[extropy-chat] what is probability?

[gts]

On Tue, 02 Jan 2007 18:48:25 -0500, Samantha Atkins <sjatkins at mac.com>
wrote:

>>>> Which statement is most true?
>>>>
>>>> A) E is frequent because it is probable.
>>>> B) E is probable because it is frequent.
>>>
>
> Neither.  An event that can by its nature only occur once or a very  
> rarely in a very large period of time may still be quite probable that  
> it will occur.   For instance, it is extremely probable that our sun  
> will some day exhaust its primary fuel and become a white dwarf.

You missed that E was defined previously as a 'frequent event', for
example 'Rain in the Amazon Rain Forest'.

However your point is still relevant. My interests in both the objective
propensity theory and the subjective bayesianist theory stem from what I
think is a failure of the more commonly held frequency theory to give an
account of the probability of singular events.

-gts