Russell Standish <R.Standish.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 13:30:01 +1000 (EST)

... Everything above trimmed. We're arguing in circles and getting
nowhere ... Maybe someone else has the patience to unravel our
conversation to see if we're even talking about the same things...

> > Why, when Bayesian reasoning works fine in both pictures, and neither
> > view is incompatible.
> > I disagree that ASSA predicts observers are unlikely to observe large
> > ages for themselves - it merely predicts that it is unlikely to come
> > across another observer with a large age.
>
> Your above comments make no sense to me. Perhaps you should
> attempt to clarify them. I will say that you seem to have missed the
> point of the Bayesian analysis. It is useful because the ASSA predicts
> that one is unlikely to observe a large age for oneself. The fact that
> the ASSA does so is supremely obvious from the fact that at large ages the
> measure is smaller.
>

It is _not_ supremely obvious. The only thing that is obvious is what
it say about _external_ reality - i.e. it predicts one is unlikely to
see a large age for someone else. It says absolutely nothing about
what you observe about yourself.


> Re: Fabric of Reality
> >Incidently, it appears that it is
> >possible to derive Occam's Razor, or something like it from the AUH
> >(as you call it - others call it the principle of plenitude). I am
> >currently writing this up as a paper, and will post this to LANL
> >eprints when ready, but it largely draws upon arguments discussed in
> >this email list.
>
> Sounds like circular reasoning, as stated above, because the AUH
> is itself justified only because of Occam's razor. A more interesting
> question is whether the experimentally observed apparent simplicity of
> physical laws (which leads to sucessful use of Occam's razor) is predicted
> by the AUH; maybe that's what you meant.

Yeah, that's what I meant. I'll try to make this clear in my paper.

 In any case I hope that in your
> paper you will give full credit where it is due to those who made the
> arguments.
>

I try to. At least some of the arguments are due to Wei Dai.

> - - - - - - -
> Jacques Mallah (jqm1584.domain.name.hidden)
> Graduate Student / Many Worlder / Devil's Advocate
> "I know what no one else knows" - 'Runaway Train', Soul Asylum
> My URL: http://pages.nyu.edu/~jqm1584/
>
>



----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Russell Standish Director
High Performance Computing Support Unit,
University of NSW Phone 9385 6967
Sydney 2052 Fax 9385 6965
Australia R.Standish.domain.name.hidden
Room 2075, Red Centre http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks
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Received on Sun Oct 17 1999 - 20:43:52 PDT

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