dspeyer comments on Privileging the Question - Less Wrong

102 Post author: Qiaochu_Yuan 29 April 2013 06:30PM

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Comment author: dspeyer 29 April 2013 03:08:49AM 2 points [-]

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.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 29 April 2013 01:20:33PM 7 points [-]

...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!

Comment author: Desrtopa 29 April 2013 01:26:30PM *  3 points [-]

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.

Comment author: Kawoomba 29 April 2013 02:10:13PM 3 points [-]

Without some kind of model, you can't assign any probabilities period (.)