FiftyTwo comments on New Year's Prediction Thread (2012) - Less Wrong

20 Post author: gwern 01 January 2012 09:35AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (339)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: FiftyTwo 04 January 2012 03:14:12AM 0 points [-]

"Did they continue torturing children?" "No" implies they had in the past.

"Did they continue torturing children?" "Yes" is only true if they did so in the past and are continuing to do so.

What I meant was without assuming a value for 'they have tortured children in the past' (which I assume to be at least slightly controversial) you cannot give a probability to it.

Though I suppose if they have not tortured children in the past the correct probability of continuation would be 0% as it is impossible. Same as the prediction "P&¬P." (Though realistically you'd want to incorporate your assessment of the available evidence, see my comment on kalla724's post).