[bweitzman]

Of course. If you flip the coin 100 times and get all heads than you are safe to call the coin unfair, even though you would expect to see that result (1/2)^100 and thus would be wrong once in a while.

I think that's sort of the point that the article is making actually. That high probability does not imply truth. There are other non probabilistic ways to verify that coin is unfair, for example by looking at the density throughout the coin.

[TeMPOraL]

Observations do not imply truth. 0 and 1 are not probabilities, and in real life you can't prove something using observations in a logical sense. Real world runs on probabilities, not boolean logic.

Even if you look at the density of the metal throughout the coin, there's still a chance I've altered your device to report the coin is fair. Or a passing microsingularity decided to play games with the scanning beam. Or you're just imagining the whole thing.

That's not to say one should despair that the world is unknowable. One only has to get used to the fact that, in practice, "true" just means "extremely, extremely likely".

[bweitzman]

Sure, but there is a difference on the order of magnitudes between the probability that a fair coin will come up heads 100 times in a row and the probability that a microsingularity will come along and bias your results.

But yeah truth is tricky.