Questions tagged [probability]
The probability tag has no usage guidance.
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Is there a term for the fact that it may need more information to describe a probability distribution than conveyed by the event itself?
For example, X is a random integer from 1 to 16. Now I get a piece of information: X is 3, 5, 9, or 14. This has 2 bits of information for the knowledge about X. But if the list of options is random ...
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If past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior, can we surmise that known past and present behavior is the best estimate for unknown past?
A discussion about the ever increasing earth population made me wonder about the world population in the past, when such things could not be recorded.
If we accept that past behavior is truly the best ...
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How Probable is the Philosophical Significance of Numerical Patterns in Religious Texts?
I have a Muslim friend who told me about a chapter in the Quran (the holy book of Muslims) in which he claims there is a "numerical miracle."
This chapter is unique in the Quran because a ...
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Should the evidence of OBEs and NDEs increase our epistemic probability of non-physicalist views of consciousness?
Should reports of out-of-body experiences (OBEs) and near-death experiences (NDEs) increase our epistemic probability of non-physicalist views of consciousness? In other words, should we judge non-...
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Are sample spaces and counter factuals mind independent?
I was thinking about the notion of sample spaces and was wondering whether they can be “objectively” analyzed for their fruitfulness.
For example, in the case of dice rolls, it seems obvious and ...
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Why don't fair coin tosses add up? Is the gambler's fallacy really valid?
I have always been perplexed by a seeming paradox in probability that I'm sure has some simple, well-known explanation
We say that a "fair coin" has "no memory."
At each toss, the ...
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Does the "Sniper Firing Squad" analogy undermine the anthropic principle’s objection to the fine-tuning argument for God's existence?
The anthropic principle, also known as the "observation selection effect", is the hypothesis, first proposed in 1957 by Robert Dicke, that the range of possible observations that could be ...
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Are epistemic probability and empirical probability comparable?
Let me illustrate this question with an example. Imagine you were to compare your credence or your belief of you winning the lottery twice with your belief in the devil’s existence.
Some argue that me ...
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Do we need expertise to rate the chance of very low and high probability events?
Do we need expertise to rate the chance of very low probability events? We make implicit judgments about probabilty quite often (is the bus late), but I catch myself struggling to do so with very low ...
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What is the probability difference of an event that has one chance vs. multiple chances to happen?
For example, what is the probability that John will land a coin on heads two times in a row on Tuesday if he only gets to do two tosses? Clearly it’s 1/4.
Now, what is the probability that we will ...
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How do I validate my confidence in things? [duplicate]
This is honestly tripping me out the more I delved into it.
Of course, I feel more confident that my mother is my real mother than myself being kidnapped tomorrow. But how do I show that this is ...
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The implication if we discovered that natural abiogenesis is statistically nearly impossible
If we were to discover somehow that (sentient) life was so unlikely that it were almost impossible that it forms even once in the whole universe, does that imply anything about creation e.g.?
My logic ...
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How could Occam's razor possibly be used metaphysically?
Occam's razor, or the law of parsimony, states that the simplest explanation for any given data is most likely the correct one.
Some have attempted to use Occam's razor in a metaphysical sense, to ...
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When do I have sufficient evidence to believe that an observed event is an occurrence of a very rare event with similar characteristics?
Suppose I am aware of a particular type of event which only occurs every 10,000 years. Call this type of event ‘A’.
Suppose that I now observe an event which has many characteristics that event ‘A’ ...
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Is there a distinction between one iteration and multiple iterations of Sleeping Beauty Problem?
Take two set-ups of the Sleeping Beauty experiment
Set-up 1 The experiment is performed once. What is the probability that a random awakening corresponds to Heads?
Set-up 2 The experiment is ...
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Doesn't fallibilism complexify Pascal's wager further?
We can never know whether we have accumulated all the knowledge in the world or not. This is a general statement. For example, a powerful counterargument against the contingency argument might exist ...
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How can we even know which philosophical interpretation of probability is correct?
There are quite a few philosophical interpretations of probability. But how can we know which one, if any, is the correct interpretation? How do we decide that? What method would we use to even decide ...
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What is a philosophical interpretation of Bayes’s theorem when one of the probabilities is zero?
Bayes' Theorem
P(H) = probability of a hypothesis
P(E) = probability of evidence
P(E|H) = probability of evidence given the hypothesis
P(H|E) = probability of hypothesis given the evidence
P(H|E) = P(...
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When can you apply the principle of indifference?
If someone wanted to assign the probability of a dice landing on 1, there seems to be ample reason to give it a probability of 1/6.
However, imagine a scenario where we randomly pick a human being, ...
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Does this Sleeping Beauty problem show conflicting priors?
Let's say that there are three beauties; Michael, Jane, and Jill. They are put to sleep and assigned a random number from {1, 2, 3}.
If the coin lands heads then 1 is woken on Monday. If the coin ...
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Do arguments arising from probability convincingly argue a mass human extinction event in the near future? [closed]
One such argument is the Doomsday argument which is taken seriously by a number of academics. But more simply, if we look at the modern population trajectory, it's something of an exponential curve. ...
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Is this a statistical argument for reincarnation being almost inevitable?
In a scenario in which we have conscious souls (ignoring all the arguments against that for now), would the following be a statistical argument for reincarnation?
Supposing we are in something like an ...
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Why would modal realist Lewis believe that the answer to the Sleeping Beauty problem is 1/2?
Why is Lewis, of all people, the champion of the halfer position, when modal realism seems to imply the thirder position?
The main argument he seems to make for the halfer position is that, although ...
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Is the inverse gambler’s fallacy charge against the multiverse accurate?
A common reason for why people came up with the multiverse hypothesis was that they couldn’t fathom that a single universe, if it is all that exists, bears the constants necessary to eventually result ...
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Deterministic or stochastic universe?
Just a little bit before my graduation from computer science, I attended a course about computational intelligence, and my professor then challenged us to debate on whether the world/universe follows ...
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How can one evaluate the plausibility of an eternal object?
Suppose I told you one of two things.
A) A Boeing 747 arose by chance in a scrapyard within a 24 hour period after a tornado flew through it.
B) A Boeing 747 always existed.
Suppose I then told you ...
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Is Arithmetic more Extensional than Probability?
One of the views of probability is that it should be viewed as a multi-valued logic where p(A) represents the probability that a proposition A is true.
In a discussion of this, I once read that ...
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Are our intuitions about probability not wrong after all?
Many people feel as if significant events are less probable. For example, some may feel as if the sequence of all heads on a coin is less probable than any other sequence. Or that the next lottery ...
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How should we evaluate improbable outcomes in a probabilistic system?
Suppose I observe a highly improbable outcome while playing roulette - for example, 50 black results in a row, with a probability of 1/2^50. A mathematician would likely say the probability remains 1/...
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Isn't the notion that everything will occur in an infinite timeline an example of the gambler's fallacy?
I've seen a few different formulations of this, but the most famous is "monkeys on a typewriter" - that if you put a team of monkeys on a typewriter, given infinite time, they will ...
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What is a "sphere model"?
I'm reading the SEP entry on multi-modal logic and there's this passage:
Is this related to what the SEP entry on infinity says about probability, here?:
Kolmogorov notes that if the original ...
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Conceptual difference between probability vs percentages
Suppose there is a medical study which finds that having some Z gene is relate to a disease Y by a by 50%. Now, would it be correct to interpret this is as a probabilistic result?
That is, there is a ...
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Is probability a concept derived from the wavefunction? Since the p.d.f. is found by finding the modulus of the wave function in Q.M
I am studying the different probability interpretations (frequentist, bayesian etcetera) but for me it keeps bugging that since the probability density function in quantum mechanics is found by ...
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Is a probability operator on propositions symmetrical?
What I mean is: does, "It is not probable that..." = "It is probable that not..."? For example, does, "It is 50% probable that..." = "It is probable that 50%..."...
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Is not knowing whether X is true inconsistent with assigning a probability to it?
I have read that it is wise to assign a non zero probability to beliefs, and not 0 or 1. This is because probability represents certainty and you cannot be certain of anything.
xxxxxx
However, if you ...
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Does the law of large numbers explain why quantum mechanics leads to statistical regularities?
When the question of why chancy effects in quantum mechanics lead to statistical regularities is proposed, it is often answered using the law of large numbers.
When you have particles that can be ...
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Subjectivity vs. Objectivity, A Mathematical Analysis
To my knowledge, objectivity is more the merrier and subjectivity a loner. That is to say, the probability of something being objective is thought to increase with the number of observers. The whole ...
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Are there phenomena which are partially spontaneous and partially causal?
Events can be spontaneous or non spontaneous. Spontaneous is defined as occurring without apparent external cause. Non spontaneous events are causal, that is, there is cause and effect.
Suppose an ...
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Can fatalism be disproved by fate-changing magic?
In a world where magic exists, fate-spinners are people with supernatural powers that influence the chances of events happening.
Their power has been proven by countless experiments where they compare ...
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How to understand the notion of majority when comparing infinite sets?
Suppose I make the argument:
It is very unlikely that in a naturalistic universe, the constants have life sustaining values, since the majority of metaphysically possible universes do not have such ...
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Why would infinite monkeys not produce the works of Shakespeare?
Apologies if this is a very basic/obvious question. I have no training in philosophy, but have been making my way through Peter Adamson's History of Philosophy podcast.
Recently I listened to his ...
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The Likelyhood Principle and Baysean Statistics
I am reading Kotzen's paper Selection Bias in Likelihood Arguments.
The author takes the following principle as a starting point:
I'm confused as to how to formalize this notion in terms of Bayesian ...
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What is the probability of events that don’t seem clearly defined?
It makes sense to talk about the probability of a series of coin tosses but what about seeing a TV on a wall, or seeing a person riding a bicycle on the street?
If one were to compare an event such as ...
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Probabilities and Certainties on the Monkey Axis: Yet more about those monkey typists
I was reading with some interest the answers and comments to this question about that familiar, weird and somewhat inhumane infinite-monkey experiment which, somehow, is still generating fresh and ...
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Does the halfer position in the Sleeping Beauty problem make for an irrational gambler?
It's my understanding that the Sleeping Beauty problem doesn't have a consensus answer, with major camps along the lines of "halfers," "thirders," and "the-question-statement-...
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Would the kind of probability involved in strong/hard free will be non-unitary?
By "unitarity" I mean that the sums of the probabilities in the given cases would be 1. Non-unitarity would, I assume (for now!), allow for final negative probabilities as well as imaginary-/...
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Is an omniscient entity self-refuting?
Consider a thought experiment involving 'something' and three individuals attempting to understand it: one person claims it is a red ball, another asserts it is a simulation, and the third insists it ...
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Carnap's method of induction
Carnap provides a general understanding of symbolic induction, given as c(h, e)=r.
c = degree of confirmation
h = hypothesis
e = evidence
r = outcome
What exactly is meant by Carnap's 'degree of ...
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Uncertainty and evidence
Under uncertainty, precise probability cannot be assigned, see my other question: How valid is assignment of probabilities when evidence is totally lacking, as in Pascal's Wager? In this case, either ...
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Implicit Models and Probability - are degrees of belief/truth/existence a complete free-for-all?
Or, to put it another way, as long as you model your statements using the grammatical framework of our modern logical idioms, is it appropriate practice to assign a probability to any utterance at all,...