[extropy-chat] Indifference (was Coin Flip Paradox)

[gts]

On Fri, 02 Feb 2007 21:43:51 -0500, Mike Dougherty <msd001 at gmail.com>  
wrote:

> Your sentence construction requires parsing of very long strings to
> establish idea chunks.  These chunks are not easily disambiguated from
> the adjacent chunks, so the whole paragraph tends to blur into a less
> comprehensible moire of ideas.

Ugh! Sorry if my writing is so unclear, Mike. I'll try to work on that!

> I'm curious, do you know of a less ambiguous language?  Do you think
> there would be less language-inherent confusion if you were to explain
> these ideas using Lojban++

I don't know Lojban++ but I am certified in C++. I don't think I could  
discuss philosophy in C++ though. :)

>> "Evidently we require [in order to correctly invoke the supposed  
>> principle of indifference] not mere absence of knowledge of reasons  
>> favoring one
>> alternative over another, but knowledge of the absence of such reasons."
>>
>> Some people confuse 'absence of knowledge of reasons' with 'knowledge of
>> absence of reasons'.

The point that author was making is that the principle of indifference  
might be logically valid in circumstances in which there are *truly* no  
reasons to prefer or expect one outcome over another, but not in  
circumstances in which we only *think* there are no such reasons (as is  
almost always if not absolutely always the case in which people try to  
invoke it). Does that make sense?

> Because of 2) above I am reluctant to go into detail here as to the  
> reason any such argument must fail, except to remind you that the  
> frequency
> theory is an objectivist, non-epistemic account of probability in which
> the epistemic principle of indifference is irrelevant and nonsensical.

Simply stated, if the principle of indifference could be proved valid  
using frequentist arguments as Stu suggested, then frequentists would be  
objective bayesians instead of frequentists. :)

Epistemic concepts such as the principle of indifference have no traction  
under frequentism, because frequentists eschew epistemic interpretations  
of probability in favor of their brand of objectivism. Frequentists  
believe probabilities exist 'out there' in objective reality as opposed to  
'in here' in our subjective assessments.

-gts