wedrifid comments on Undiscriminating Skepticism - Less Wrong

97 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 14 March 2010 11:23PM

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Comment author: wedrifid 22 January 2012 03:49:41PM 0 points [-]

It's unclear what it would mean to qualify the conclusion of a proof with "probably" as in your example, though. What does "Probably, H is a G" mean? Is it a (mathematical) statement about probabilities? Or is "probably" just a rhetorical qualifier to trick someone into thinking we're allowed to conclude "H is a G"?

I agree that there is some ambiguity there regarding what 'probably' is supposed to mean when used that way and fortunately in this case it doesn't even matter how we resolve that ambiguity. The probability that H is a G given known information could be less than 0.5 given information that the argument neglects to include. Without including (or implying) another premise it doesn't matter much what definition of 'probably' we plug in!