potato comments on MSF Theory: Another Explanation of Subjectively Objective Probability - Less Wrong

14 Post author: potato 30 July 2011 07:46PM

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Tags: probability subjectively-objective bayesian statistics epistimology philosophy

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Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 30 July 2011 01:35:52AM *  2 points [-]

To be undecided about a proposition is to not know which possible world you are in; am I in the possible world where that proposition is true, or in the one where it is false?

Better framing: if proposition is about worlds, then ask whether you are in the worlds about which the proposition is true. It's true about the worlds it's true about "in all worlds", no relativism. But also, there are propositions that are just false, the worlds they are true about don't exist, so you are not in possible worlds about which they are true, but these worlds are not out there either, and still they hold some of the probability mass in a model that doesn't know that they don't make sense.

Comment author: potato 30 July 2011 08:34:25PM *  1 point [-]

I added this sentence thinking about your comment, thanks for the help:

To be clear, we don't need to believe that possible worlds actually exist to accept this view of belief; we just need to believe that any agent capable of being undecided about a proposition is also capable of imagining alternative ways the world could consistently turn out to be, i.e., capable of imagining possible worlds.

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