James, FJ’s point, as I understood it, was that it produces an absurdity to assume that every proposition is 50-50 from the get go. To show this, he showed how if the likelihood of the proposition ‘A’ is .5, and the likelihood of the proposition ‘B’ is .5, then the likelihood of the proposition ‘C’ where C=‘A&B’ cannot be .5.
He then (tangentially, as I read it) mentioned that this same principle is related to Occam’s Razor, and I agree. Once we see that the likelihood of ‘A&B’ will always be less than or equal to the likelihood of either ‘A’ or ‘B’, we can see why the likelihood of ‘A&B’ is less than the likelihood of ‘C’. And the later statement, i.e. P(A&B) <= P(C), is acknowledged as a justification for Occam’s Razor on the very wikipedia page you gratuitously copy/paste at me like I don’t know what Occam’s Razor is:
All this is not to say that selecting the baseline probability in a Baysian analysis is easy or completely determined, but the suggestion that our response to the uncertainty should be to treat all propositions as equally likely is clearly not the answer. Not knowing the exact probability is not the same as not being able estimate reasonable values. Your argument is similar to, and as incorrect as, arguments that Relativistic physics isn’t more correct than Newtonian physics because we know that Relativistic models are incomplete. Knowing that we don’t know everything does not entail that we know nothing, and knowing that we can’t peg a probability precisely doesn’t mean we can’t narrow it down to a better guess than 50-50.
He sees the graph of the correlation, he does some reasonable calculations and he comes to this conclusion:
But his first assumption that the probability of a causal relation ship was only .00001 almost completely determined the result he would get. He didn’t calculate anything useful although it looked very methodical and scientific.
The only way that you will figure out whether there is a causal relationship, is to deeply investigate the processes involved with an open mind. An open mind would consider any statement as having a 50% chance of being true, at least initially.
Occam’s razor is used to choose between equally valid theories. Based on the data, both theories are equally probable.Occam suggests choosing based on economy.
Carleas, there are many things that were wrong with FJ’s argument, which is why I was willing to leave it with a simple statement of concern, but it is hard to believe that out of all that was wrong with it, you have chosen to advocate prejudice and juris-imprudence.
A black man appears in court. The judge knows that 60% of the time a black man shows up in court, he is convicted, guilty. So the judge places the “burden of proof” higher on the black man. And if the man doesn’t provide enough extra evidence in his favor to make up for the statistics, then his case will add to the statistics concerning black men being convicted.
So after a few years, the statistics concerning the guilt of black men in court becomes, not the 60% as before, but now 70%, further increasing the required burden of proof. And after a few more years, it becomes 80%, then 90%, eventually 100%. So eventually there really is no need for a court at all because statistically 100% of the time, if a black man is accused in court, it’s been proven that he is guilty, so why waste “the tax payers dollars” on a trial?
And you actually fell for that?
In that part of his misreport and proposed dysnomy, he conflates 3 propositions, something that isn’t even related to the OP at all. He states that; we already know that A has a certain probability, we already know that B has a certain probability, and that we can add the two already knowns to form a new proposition and treat it as if it is an unknown with equal probability as the first two. The OP has nothing at all to do with adding propositions unless you are questioning the data sets offered in the OP.
The OP also has nothing to do with comparing known equally possible ontological models, Occam’s Razor.
And then even further, look at his statements;
And then he proposes that his belief in a direct causal relationship is reflected by giving the probability of it being accurate;
So what he is saying is that any time he believes that there is a direct correlation, we can already presume that the probability of him being right is 1/100000.
The OP is saying, “look how interesting it is that there are these correlations concerning things that we wouldn’t normally think had any relationship. Perhaps they do”.
If you are going to assign a probability of there being a relationship, why bother? The OP intentionally presents data sets that are supposed to be superficially low probability cases. So by putting numbers on it, you merely support the fact that the OP was right, “at first glance, these correlations wouldn’t be expected”.
FJ’s argument then states that BECAUSE a mindless superficial examination (none at all) yields the thought that there is no relationship, we should accept that mindless conclusion as strong, very strong, evidence that there is no relationship at all. He is proposing that we give mindlessness a much higher authority in decision making (literally a 100,000 to 1 higher). He is proposing that if an ignorant person at first believes or doesn’t believe something, it should require extreme proof to alter his ignorance; empowering mindlessness, anti-philosophy (aka religiosity = “don’t think, just believe/disbelieve”).
That was a number I gave as an example number. Your straw man here is absurd. It’s as if I said ‘I want to talk about my idea about prime numbers; let’s take 7 for example’ and you said ‘Ha! Look at this fool! He thinks 7 is the only prime number!’
I was making a point about probabilities and updating them based on evidence (the evidence of statistical correlation in this case); my example probability was 1/100,000 and you respond with this absurd and completely transparent strawman.
I already proved that that’s mathematically impossible. Here, something simpler, let’s take these 3 statements:
I’m wearing a hat, and I’m not wearing a shirt, and I’m not wearing shoes.
I’m not wearing a hat, and I’m wearing a shirt, and I’m not wearing shoes.
I’m not wearing a hat, and I’m not wearing a shirt, and I’m wearing shoes.
They can’t all have a probability of 50%. They’re all mutually exclusive; a set of mutually exclusive probabilities has to some to 1 or less. If they’re all 50%, they sum to 1.5. There’s a 150% probability that one of those statements is true?
You were talking about presuming a certainty level of 0.99999% before you even looked for evidence and then stated that any evidence wouldn’t be sufficient to change your mind.
I have found in the past, that you are right. No evidence changes your mind.
What I’m saying is ‘not all statements have a probability of 50%; that is mathematically impossible.’
And I explained very clearly why it was a strawman. I used a number as an example to show how a particular probabilistic calculation works; your post assumes I used that number as a universal constant for all situations.
YOU are providing cases that do not fit the OP suggestion. The OP is asking a “true-false” question. A true-false question has a 50/50 chance until data is examined.
“Is X true?” - 50/50 chance until you examine what X is.
No, not all true/false questions start out with 50/50 probability.
example:
I state:
A dwarf just broke into your house and stole your keys: 50/50?
You respond, true to form, ‘Yes, 50/50’.
So we go downstairs to your kitchen where you keep your keyhook that holds your keys, and we find your keys missing.
So…now it’s more than 50/50? It’s more than 50% likely that a dwarf stole your keys? Out of ALL the possibilities to explain how your keys are missing, just because of the fact that I mentioned that as a hypothesis, it is now more-than-a-coin-flip likely?
I’m not talking about the probability of some set of statements.
I’m talking about a way of approaching a statement and determining whether it is true or false without a bias. That requires dropping preconceived ideas.
For you to proclaim that it isn’t 50/50, you have to presume that you know something about the truth of that statement first, don’t you?
Do you know who said it?
Do you understand what was meant by “dwarf”?
Was your house unguarded for a long time?
Were your keys in your house to be stolen?
You instinctively assess those things pretty quickly and thus often mislead yourself into biased mis-judgment. People can easily take advantage of you because of your willingness to presume so readily.
“That is silly. No one would do that.”
— exactly what a con artist looks for.
Until you think about the real situation, you cannot assess any probability to favor anything.
You are talking about a set of statements. ‘Consider any statement as having a 50% chance’ is you talking about a set of statements. Namely, the set of All statements.
You are the one proclaiming multiple statements combined as being not simply true or false. The OP isn’t, nor has phyllo. “The set of all statements” is YOUR strawman, no one else’s.
This whole post reads like, ‘If I make a semantic argument about dwarves, I could maybe make a dent in your argument.’
I’m not really the type to buy that line of argument. I have arguments in good faith. When I use ‘dwarves’ as an example, I’m not meaning anything confusing or unintuitive; I’m not planning on pulling any tricks by making ‘dwarves’ out to mean something you couldn’t have expected it to mean. I’m not interested in that low type of arguing. I’m not engaging in it.
YOU are not the one making the statement (in your example). You always presume that you already know so very much more about the certainty of things before you even think about them. You are extremely presumptuous/biased.
I actually wouldn’t be surprised if there were a causal relationship between the two. Not divorce in Main specifically and margarine consumption in the entire US, mind you, but divorce in the US and margarine consumption in the US. It doesn’t sound too absurd to me to think that maybe recently divorced men and women switch from butter to margarine to save money, as I expect divorce is generally followed by financial hardships for one or both parties.
And, it might be that Main’s divorce rate varies with the general US divorce rate (possibly divorce rate increasing or decreasing due to changing social/cultural landscape which is shared by Main and the US in general), in which case the divorce rate in Main would be causally linked to margarine consumption.
So I don’t start out with a very strong prior against a causal relationship between the two.
But I would start out with a strong prior against ‘There’s a strong causal relationship between divorces in main and margarine consumption in the US, but not a strong causal relationship between divorces in the US in general and margarine consumption in the US.’
In a sense everything is interrelated in the cosmos. So it would impossible to have an event which does NOT affect another event, no matter what event that might be.
