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by mrow84 1737 days ago
One way of considering the things you describe in terms of probability is to frame them as bets, and then set the probabilities based on what bets you might make (e.g. what odds would you want in a bet on whether the sun would rise tomorrow). Personally I find that makes some of the more difficult statements a little more palatable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_epistemology

2 comments

> what odds would you want in a bet on whether the sun would rise tomorrow

How would you denominate such a bet? I don't think money would have much value in a world where the sun failed to come up one day.

the point being that IMO the way you understand and come up with and reason about something like “classical mechanics” or “timeless decision theory” or “quantum enlightenment time cube satanic world order simulation” or “risc v architecture” is not about probability, and saying science is about probability totally elides the actual complex information and reasons that go into creating and using those in favor of just saying “they have a probability and we can change them”.