All of CyrilDan's Comments + Replies

CyrilDan120

Right, my mistake about the mistaken communism statistic; you're correct that I confused the two in my memory.

And that was a very thorough explanation; thank you. It seems to match what I could glean from my searches, but it was nice having it in one place and in more straight-forward terminology. So thank you.

Unfortunately no, but from your description it seems quite like the theory of the mind of General Semantics.

I think it's similar, but Lakoff focuses more on how things are abstracted away. For example, because in childhood affection is usually associated with warmth (e.g. through hugs), the different areas of your brain that code for those things become linked ("neurons that wire together, fire together"). This then becomes the basis of a cognitive metaphor, Affection Is Warmth, such that we can also say "She has a warm smile" or &qu... (read more)

0MrMind
You'll have to ask to a frequentist :) Bayesian use both definition (even though they call long-run frequency... well, long-run frequency), but frequentist refuse to acknowledge bayesian probability definition and methods. I skipped the whole derivation too, it was not interesting. What is important is at the end of the chapter, that is that developing Cox requirements brings to the product and the negation rules, and that's all you need.

I believe you've defined an equivalent if unusual form (or rather, your definition can be extended to an equivalent form).

Yeah, that's what MrMind said too. Thanks!

The only laws of probability measure I know are that the measure of the whole set is 1, and the measure of a union of disjoint subsets is the sum of their measures. I'm finding it hard to imagine how I could hold beliefs that wouldn't conform to them. I mean, I guess it's conceivable that I could believe that A has probability 0.1, and B has probability 0.1, and A OR B has probability 0.3,

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First of all, let me thank you so much, MrMind, for your post. It was really helpful, and I greatly appreciate how much work you put into it!

I'll try to give you the formalist perspective, which is a sort of 'minimal' take on the whole matter.

Much obliged.

Everything starts with a set of symbols, usually finite, that can be combined to form strings called formulas.

Question. I'm making my way through George Lakoff's works on metaphor and embodied thought; are familiar with the theory at all? (I know lukeprog did a blog post about them, but it's not n... (read more)

1MrMind
Unfortunately no, but from your description it seems quite like the theory of the mind of General Semantics. Not exactly, because in the end symbols are just unit of perceptions, all distinct from one another. But while Lakoff's theory probably aims at psychology, logic is a denotational and computational tool, so it doesn't really matter if they aren't perfect inverse. Yes. Since a group of maps can be seen just as a set of things in itself, it can be treated as a valid territory. In logic there are also map/territory loops, where the formulas itself becomes the territory mapped by the same formulas (akin to talking in English about the English language). This trick is used for example in Goedel's and Tarski's theorems. Yes. Basically the Bayesian definition is more inclusive: e.g. there is no definition of a probability of a single coin toss in the frequency interpretation, but there is in the Bayesian. Also in Bayes take on probability the frequentist definition emerges just as a natural by-product. Plus, the Bayesian framework produced a lot of detangling in frequentist statistics and introduced more powerful methods. The first two chapters of Jaynes' book, a pre-print version of which is available online for free, do a great job in explaining and using Cox to derive Bayesian probability. I urge you to read them to fully grasp this point of view. And easily falsifiable. Yes, but remember that this measure interpretation of probability requires the set of possible world to be measurable, which is a very special condition to impose on a set. It is certainly very intuitive, but technically burdensome. If you plan to work with probability, it's better to start from a cleaner model. Yes. Fuzzy logic has an infinity of truth values for its propositions, while in PTEL every proposition is 'in reality' just true or false, you just don't know which is which, and so you track your certainty with a real number. Yes, in PTEL you already have real numbers, so it's no

Okay, that clears up it up a lot.

In The Princess Bride, Vizzini loses his contest of wits with Wesley because he doesn't question his assumptions, which leads to him dying (and falling over comically). It's not super high-level, but it could be a useful talking point, given that it's a popular movie and relatively kid-friendly.

As a variation on the explicit "I'm ending my talking turn", maybe use Aesop-style summaries as the marker, using some kind of agreed-upon lead-in, like "and that's why..." That could be useful for a number of reasons:

~It would definitively mark that the speaker was done talking

~It would encourage one's thinking to be more focused. If you can't briefly sum up what you've been saying, then maybe you've been trying to say too much at a time. This isn't always a problem, but it could lead to your conversation partner missing something.

~It ... (read more)

My name is Dan, 25-year old white male.

It's unclear when my path to rationalism began. I was pretty smart and studious even as a home-schooled creationist in a very Christian family. Things started changing when I hit high school and left home school for private school. Dealing with people of other denominations and (Christian) theologies meant that I had to know where my own beliefs were coming from, and then my domain of beliefs-needing-justification expanded again when I was anticipating going to (and evangelising at) a public university. I took the Out... (read more)