Matt_Heath comments on Explainers Shoot High. Aim Low! - Less Wrong

40 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 24 October 2007 01:13AM

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Comment author: Matt_Heath 26 October 2007 09:13:06PM 0 points [-]

"One word for probability one is "certainty" and a word for probability zero is "impossible"." I think you should be cautious about using these words like this, at least if you might be talking about uncountable probability spaces. Using your definitions it is certain that (say) a normally distributed variable takes a value in the real numbers but impossible for it to take any such value.

I hope this isn't unfairly pedantic to point out. I can see that one could argue that for decision making in the real world you only assign probabilities to finitely many outcomes.