this post was submitted on 29 Dec 2023
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Probability.... Need I say more?! (literature.cafe)
submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 36 points 6 months ago (10 children)

Missing: any sort of physicist who will tell them both that the forward model says that the sun won't explode for a few billion years, and so far that model hasn't been wrong.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (5 children)

Minor correction: in a few billion years our sun will expand into its red giant death phase.

Also: our star can't go nova by our understanding of astrophysics. If it actually can, then we might need to throw out a lot of astrophysics, including predictions on when our star will expand.

Also also: the odds of the dice giving double 6s is MUCH higher than our sun going nova at any point in time even if it could go nova and was overdue.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 6 months ago (1 children)

That last part is what the Bayesian scientist is wagering on, it's not missing, as op suggested

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Ah, gotcha. I tried learning Bayesian probability once and failed utterly. One of the only classes I just barely passed (stat was the other). My brain just barely computes it.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago (1 children)

The intuition is exactly your argument:

When the machine says yes it's either because

(1) the sun went nova (vanishingly small chance) and machine rolled truth (prob 35/36) -- the joint probability of this (the product) is near zero

OR

(2) sun didn't go nova (prob of basically one) and machine rolled lie (prob 1/36) -- joint prob near 1/36

Think of joint probability as the total likelihood. It is much more likely we are in scenario 2 because the total likelihood of that event (just under 1/36) is astronomically higher than the alternative (near zero)

I'm skipping stuff but hopefully my words make clear what they math doesn't always

[–] steveman_ha 2 points 6 months ago

That's a solid intro! Nice.

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