Am 14.03.2012 05:27, schrieb Patrick Elliott:
> 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.

See my latest response to Kevin where I've written a bit more about Hume.

-Ive

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