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Vladimir_Nesov comments on You can't believe in Bayes - Less Wrong
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Phil, nothing is a statement of absolute certainty, natural language doesn't express anything precisely. It's wrong to read even "I'm absolutely certain that 2+2=4" as a statement of absolute certainty.
Um, how is that relevant? You're the one who introduced the word 'certainty'.
"I believe it's possible that I'll die in a car accident" is a statement of uncertainty in the event "I'll die in a car accident", so how is it relevant that the statement as a whole is a statement of certainty? I misjudged, trying to find the cause of you mentioning that, which now opens that question explicitly.
Nitpick: No, it's not. Things that are necessary are all also possible. For instance, it is possible that 2+2=4, because it is not impossible that 2+2=4. It's not as strong a statement as someone who believed that death by car accident was inevitable could make, but it's not an expression of uncertainty all by itself unless the speaker is doing something with tone of voice ("Sure, I guess I think it's possible that I could die in a car accident...")
That's not what I was talking about, interpreting "It's possible that X will happen" as "the event X is non-empty" is as wrong as interpreting "I believe X will happen" as "negation of even X is empty". Uncertainty is just lack of certainty, "it's possible" expresses probability lower than that of "it's probable", way below "it's certain". See also the references from the Possibility article on the wiki.
No it's not. It's an assertion about someone's understanding and expectations. You're confusing the subject of the sentence with the subject of the subordinate clause.
No; it's a statement of certainty; but it is expressing certainty that the proposition "it is possible that I will die in a car accident" is true, not that "I will die in a car accident" is true.
Of course it can and does. People just don't care much about precision.
The problem lies in making the precision explicit. That's why various non-natural languages like the conventions of mathematics were generated.