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That’s an interesting point about the dependence of likelihood on the outcome. However, a counter-argument is that if you win a lottery 250 times, it would be

by clnq 3y ago

That’s an interesting point about the dependence of likelihood on the outcome. However, a counter-argument is that if you win a lottery 250 times, it would be reasonable to conclude that the lottery is biased in your favor. If you lost a bet on a coin toss picking tails 250 times in a row, you’d assume the coin is biased. In that case, every toss with the same outcome informs you of the bias. So does an outcome really say nothing of the chance for that outcome? In a similar way, our survival might say that a chance for extinction was sufficiently low each year/month/day/period. The longer we survive, the more confidently we can say that the possibility of survival was high and extinction — low.

vidarh 3y ago
If you knew the number of attempts, the outcome would say something of the probability. So to your last paragraph, yes, we can say something about the odds of survival any given period, because we see many periods. But we see only one instance of our survival, and we inherently need to be here to see it, so our survival in general for the whole period tells us nothing of how likely (few events reducing our chances) or unlikely (many such events) our survival was in the past, because no matter how unlikely we wouldn't be here to discuss the probability if we didn't survive, and unlikely things do happen.
- clnq 3y ago
  Yes, if you look at survival as one instance, it does become difficult to say anything about the likelihood based on the outcome. But I think it's too easy to dismiss this as survivorship bias. There are also other selection biases, which might explain the higher chances of survival of a species if an alive species is selected. There's also the multiverse theory, or more locally, something we could call "multi-environment". It does make sense that if we were here at all, we would most likely be in an environment where we were most likely to survive. Imagine 20 planets, or 20 timelines, where some make our survival nearly impossible, some - very difficult, and some - relatively easy and likely. We'd probably find ourselves alive on a planet or in a timeline where it was relatively easy and likely. I just read a bit more on this and it looks like the debate for whether human survival implies the low risk of extinction in the past is ongoing with good arguments on each sides. So I think I'll leave it up to more academic people than me to debate this, but thanks for your thoughts.
  - vidarh 3y ago
    Whether or not there are other instances of long term survival, without having access to them, they can't form a basis for our probability calculations, so the point remains that our single survival is insufficient to use as a basis for the probability of events in our past.
    - hollerith 3y ago
      I agree: if we could not have survived an event E, our observing not E is not evidence for or against anything.

by clnq 3y ago

vidarh 3y ago

If you knew the number of attempts, the outcome would say something of the probability. So to your last paragraph, yes, we can say something about the odds of survival any given period, because we see many periods. But we see only one instance of our survival, and we inherently need to be here to see it, so our survival in general for the whole period tells us nothing of how likely (few events reducing our chances) or unlikely (many such events) our survival was in the past, because no matter how unlikely we wouldn't be here to discuss the probability if we didn't survive, and unlikely things do happen.

clnq 3y ago
Yes, if you look at survival as one instance, it does become difficult to say anything about the likelihood based on the outcome. But I think it's too easy to dismiss this as survivorship bias. There are also other selection biases, which might explain the higher chances of survival of a species if an alive species is selected. There's also the multiverse theory, or more locally, something we could call "multi-environment". It does make sense that if we were here at all, we would most likely be in an environment where we were most likely to survive. Imagine 20 planets, or 20 timelines, where some make our survival nearly impossible, some - very difficult, and some - relatively easy and likely. We'd probably find ourselves alive on a planet or in a timeline where it was relatively easy and likely. I just read a bit more on this and it looks like the debate for whether human survival implies the low risk of extinction in the past is ongoing with good arguments on each sides. So I think I'll leave it up to more academic people than me to debate this, but thanks for your thoughts.
- vidarh 3y ago
  Whether or not there are other instances of long term survival, without having access to them, they can't form a basis for our probability calculations, so the point remains that our single survival is insufficient to use as a basis for the probability of events in our past.
  - hollerith 3y ago
    I agree: if we could not have survived an event E, our observing not E is not evidence for or against anything.