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potato comments on Bayes Slays Goodman's Grue - Less Wrong
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No, that's a common misunderstanding. No emerald ever has to change color for the grue hypothesis to be true
It is analogous to assuming that there is a definite frequency of green emeralds out of emeralds ever made.
Well, O.K. "The next observed emerald is green if before T and blue otherwise" doesn't entail any change of color. I suppose I should have said, "Analogous to assuming that the emeralds' color (as opposed to anti-color) distribution doesn't vary before and after T."
I'm really not seeing that analogy. It seems more analogous to assuming there's a single, time-independent probability of observing a green emerald. (Holding the line fixed means there's a single, time-independent probability of landing right of the line.) Which is again an assumption the skeptic would deny, preferring instead the existence of a single, time-invariant probability of observing a grue emerald.
Correct, but my solution rests around there being a semantic method for testing greenness. This is what breaks the symmetry which the skeptic was abusing. Because the test stays the same the meaning of green stays the same.
I don't think I really understand what this means. Could you give more detail?
Read my conclusion over, I made some edits, if you still don't understand comment and i'll explain.
I'm not sure I've understood that very well, either. From what I can gather, it seems like you're arguing that 1. the meaning and physical tests for grue change over time, and consequently 2. grue is a more complicated property than green is, so we're justified in privileging the green hypothesis. If that's so, then I no longer see what role the reft/light example plays in your argument. You could've just started and finished with that.
yea, the reft light argument is just what made it obvious to me, i though it might help my readers to.
All right. Regarding the idea that the meaning of "grue" changes over time - how do you take this to be the case? What do you mean by "meaning" here? Intension, extension or what?
The common physical test, of using your eyes. The result from your eyes, and instruments which pick up the same sort of optical information of your eyes are the test for the test for application of green. This is how we learn green. This definition of green is semantic. Theses instrument's results are the primary meaning of green, how your brain decides whether to use the term. They are semantic because their usage must refer to the outside world