syllogism comments on The dangers of zero and one - Less Wrong

27 Post author: PhilGoetz 21 November 2013 12:21PM

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

Comments (68)

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

Comment author: jockocampbell 15 November 2013 10:48:42PM *  0 points [-]

Interesting discussion but I suspect an important distinction may be required between logic and probability theory. Logic is a special case of probability theory where values are restricted to only 0 and 1, that is to 0% and 100% probability. Within logic you may arrive at certain conclusions but generally within probability theory conclusions are not certain but rather assigned a degree of plausibility.

If logic provides, in some contexts, a valid method of reasoning then conclusions arrived at will be either 0% or 100% true. Denying that 100% confidence is ever rational seems to be equivalent to denying that logic ever applies to anything.

It is certainly true that many phenomena are better described by probability than by logic but can we deny logic any validity. I understand mathematical proofs as being within the realm of logic where things may often be determined as being either true or false. For instance Euclid is credited with first proving that there is no largest prime. I believe most mathematicians accept this as a true statement and that most would agree that 53 is easily proven to be prime.

Comment author: syllogism 17 November 2013 02:25:25PM *  6 points [-]

Denying that 100% confidence is ever rational seems to be equivalent to denying that logic ever applies to anything.

It's just saying that logic is a model that can't describe anything in the real world fully literally. That doesn't mean it's not useful. Abstracting away irrelevant details is bread and butter reductionism.

Comment author: jockocampbell 17 November 2013 07:51:34PM 0 points [-]

Yes I agree, there is only a rough isomorphism between the mathematics of binary logic and the real world; binary logic seems to describe a limit that reality approaches but never reaches.

We should consider that the mathematics of binary logic are the limiting case of probability theory; it is probability theory where the probabilities may only take the values of 0 or 1. Probability theory can do everything that logic can but it can also handle those real world cases where the probability of knowing something is something other than 0 or 1, as is the usual case with scientific knowledge.

Comment author: syllogism 18 November 2013 05:11:34PM 0 points [-]

Yeah, I came across that idea in the Jaynes book, and was very impressed.