V_V comments on Probability and radical uncertainty - Less Wrong

11 Post author: David_Chapman 23 November 2013 10:34PM

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Comment author: V_V 25 November 2013 10:25:09PM 1 point [-]

Laplace's Rule of Succession can only be used once you have identified a set of possible outcomes and made certain assumptions on the underlying probability distribution. That's not the case at hand.

Applying Bayesian reasoning to such cases requires an universal prior. It could be that humans do a form of approximate Bayesian reasoning with something like an universal prior when reasoning informally, but we know no satisfactory way of formalizing that reasoning in mathematical terms.