Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by TeMPOraL 2403 days ago
As the saying goes, "zero and one are not probabilities". Like 'Dylan16807 says, they eat evidence. When doing maths, when transforming to log probabilities, 0 becomes -Infinity; when transforming to odds ratios, 1 goes to infinity.

A longer explanation: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QGkYCwyC7wTDyt3yT/0-and-1-ar....

See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cromwell%27s_rule, mentioned by 'edflsafoiewq.

1 comments

Yes, I get the arithmetic, thank you. What I don't get is why I'm forced to perform it in the way that you say. Why do I have to hold on to that 0 probabilty no matter what happens? Clearly it's much more reasonable to change my mind given that the world has changed and assign a non-zero probability to an event for which I now have evidence. Why would I not?

>> See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cromwell%27s_rule, mentioned by 'edflsafoiewq.

How about the statement "Hillary Clinton is the President of the United States"? What probability should I assign to that? I know that the PotUS is Donald Trump. Does Cromwell's Rule mean that I have to believe that Hillary Clinton is the PotUS at least a little, because otherwise I will never be able to believe it if she ever gets elected president?