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ChristianKl comments on Open thread, Sep. 26 - Oct. 02, 2016 - Less Wrong Discussion

2 Post author: MrMind 26 September 2016 07:41AM

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Comment author: Arielgenesis 01 October 2016 03:01:57AM *  0 points [-]

I just thought of this 'cute' question and not sure how to answer it.

The sample space of an empirical statement is True or False. Then, given an empirical statement, one would then assign a certain prior probability 0<p<1 to TRUE and one minus that to FALSE. One would not assign a p=1 or p=0 because it wouldn't allow believe updating.

For example: Santa Claus is real.

I suppose most people in LW will assign a very small p to that statement, but not zero. Now my question is, what is the prior probability value for the following statement:

Prior probability cannot be set to 1.

Comment author: ChristianKl 01 October 2016 06:15:54PM 2 points [-]

Prior probability cannot be set to 1. is itself not an empiric statement. It's a question about modelling.