[ysr23]

"Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."

is that the actual quote? Maybe not enough coffee on my part but i am having difficulty with it.

By eliminating impossible, which strikes me a fairly redundant thing to do, we are left with probable and improbable?

Your post could have been written by:

- Kurtz79 (probable)

- Marlow79 using your login for REASONS (possible but improbable)

- Elon Musk using your login for REASONS(possible but improbable)

- Stephen Hawking (impossible)

- Queen Victoria (impossible)

etc ...

do we really need to eliminate all the impossible? i'm not sure it really moves us along finding the OP, even if we do.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

That's a very good point, however eliminating the impossible (or just improbable) is a necessary first step towards finding "the truth".

Then all you need is a good prior, to allow you to tell the truth from the nontruth. And the er, simplest prior is the Occamist prior- that the simplest explanation is the most likely to be true.

Going by which, Kurtz79 is the most likely author of the post above, since that's the simplest explanation that is not impossible (or improbable).

Edit: it's "simplest" in the sense it doesn't require REASONS.