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Saying p=0.5 necessarily implies the 1/2 thing. Neither implies any stance on whether it's subjective/objective so far. The 'objective' conclusion there require

Saying p=0.5 necessarily implies the 1/2 thing. Neither implies any stance on whether it's subjective/objective so far. The 'objective' conclusion there requires the further fact of mind-independence, which is based on 'you can't change the odds that a fair coin comes up heads just by thinking about it' type arguments. So it's not circular/question-begging, IMO.

mcarvin 14y ago
When a fair coin is tossed it will either come up heads or it wont. Put another way, the probability of getting heads is 1 or 0, unless you believe that something magical happens to the coin while it is in mid-air that somehow makes it impossible to predict what will happen when it lands (given a complete set of data). So the outcome of the coin-toss is knowable, it just happens to be complex enough that it is not known (to us). To bridge the gap between the knowable and the not known we introduce a margin of error in our calculations, called Probability. Probability then, only exists as man-made mathematical spackle - and is by definition subjective. To prove me wrong find an event that has an outcome that cannot be known in advance. That's why this question is on a philosophy exam.
- esrauch 14y ago
  Quantum mechanics?
- JumpCrisscross 14y ago
  Heisenberg uncertainty principle and the entire field of quantum mechanics?
  - mcarvin 14y ago
    Well played and conceded. So do we need two sets of rules? One for 'our world' and one for the subatomic world?
    - Natsu 14y ago
      Good question. My best guess is that the law of large numbers averages out the weirdness so that you never spontaneously tunnel through the floor or whatever, but that's only a guess. And there's a lot of weirdness to deal with.
    - JumpCrisscross 14y ago
      Just because relativity showed Newtonian physics to be wrong about how the universe worked doesn't mean we can't use the latter as a decent approximation under appropriate constraints. Similarly, we don't really need to calculate the probability of the Sun teleporting over Wall Street when valuing Facebook's IPO.

mcarvin 14y ago

When a fair coin is tossed it will either come up heads or it wont. Put another way, the probability of getting heads is 1 or 0, unless you believe that something magical happens to the coin while it is in mid-air that somehow makes it impossible to predict what will happen when it lands (given a complete set of data). So the outcome of the coin-toss is knowable, it just happens to be complex enough that it is not known (to us). To bridge the gap between the knowable and the not known we introduce a margin of error in our calculations, called Probability. Probability then, only exists as man-made mathematical spackle - and is by definition subjective. To prove me wrong find an event that has an outcome that cannot be known in advance. That's why this question is on a philosophy exam.

esrauch 14y ago
Quantum mechanics?
JumpCrisscross 14y ago
Heisenberg uncertainty principle and the entire field of quantum mechanics?
- mcarvin 14y ago
  Well played and conceded. So do we need two sets of rules? One for 'our world' and one for the subatomic world?
  - Natsu 14y ago
    Good question. My best guess is that the law of large numbers averages out the weirdness so that you never spontaneously tunnel through the floor or whatever, but that's only a guess. And there's a lot of weirdness to deal with.
  - JumpCrisscross 14y ago
    Just because relativity showed Newtonian physics to be wrong about how the universe worked doesn't mean we can't use the latter as a decent approximation under appropriate constraints. Similarly, we don't really need to calculate the probability of the Sun teleporting over Wall Street when valuing Facebook's IPO.