Unknown comments on Infinite Certainty - Less Wrong

32 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 09 January 2008 06:49AM

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Comment author: Unknown 09 January 2008 03:06:57PM 6 points [-]

Ben, you're making an obvious error: you are taking the statement that "P never equals 1" has a probability of less than 1 to mean that in some proportion of cases, we expect the probability to equal 1. This would be the same as supposing that assigning the light-speed limit a probability of less than 1 implies that we think that the speed of light is sometimes exceeded.

But it doesn't mean this, it means that if we were to enunciate enough supposed physical laws, we would sometimes be mistaken. In the same way, a probability of less than 1 for the proposition that we should never assign a probability of 1 simply means that if we take enough supposed claims regarding mathematics, logic, and probability theory, each of which we take to be as certain as the claim rejecting a probability of unity, we would sometimes be mistaken. This doesn't mean that any proposition has a probability of unity.