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The point he’s making is that if you don’t know what the factors are, then your best bet is to pick from the larger group — you’ll be more likely to be correct.
by setr 5y ago
The point he’s making is that if you don’t know what the factors are, then your best bet is to pick from the larger group — you’ll be more likely to be correct.
If aliens are sufficiently common, then we are much more likely than not to be a “normal” species. It is possible we are not normal, but that’s what a confidence interval is for.
- adwn 5y ago> The point he’s making is that if you don’t know what the factors are, then your best bet is to pick from the larger group — you’ll be more likely to be correct. If your best bet only has a miniscule probability of being right, then your best meta-bet is not to bet. At some point the correct conclusion is to say "We don't know", instead of fooling ourselves with empirically-unsupported navel gazing.
- croon 5y ago"More likely than not" is not a "miniscule probability".
- choeger 5y agoYou make a mistake in your argument. Some assumption being "more likely to be correct" has no meaning without a distribution that can be described as random. Without repeating the assumption multiple times the words "probability" or "likelihood" simply cannot be applied.