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This gets philosophical, but roughly I think of it as: Something that is truly false has a 0% chance of being true, by definition. Something that has we have

This gets philosophical, but roughly I think of it as: Something that is truly false has a 0% chance of being true, by definition. Something that has we have proven false has an effectively 0% probability of being true -- but more specifically, it is whatever probability you assign to Descartes' evil demon being true (ie the probability of _everything_ else you know, even rules of logic and math, being false). Every non-solipsist assumes that this probability is negligibly different from 0, therefore in practice we consider "proven false" to be the same as "truly false". If something is "undecidable", I take that to mean that we don't yet have (and may never be able to acquire) any supporting evidence to meaningfully separate it from the "proven false" case. This is just the standard behavior of assuming the null hypothesis... or colloquially: not believing something for no reason. (there's probably some much more standard set of terminology for these ideas)

m_mueller 8y ago
Exactly. Not believing something for no reason. I see postulating that there is no hierarchically higher intelligence just as much as a believe system as postulating that there is. So far I couldn't find evidence pro or contrary either of these. Penrose, as I've written elsewhere, is IMO the closest to producing such evidence and I'll gladly revise my stance if/when that happens.
- baumandm 8y ago
  In my experience, most people don't actually claim there is no higher intelligence or god. They just don't accept the claim that there is (because there is no evidence). The nuance of this tends to get lost through imperfect language. That's the point of the teapot. Technically there is equal probability of it existing or not, but that is meaningless. Anything without evidence is equally likely to exist or not, but for some reason people only tend to take this seriously in regards to religion.
  - m_mueller 8y ago
    Imagine for a moment that our telescopes show mostly black except a ring of light from one direction. The light scattering has furthermore been used to indicate that the universe is mostly water, with some complex carbon based molecules in diluted form. Newer religions are thus calling our universe the holy teapot, waiting for the great beings above to open it up. Of course that's nonsense say the atheists who have a perfect theory for how the ring of light and water universe has come to existence, it only relies on the assumption that from nothing there was suddenly something. This is essentially the teapot equivalent of the big bang theory. Atheists also dispell the idea of the teapot with a hypothetical teaspoon orbiting Saturn - as we can't see it it's ridiculous to just postulate it's there, with handle and cover and stove - we have no way of proving its existence from what we observe only.

m_mueller 8y ago

Exactly. Not believing something for no reason. I see postulating that there is no hierarchically higher intelligence just as much as a believe system as postulating that there is. So far I couldn't find evidence pro or contrary either of these. Penrose, as I've written elsewhere, is IMO the closest to producing such evidence and I'll gladly revise my stance if/when that happens.

baumandm 8y ago
In my experience, most people don't actually claim there is no higher intelligence or god. They just don't accept the claim that there is (because there is no evidence). The nuance of this tends to get lost through imperfect language. That's the point of the teapot. Technically there is equal probability of it existing or not, but that is meaningless. Anything without evidence is equally likely to exist or not, but for some reason people only tend to take this seriously in regards to religion.
- m_mueller 8y ago
  Imagine for a moment that our telescopes show mostly black except a ring of light from one direction. The light scattering has furthermore been used to indicate that the universe is mostly water, with some complex carbon based molecules in diluted form. Newer religions are thus calling our universe the holy teapot, waiting for the great beings above to open it up. Of course that's nonsense say the atheists who have a perfect theory for how the ring of light and water universe has come to existence, it only relies on the assumption that from nothing there was suddenly something. This is essentially the teapot equivalent of the big bang theory. Atheists also dispell the idea of the teapot with a hypothetical teaspoon orbiting Saturn - as we can't see it it's ridiculous to just postulate it's there, with handle and cover and stove - we have no way of proving its existence from what we observe only.