Here's the new thread for posting quotes, with the usual rules:
- Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be voted up/down separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
- Do not quote yourself
- Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB
- No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.
How do you know? People mention "divine inspiration" quite frequently. The point is that the statement is untestable and thus irrelevant, not that it is most likely false.
I don't think the version with the math proof is meaningless in a probabilistic sense; my point is that the meaning comes from an additional factor unrelated to the dream, and I think Hobbes would agree that in the absence of any additional aspect of God speaking to the dreamer such as prophecies (objectively verifiable, like the proof!) there's no reason to believe him. But these additional aspects are the strange and unusual things which might oblige Hobbes to believe him, not the speech in a dream.