On 3/13/2012 6:02 PM, Ive wrote:
> David Hume's point was: laws are general, and therefore apply to an
> infinity of cases, so no finite number of observations increase their
> likelihood by any amount.
I would say that the flaw in this assumption is that there is an 
infinite number of cases. Often there is in fact a finite number of 
possible outcomes, once you apply existing laws. While one could argue 
that some sort of variation may lie "outside" those laws... unless you 
want to deny all observation, at some point the statistical odds *must* 
narrow. You get a similar dichotomy of principles when talking about how 
people think, with some arguing that there is, somehow, an infinite 
number of possibilities, and other people pointing out that the flaws in 
the human senses, mind, etc., all pretty much mean that no one is 
***anything close*** to as unique, or unpredictable, as they presume 
themselves to be. In reality the former is likely illusion, because a) 
there is no plausible mechanism, which doesn't badly misunderstand a lot 
of things to get there, for people not being state machines, of a sort, 
and b) its only possible in control conditions, with known variables, to 
predict results, over a short span, because even in a state machine, if 
you don't know the starting state, the more complex the machine, the 
less your odds are of predicting its behavior over a longer span.

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