Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Privileging the Question - Less Wrong
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Comments (311)
Using my theory of planetary motion, I will be able to STOP THE EARTH FROM CRASHING INTO THE SUN.
But you killed the gnomes and the fairies!
Because they did not obey my scientific theories, they went on to CRASH INTO THE SUN!
Even without a coherent theory of planetary motion, we can assign a very low probabiliy to the earth crashing into the sun simply on the basis that it hasn't yet.
...that is exactly the sort of judgment which requires some sort of theory. Every day, trillions of things happen which have never happened before. Never in the history of the universe has this comment been posted to LW!
Well, a couple days ago, we could reasonably have assigned a pretty low probability to that exact post being made today.
New things happen all the time, but without a model, we can't assign much likelihood to any specific new thing happening at any particular time.
Without some kind of model, you can't assign any probabilities period (.)