quote:Ergo it is irrational for him to allow himself to be convinced by the atheist.
mystic, it's worth noting that here you're actually discussing a sort of meta-belief: the idea that a person, when choosing to believe something is true, might choose not necessarily the option with the highest personally-demonstrated truth value but rather the option with the highest observable personal benefit.
This is how it plays out. I thought the tension between competing rational actions interesting.
quote: While I personally believe that many people do have this kind of (conscious and subconscious) control over many of their own beliefs, I'm a little surprised that you agree.
quote:Aside form dictionary definitions it seems that atheists largely go with the "don't believe in God" definition while theists largely seem to go with the "believe there's no God" definition. It seems like it's probably best to defer to those who self-identify with the term unless there is substantial disagreement within that group about the correct definition.
This.
I'd go a step further and say it's not "probably best" but definitely best. I've seen dictionary definitions such as: "one who denies the existence of God." Which assumes that there is a God to deny the existence of.
BTW, at alt.atheism and infidels.org, the definitions are generally:
Strong atheism = I believe there is no God
Weak atheism = I lack belief in God
This second one is somewhat problematic to gnostic theists because it is implies that weak atheism is the default position, therefore, babies are weak atheists.
quote:God made or may not exist as a distinct supernatural entity, but he exists in the hearts and minds of people and culture.
Which was my justification for signing the Declaration of Religious Principles when I was a scout leader. I DO believe in that God.
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It is becoming more clear as telescopes get better that rocky planets like earth/Mars/Venus etc. are actually quite common. Most suns appear to have planets, and quite a few of those planets do appear to be rocky ones.
Water and carbon, two very important elements for life, are very, very common in this galaxy at least, and quite possibly in others.
The fact of the matter is that our Sun is a very common type of star. The only thing that distinguishes it is that it, as well as the rest of the Solar System, is higher in metals than the average Sun and solar system.
Given these facts, I'd be less than shocked if there are some other planets with intelligent life around, probably even in this galaxy, maybe even relatively close by.
I'm not sure I feel much real pleasure at the thought of proving the fundamentalists wrong about this. The way I see it, they're making guesses, just like me. Wrong ones, I assume, but still guesses. I can't pretend to be doing anything other than guessing.
If anyone wants links for any of this, I'd be happy to provide them. I will win this argument, though...that's just fair warning.
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quote:Originally posted by steven: It is becoming more clear as telescopes get better that rocky planets like earth/Mars/Venus etc. are actually quite common. Most suns appear to have planets, and quite a few of those planets do appear to be rocky ones.
As of yet, this is mostly supposition. Educated supposition (and I suspect, correct supposition), but nonetheless.
Our telescopes (and other methods of detecting planets, like solar wobbles) are simply not yet as advanced as you seem to think. And I've seen the links -- this is an issue I follow closely.
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quote:Originally posted by steven: It is becoming more clear as telescopes get better that rocky planets like earth/Mars/Venus etc. are actually quite common. Most suns appear to have planets, and quite a few of those planets do appear to be rocky ones.
As of yet, this is mostly supposition. Educated supposition (and I suspect, correct supposition), but nonetheless.
Our telescopes (and other methods of detecting planets, like solar wobbles) are simply not yet as advanced as you seem to think. And I've seen the links -- this is an issue I follow closely.
Are you arguing because Orthodox Judaism would look insignificant, irrelevant, and unimportant if intelligent aliens were discovered? Or are you just so addicted to the position of Devil's advocate that it's just become a reflex?
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That's a false dichotomy, steven. For one thing, it's possible that she's arguing because, technically, we don't know for sure that Earth-like planets are particularly common.
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Yeah, we only know about planets that are much larger than earth, and most of the ones that aren't huge (and almost certainly gas giants) are only observed very indirectly.
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quote:Yes, but the numbers from zero to one are not a set of measure zero; the rationals are. You cannot fire one Euclidean point at another and hit; that doesn't stop you hitting a circle with the point.
So? I'm arguing against this quotation of yours, which has no such qualifications:
quote:
quote: After all, the probability zero that something will occur does not mean it will not occur.
I think it does, actually.
There is a probability zero for every exact number that can come up in a spin of a perfect wheel (or a sample from a gaussian, or whatever). Yet, every time, a number does come up.
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: That's a false dichotomy, steven. For one thing, it's possible that she's arguing because, technically, we don't know for sure that Earth-like planets are particularly common.
Right, just like we don't know for sure that OSC likes cookies. LOL
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Granted, we don't know for sure...but for Lisa's assertion to go unchallenged is a little silly.
We know this is an average Sun. We know about the existence of rocky planets in several nearby solar systems. We know that there are trillions of other GALAXIES, and hundreds of millions of suns in each of them.
It's more of a stretch to say that there is no other intelligent life, than the reverse. In my view.
But whatever. Clearly none of you find the issue that compelling, or you'd have already challenged Lisa's statement, and that's fine.
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quote:There is a probability zero for every exact number that can come up in a spin of a perfect wheel (or a sample from a gaussian, or whatever). Yet, every time, a number does come up.
Pick a number; it will never come up. You can't assign a probability to an event that has already happened.
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Are you being intentionally obtuse? I can make that statement about every single possible number at once (just note that the probability is the same, per my distribution, for every number between 0 and 1). Yet at least one of them comes up, despite my having described the probability in advance.
Heck, if you really want, I'll define my distribution as being only over the rationals, since I can even enumerate them (infinitely, but enumerate even so).
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Atheism is not a belief. It is only a lack of belief.
I used to call myself an agnostic because I thought the distinction was that an atheist is certain there's not a god while an agnostic simply claims not to know.
But one can be reasonably certain without knowing absolutely. I readily acknowledge that there may be a god. But I don't think there's much chance of it; I can't give you a number, but I assign an extremely low probability to the prospect. So low, in fact, that I rate it around the same level as fairies and unicorns and celestial teapots. But I don't need to go around saying, "I don't know if there are fairies or not, so I won't say one way or the other," or, "Since I can't prove there's not a celestial teapot, I'd better be safe and not try to make a claim." I am pretty reasonably certain there are no fairies or celestial teapots, just as I am pretty reasonably certain there is no god.
The burden of proof, simply put, is not on our team. There are billions of theists who have been telling us for thousands of years that there are such things as deities, but in all that time, not one of them has ever come up with any evidence for it that has not since been overturned by a better understanding of science. The certainty with which I claim there isn't a god cannot be absolute, but it is high enough that there's no point in pretending that I assign much of a probability to his/her/its/their existence.
If a stranger on a bus tells you, "My houseplants talk to me in English when I'm all alone with them, but they're very shy, so they won't do it if there are recording devices around," what do you think? Do you think, "I'd better come up with a way to prove that isn't true, or I'll be forced to conclude that it probably is"? Or do you think, "This person is either a crackpot or a liar, and either way, I'm free to dismiss his claim and think no more about it"?
In the words of Christopher Hitchens, "That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence." So I don't need to say, "I know there's no god." I can simply say, "There is no reason to believe there is a god, so I don't." And that is enough to make me an atheist, a "non[a]-god[the]-person[ist]".
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quote:Are you arguing because Orthodox Judaism would look insignificant, irrelevant, and unimportant if intelligent aliens were discovered? Or are you just so addicted to the position of Devil's advocate that it's just become a reflex?
Boy, this is a pretty silly statement, steven. Of all the religions on Earth, Orthodox Judaism would have to be one of the best at dealing with being a very small minority and being comfortable with that status while not also thinking they were insignificant, irrelevant, and unimportant. Orthodox Judaism would have to go high on any list of religions able to successfully weather the discovery of extraterrestrial life.
Oh, and not only was your post silly, it also came off as very insulting (that is, intended to be very insulting), and unprovoked as well. If you don't like being corrected when you're wrong, the appropriate response is to not be wrong so much, not to lash out at people correcting you.
Or at least lash out effectively.Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:Are you arguing because Orthodox Judaism would look insignificant, irrelevant, and unimportant if intelligent aliens were discovered? Or are you just so addicted to the position of Devil's advocate that it's just become a reflex?
Boy, this is a pretty silly statement, steven. Of all the religions on Earth, Orthodox Judaism would have to be one of the best at dealing with being a very small minority and being comfortable with that status while not also thinking they were insignificant, irrelevant, and unimportant. Orthodox Judaism would have to go high on any list of religions able to successfully weather the discovery of extraterrestrial life.
Not to mention the fact that the question has been addressed before.
quote:One of the first to discuss the question of extraterrestrial life in general was Rabbi Chasdai Crescas (Or Hashem 4:2). After a lengthy discussion, he comes to the conclusion that there is nothing in Jewish theology to preclude the existence of life on other worlds. As possible evidence for extraterrestrial life, he quotes the Talmudic teaching (Avoda Zara 3b) that "God flies through 18,000 worlds." Since they require His providence, we may assume that they are inhabited.
I might add that Rabbi Crescas lived c.1340 – 1410/1411.
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Yeah, I was thinking of that man when I replied-I didn't remember his name or anything and I would have needed a multiple choice question to have a shot at remembering what century he lived in, but I've heard of that before.
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quote:Question for those that call atheists truly agnostic, because they claim you can't know for sure 100%
Wouldn't that mean that theists are truly agnostic as well?
Theists nearly never claim to be rational empiricists. So it isn't inconsistent for them to be 100% sure of something.
It is a little inconsistent for a rational empiricist. Especially when there's very little evidence either way. And there are a lot of atheists who claim to be rational empiricists. Of course, it's entirely possible to be atheist with out being a rational empiricists. And in that case, it isn't inconsistent to be 100% sure.
PS: Trying to change my terminology to be more accurate. Think this terminology works?
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quote:Theists nearly never claim to be rational empiricists. So it isn't inconsistent for them to be 100% sure of something.
I am a theist but I am not 100% sure of theism, and I suspect a majority of theists would not claim to be 100% sure. Most theists experience doubt, including for sure the pastor of my church who has said exactly that.
So the question remains... are we actually agnostics?
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quote:Originally posted by steven: Granted, we don't know for sure...but for Lisa's assertion to go unchallenged is a little silly.
We know this is an average Sun. We know about the existence of rocky planets in several nearby solar systems. We know that there are trillions of other GALAXIES, and hundreds of millions of suns in each of them.
It's more of a stretch to say that there is no other intelligent life, than the reverse. In my view.
But whatever. Clearly none of you find the issue that compelling, or you'd have already challenged Lisa's statement, and that's fine.
I did on the first previous page. Geez.
quote:quote: There's zero empirical evidence for the existence of extraterrestrial life. Well, I'm not sure about that, it depends if you consider the evidence based on observation (empirical) or theory. Anything outside our solar system (where we've seen squat), is too damn far away to go to.
Pluto ~10 years away from Earth with current technology
Nearest stars we know about ~ 10,000 times as far as that.
Quite simply, if an extra-solar planet similar to Earth in terms of size, star type, neighborhood and distance, then it is possible for life to exist, simply by the laws of physics and what worked for us. Whether life actually does exist will depend on the planet's geological (okay, not the right prefix) state.
Whether life exists in places that are not like Earth at all, we don't know, but we haven't found much anywhere else in the solar system.
As for how many groups just like us exist, there's the Drake Equation. You start with the number of stars in the galaxy, multiply that by the percentage of stars like the sun, stars which have planets, stars which have earth like planets, and odds of any life being at a communicable stage among other things. So sure, that's just theory, but we don't know any of the percentages to give us a real number, which is where observation (and empirical evidence) comes in.
We have not found habitable planets, because up until Kepler, we did not have something that could detect them. Detecting planets (by transits or radial velocity curves) is a matter of both instrument precision and the time we have to look (getting better and not that long so far). Also, the inclination of the planets orbits with respect to us (totally random) will determine if we can even see something exists at all with these two methods. Meanwhile, hot Jupiters are easy to detect and they justify making the instruments to probe deeper. Hot Jupiters have also defied scientists' notion that our system was typical.
If you run simulations with a gas giant at Jupiter's distance and a bunch of rocks inside, the planetesimals will collect and form bodies that are different from, but not so far off from what we have. (A large number of these simulations have not been made because a single simulation takes months to run).
So basically, right now, scientists are gathering evidence that other stars have planetary systems, something we couldn't really answer one way or another 25 years ago. Whether we will ever detect little green men is one thing.
Having something that scientists are working towards and a method to do it, makes extra-terrestrial life a concept that is quite different from the God question, in my opinion.
quote: quote: Originally posted by Lisa: quote: Originally posted by Alcon: There's no empirical evidence for the existence of extraterrestrial life. There's a ton of empirical evidence pointing to the possibility. And there is some that suggests a high likelihood. Uh... "empirical evidence pointing to the possibility"? What does that even mean? It means we observe that there are other stars just like ours (old news). It means that we are starting to observe planets around other stars. We haven't found a planet just like Earth, but what we have strongly suggests there is something like it (we have stuff barely sensitive enough to detect an Earth). If there are aliens, they gotta live *somewhere*, so any Earth-like planet represents that possibility.
quote:So the question remains... are we actually agnostics?
Like I said, I think Kate's a good example of an agnostic Catholic. So if you think you're like Kate, then yes. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Yes, but the numbers from zero to one are not a set of measure zero; the rationals are. You cannot fire one Euclidean point at another and hit; that doesn't stop you hitting a circle with the point.
So? I'm arguing against this quotation of yours, which has no such qualifications:
quote:
quote: After all, the probability zero that something will occur does not mean it will not occur.
I think it does, actually.
There is a probability zero for every exact number that can come up in a spin of a perfect wheel (or a sample from a gaussian, or whatever). Yet, every time, a number does come up.
The problem with this argument is that is that a wheel of numbers IS a discrete probability distribution while a gaussian represents a continuous distribution.
The probability zero for a particular number coming up only occurs if there is an infinitely large set of numbers, which means you no longer have a discrete system. Therefore, this perfect wheel cannot give you exact numbers. You can, however, get a probability within a RANGE of numbers by integrating the distribution, which is how continuous distributions are used in practice.
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not a wheel of numbers, a number wheel. Each point on the wheel represents the number found by interpolating it between the "ends" of the wheel.
This may have been the source of some of the confusion, and is why I've been careful about specifying "every number between zero and one" and things of the sort in more recent posts.
Also, I'm quite sure that my "perfect wheel" always does give me an exact number, just an exact irrational number. Much like (perfect) sampling from the gaussian always gives an exact number.
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Wow, so many points to respond to. OK. To Verily the Younger. I used to be in love with the idea of Burden of Proof, until I realized that it applies only in legal and strict scientific settings. The burden of proof is on whomever wants to convince their opposite. Always. You say that religious people have made assertions with no proof, well and good. But if a theist (to use your term) doesn't care if you believe or not, then he is under no obligation to prove anything. Same with your talking plant man (BTW, you gave me an idea for a short story, mind if I run with it?)
To all you people talking about the perfect spinner, I believe the conversation is missing a key point. Your perfect spinner can point to any number, rational or irrational, between 0 and 1 with equal ease and likelihood, no? However, and please correct me if I'm wrong, I seem to remember that it is a mathematical impossibility to point to irrational numbers that don't equate to some known relationship, such as pi and e and their dependents. If I'm right about that, then the spinner is not just a practical impossibility, but a theoretical one as well, so the laws of probability wouldn't really apply.
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quote:However, and please correct me if I'm wrong, I seem to remember that it is a mathematical impossibility to point to irrational numbers that don't equate to some known relationship, such as pi and e and their dependents.
You're wrong
We can't define the values of the numbers, but we can assign them properties (and do so all the time). Assigning them probabilities (and then sampling from them) is entirely legitimate.
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quote:Originally posted by Raventhief: An atheist could also apply Occam's Razor and say that the addition of god, gods, nature spirit, etc, adds nothing to our understanding of the universe, and so is an unnecessary complication.
I would merely point out that the order and constancy of the universe constitute a design that implies an Intelligent Designer. The only alternative is to suppose that the universe somehow created and organized and continually maintains its physical laws and constants itself. How does that fare when it meets Occam's Razor?
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The universe having consistent laws only points to an intelligent designer if you insist on assuming it was designed and are not comfortable with saying simply "It is."
And when we say it has laws, we are merely trying to describe what is. We are not saying that the universe has these laws embedded in it. We are building a system of laws trying to describe the way the universe works. And we constantly have to revise them.
However, intelligent designer or no intelligent designer is one of those questions for which there is little evidence either way.
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quote:The only alternative is to suppose that the universe somehow created and organized and continually maintains its physical laws and constants itself.
Do physical laws and constants require maintenance? I suppose you do believe that the speed of light may have changed in the recent past, but.... Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:I can make that statement about every single possible number at once (just note that the probability is the same, per my distribution, for every number between 0 and 1). Yet at least one of them comes up, despite my having described the probability in advance.
No, actually, you can't. There is a very marked conceptual difference between "This particular number" and "Every number in this range", and statements that you can apply to the first do not apply to the second, and vice-versa.
quote:Heck, if you really want, I'll define my distribution as being only over the rationals, since I can even enumerate them (infinitely, but enumerate even so).
For all I care you can go to the integers and expand the range to [0, \infty>. I stand by my statement: You will never get any particular integer; in fact, in this case you will also never get an integer that's part of any given finite range.
The basic problem is that probability is not well defined for these kinds of ranges. Infinity is not a number. Perhaps we could agree that, rather than assigning probability zero, we should say "the probability doesn't exist"? Or "isn't well defined" or "exists only as a limit" or however you prefer to state this sort of thing.
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quote:Originally posted by Raventhief: An atheist could also apply Occam's Razor and say that the addition of god, gods, nature spirit, etc, adds nothing to our understanding of the universe, and so is an unnecessary complication.
I would merely point out that the order and constancy of the universe constitute a design that implies an Intelligent Designer. The only alternative is to suppose that the universe somehow created and organized and continually maintains its physical laws and constants itself. How does that fare when it meets Occam's Razor?
I don't buy Occam's Razor for the creation of the universe. Even when I believed in God, I didn't buy it. Its to easy. Occam's Razor doesn't fit everything we don't understand yet. Just saying you don't understand it, so God did it, is very medieval.
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quote:Originally posted by Raventhief: An atheist could also apply Occam's Razor and say that the addition of god, gods, nature spirit, etc, adds nothing to our understanding of the universe, and so is an unnecessary complication.
I would merely point out that the order and constancy of the universe constitute a design that implies an Intelligent Designer. The only alternative is to suppose that the universe somehow created and organized and continually maintains its physical laws and constants itself. How does that fare when it meets Occam's Razor?
Art implies artist. However it has yet to be proved that the universe constitutes art. We (people) find symmetry, order, beauty, (in other words, art) in what we perceive to be naturally occurring phenomena, such as sunsets, mountains, dew drops, snowflakes, etc. It's possible that there is an ultimate artist we don't see (god) or that things we see as art may be nothing more than happenstance.
Fugu, not rejecting what you said, but talking about something, or even using it, isn't the same as pointing to it (just ask any programmer). I was under the impression that irrational numbers can't be described or pointed to specifically, which makes the spinner, well, not work.
Now, a different way of accomplishing this task might be to say our spinner will point to any rational number between 0 and 1. There are still an infinite number of possibilities, so there's still a 1 over infinity (aka 0) probability of choosing any particular one.
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It took hundreds of years before even mathematical models could predict planetary movements better than the Earth-centric one. Galileo's theory of a sun centered universe couldn't match the theoretical models and mathematical predictions of movement of the earlier scientific models of an Earth-Centric universe. They made the false assumption that orbits were perfect spheres. Science is based upon observation. Observing and predicting something does not bring anyone closer to the truth of the observed phenomenon. Observing a phenomenon and being able to describe every state of its development does not make you understand the reality of the object. Science is an attempt to describe God's mystery. It shouldn't be a surprise that there is order in it. I majored in mathematics. I thought in math was unbiased truth. One English teacher might give you a C while another an A but in math, the answer is all that matters. I felt that truth could be found in mathematics. I followed that path until I realized that the only reason we count to 10 then roll over to 11 or 20 and 21 is because we have 10 fingers. An eight fingered creature's math would work just the same. 10 is no magic number, only the number of our fingers. Our math only works because it quantifies what we observe. Quantifying is not understanding. In college, I realized math is nonsense, because even mathematics breaks down when taken to it's limits. Truth can withstand the limits. Science is only observation.
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You are mistaken on points of fact regarding the history of science surrounding heliocentrism; you are also a very bad philosopher.
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Malanthrop, just because our math is based on our biology doesn't mean that it's conditional. An eight fingered species might use a base-8 math system instead of our base-10 system, but our answers would be the same. 8+8 equals 16 in base-10 and 20 in base-8, but it's the same number. Mathematics are universal truths, only the language is different.
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Raventhief: of course we can't physically point to them, with a pointer, but we can't with physical precision point absolutely at any number. I can, however, point to a class of numbers (and by virtue of pointing to a class point to the things in it). I can do calculations with them (for instance, when I integrate, I am summing up very large numbers of unpointable irrationals, in a sense).
But just like a Gaussian distribution samples perfectly from irrationals, a uniform distribution over an interval (a 'spinner') samples from them, too.
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Are you suggesting people couldn't predict platenetary movements prior to the acceptance of a sun centered universe? Perhaps rhetorical, they did...with functional models of a universe with the Earth in the center and the sun and planets revolving around the Earth while making funny figure 8's during their orbit. The observations and predictions worked just fine. The ancient Earth centered model could predict the movements of Mars 1000 times better than our current climate scientists can predict hurricanes. I know my homeowners insurance premium reflects their "science" but the hurricanes never came. My bird bath was an ice cube and I live in Florida. The entire norther hemesphere of the world is experiencing a 100 year cold...funny. Climate "scientists" predicted unprecedented hurricanes two years ago and uprecedented heat right now. The Earth center model was very accurate....a million times more accurate that the science of these global warming scientists. When they said star A would be in position B in the sky, they were right but the unprecedented hurricanes that jacked up my insurance never came.
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Fugu, I know not physically, I'm not a moron. I'm referring to, well, referrants. Pointers, in programming. An item which designates a single, particular number without specifying what the number is. I know you can work with aggregates and totals, but that doesn't mean you can deal with individual numbers. If you can't point to a specific irrational number, doesn't that negate the possibility of using a single irrational number in probability?
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quote:Are you suggesting people couldn't predict planetary movements prior to the acceptance of a sun centered universe?
No. I'm suggesting that they did so to the limit of accuracy of the naked eye, and that when telescopes came along, their system broke down in the face of more accurate measurements. You are just plain mistaken as to facts when you argue that heliocentrism, which incidentally was a theory of Copernicus and not Galileo, was initially less accurate, in this sentence:
quote:Galileo's theory of a sun centered universe couldn't match the theoretical models and mathematical predictions of movement of the earlier scientific models of an Earth-Centric universe.
As for insurance premiums, they are based on science but they are formulated by extremely hard-headed businessmen, who do not plan for a decade but for a century. I suspect that you do not understand probability, which is not uncommon in theists; it's the black-and-white view that does it. Your insurance premium, and everyone else's, is paying for new housing for those that got hit in Katrina, plus some profit for the insurance company. If everyone who bought insurance got hit, there would be no insurance company; if you think you know the probabilities of hurricanes better than they do, you should not buy insurance at their price. Better still, you should start your own insurance company. I suggest, however, that you never try any gambling sites.
Better still, do try some gambling sites. There's no better way of learning probability than having it bite you in the ass a few times, and I'm all in favour of learning.
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Mal, that's...amazing? I can't find the right word. Maybe jaw-dropping.
You are comparing planetary motion, which can be explained by fairly simply equations (simple, once you've observed and hypothesized and disproven and rehypothesized and finalized), with climate and meteorology, an incredibly complicated system with chaotic elements and hundreds (if not thousands) of variables.
You try to make the world fit to your views, but in cases like this, you oversimplify to the point of absurdity.
Not to mention you reject mathematics and science because you can't find the impossible perfection you are looking for.
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quote:Originally posted by Raventhief: Fugu, I know not physically, I'm not a moron. I'm referring to, well, referrants. Pointers, in programming. An item which designates a single, particular number without specifying what the number is. I know you can work with aggregates and totals, but that doesn't mean you can deal with individual numbers. If you can't point to a specific irrational number, doesn't that negate the possibility of using a single irrational number in probability?
Nu, but we are taking the number wheel as a postulate, and then we can refer to an arbitrary transcendent simply by "This number on the wheel", whether or not it can be expressed in terms of pi and e, and sqrt(2), and all the other known irrationals. You can't draw a Euclidean line either, but you can reason about it!
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quote:Originally posted by fugu13: Yeah, we only know about planets that are much larger than earth, and most of the ones that aren't huge (and almost certainly gas giants) are only observed very indirectly.
This, exactly. (Also, three posts in a row agreeing with me, and two from Tom and KoM! I should print that out and frame it. )
Personally, I suspect that there are many earth-like planets out there, and I consider the likelihood of not only life but intelligent life somewhere else in the universe to be quite high. But that is NOT based solely on the empirical evidence we have, simply because we have precious little.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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My confusion is that your argument seems to be that, if you sample from a probability distribution, the only possible numbers you can get are either rational, or a very tiny set (indeed, one as small as the rationals) of "pointable" irrationals.
That does not make sense. The definitions of probability distributions preclude that possibility. In particular, a probability distribution could not have a density if it had measure zero -- yet many continuous probability distributions do. Just as I can have a function f(x) = x^2 that's defined over the irrationals, despite never being able to directly give it an x, I can have a probability distribution that samples from them, even if I can't look at any of the results, because usually when I'm using the results, I'm using them in aggregate, and summing over irrationals I can't point at is entirely permissible (see point about integration).
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote:As for insurance premiums, they are based on science but they are formulated by extremely hard-headed businessmen, who do not plan for a decade but for a century. I suspect that you do not understand probability, which is not uncommon in theists; it's the black-and-white view that does it. Your insurance premium, and everyone else's, is paying for new housing for those that got hit in Katrina, plus some profit for the insurance company. If everyone who bought insurance got hit, there would be no insurance company; if you think you know the probabilities of hurricanes better than they do, you should not buy insurance at their price. Better still, you should start your own insurance company. I suggest, however, that you never try any gambling sites.
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For the most part you are right. They really can't plan 100 years in the future though. If they start taking in too much premium, and they are not paying out claims, they pretty much have to lower premiums to remain competitive.
Posts: 3134 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
malanthrop, you're comparing two completely incompatible things. Linear systems, like gravitation and astronomy, have been studied and developed for about 3000 years. Nonlinear systems (like meteorology) were considered completely unpredictable until about 100 years ago.
Posts: 354 | Registered: Jan 2006
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