shminux comments on Where Recursive Justification Hits Bottom - Less Wrong

41 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 08 July 2008 10:16AM

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Comment author: Arandur 08 August 2011 08:24:24PM 2 points [-]

Huh. If you believe that the timespan of this Earth is finite, which you probably should if you are a Christian, then does that mean that, according to that prior, your confidence in the sun rising tomorrow should, in fact, be decreasing with each passing day? o.o And does this mean, that every time the sun rises ought to decrease your confidence in that prior, which should then lend itself less weight in your determination of the sun's likelihood of rising.....

Seems like a convergent series to me, but I'd like to see someone else better-versed in the math than me work it out.

Comment author: shminux 08 August 2011 08:47:07PM *  2 points [-]

Not necessarily, a memoryless process (e.g. same odds of the second coming happening today as yesterday) follows the Exponential distribution. It has a finite expected value, even though it has no memory. Radioactive decay is a standard example.

Comment author: Arandur 08 August 2011 09:16:04PM 0 points [-]

Oh, I see. :3 Thanks.