OT: An Existential Dilemma

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Zapmeister:
I think you should acknowledge Douglas Adams as the author of this. It's not verbatim, but it's close enough IMHO.

Douglas Adams is the author of the original quote, and I was not, in fact, quoting him verbatim. The original quote was "In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move."

[Zapmeister]

Originally posted by Stormbinder:
Perhaps, to some degree. But there have to be some connection between the "pure probability" that you are searching for Zapmeister, and personal confidence of the professianals who posses all related knowledge and expertise in this specific matter, don't you think? Granted, often it maybe hard to express in exact numbers though.

Certainly. In fact, questions of historical fact could be regarded as equivalent to existential questions. "Does the event 'The Great Flood' exist as an element in the history of our world?"

EDIT: Hmmm. I just realized that this does not in any way address the paragraph I quoted.

Besides, let's assume for the sake of argument that you are right about historical facts. But than the same logic could be aplied to almost every other none-historical field as well. For example take jurisprudence. One could argue that the jury, (or professional judjes in some cases/countries) when they are declaring "guilty" or "not guilty" verdicts, based upon "beyond reasonable doubts" clause as requred by law, are also operating outside the field of probabilities.

Indeed they are. They rely on beliefs formed during the examination of evidence. The expression "beyond reasonable doubt" underlines that, by placing a minimum level on the confidence in belief that is required. Probability is not involved.

My recollection of first year probability (irrelevent trivia: the lecturer was John Donaldson, father of Mary Donaldson, recently the Princess of Denmark) is that this field of mathematics was originally designed to help analyse and win gambling games.

It weights the tree of possibilities that extend from the present moment into the future. It does not say anything about isolated premises whose truth or falsehood is already set in stone.

[ May 25, 2004, 08:52: Message edited by: Zapmeister ]

[Zapmeister]

Originally posted by Norfleet:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Zapmeister:
I think you should acknowledge Douglas Adams as the author of this. It's not verbatim, but it's close enough IMHO.

Douglas Adams is the author of the original quote, and I was not, in fact, quoting him verbatim.

---

That's what I said.

[Tris]

It is meaningless, for example, to conclude that there is a 60% chance that there is a god. Either there is a god or there isn't - there's no 60% about it.

If you are going to be like that about it then:

Given a set of starting conditions any given system will develop in accordance with the laws of physics.

If you know the starting conditions you can predict the events arising therefrom, and hence calculate a new set of "starting conditions" for the system at time X, where X is arbitraraly large.

(I can't spell that arbi word, it appears)

Given that, due to CPT symmetry (ok, actually just the T part will do) X can be negative as well as positive, and indeed can be arbitar...damn can be as negative as you want it to be, if you know the starting conditions then talking about probability at all is meaningless. Everything either won't/hasn't happen(ed) or will/has happen(ed).

Of course, if you mean "given the limits of human knowledge and understanding there is a 60% chance that this will happen", that makes more sense, but then "given the limits of human knowledge and understanding there is a 60% chance god exists" is also sensible.

The upshot of this, for those who weren't following carefully, is you should place your palm on the screen, take out your credit cards, and send me your money.

[Zapmeister]

Originally posted by Tris:
If you know the starting conditions you can predict the events arising therefrom, and hence calculate a new set of "starting conditions" for the system at time X, where X is arbitraraly large.
...
Of course, if you mean "given the limits of human knowledge and understanding there is a 60% chance that this will happen", that makes more sense, but then "given the limits of human knowledge and understanding there is a 60% chance god exists" is also sensible.

You could be right - I certainly don't want to portray myself as an expert in this matter. However:

The first part of your post assumes that we have a determined, or "clockwork", universe in which all events, past and future, are set in stone. There is no agreement that this is in fact the case.

Even if it is, there are certain events (like the result of a dieroll) which are the net result of many small influences. It is these "statistical" results that are described by the theory of probability. When viewed in this light, it doesn't matter whether the result is determined or not.

Existential questions, as far as I can see, are not statistical in nature, and so cannot be addressed with the theory of probability.

[Tris]

I'm no expert either, I just enjoy sounding like one :-)

Ok, the thing about the die roll and probability is that we don't know what effect the small influences will have. If we knew exactly how the die was rolled, a decent computer could calculate what it would land on every time. Probability says "When you roll an unbiased D6, you have a 16% chance of getting each result" Actually, if you roll it exactly the same way, you will get exactly the same result, it's just you can't determine the starting conditions perfectly, so it seems probabalistic, rather than determanistic.

As far as existential questions go, I think perhaps you can use probability. Here goes:

"I am the only person other than you on this forum"

> I am impersonating everyone else.
> All other posters have distinct personalities
> To create such a number of posters with distinct personalities accurately, I would have to be very clever. In fact I would need to be X clever.
> The average IQ is 100. IQ is a bell curve with set varience.
> Using this curve, and the worlds total population we can see that there are likely to be 5 people in the world clever enough
> The chance of one of these people spending all their time posting on a dominions 2 forum is 0.001%, given that there are Z other forums, and at least 2 of those people are enlightened Zen Buddists who live solitary lives of contemplation.
>The chance of me being the only other person on this forum other than you is 0.001%, from your point of view.

Of course, from mine it is different, as I have different information

Tris (who has exactly 0 idea why he bothered writing that...)

[Zapmeister]

Originally posted by Tris:
As far as existential questions go, I think perhaps you can use probability. Here goes:

Heck, there's no way I'm arguing with this.
You win