Russell Standish wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 15, 2008 at 01:40:09AM -0700, Greg Egan wrote:
...
>>> But we do this all the time. Why is it we reject crackpot claims that
>>> the world will end on such and such a date for instance?
>> We reject those claims because they flow from theories that we reason
>> should have led to observable consequences in the past (e.g. theories
>> of interventionist deities). So what we have are prior probabilities
>> that strongly disfavour those crackpot theories -- and given equal
>> crackpot ratings, their predictions about the future are irrelevant.
>> If crackpot A tells me that the world will end in 2012, and crackpot B
>> tells me that the world will end in 20,012, then all else being equal
>> I will (in 2008) give them both *equal* low credence.
>>
>
> I was actually thinking more of theories like "the law of gravity will
> be suspended on the 25th of July, 2012, but otherwise everything else
> is the same". Obviously it makes the same retrodictions as our usual
> scientific theories (doing so by definition). The reason it is
> rejected is because of the arbitrary nature of the date makes it a
> more complex theory (in the Occam's razor sense).
And it is not POVI.
Brent Meeker
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Received on Wed Jun 18 2008 - 00:24:35 PDT