...so the total value of a lingering doubt should go to zero if investigated forever.
Very well written, I just wanted to confirm something, I was under the impression that since nothing has 100% certainty, nothing can have a 0% uncertainty, you could get closer and closer, but you can never actually reach it. If I’m wrong or misunderstanding this I would appreciate it if someone would correct me, thanks.
nothing has 100% certainty, nothing can have a 0% uncertainty
That’s my understanding as well. I was trying to say that, if you were to formalize all this mathematically, and took the limit as number of Bayesian updates n went to infinity, uncertainty would go to zero.
Since we don’t have infinite time to do an infinite number of updates, in practice there is always some level of uncertainty > 0%.
There are some forms of doubts that you can easily reduce by simply adding more observations but not all. Seeing an infinitive amount of white swans doen’t help you to completely rule out the black one.
MarsColony_in10years: Yeah, thanks. Sorry about the nitpicking.
ChristianKl: I think an infinite number would allow you to rule out the possibility (of a black swan that is). I thought that the problem was simply that we could never get an infinite number of them, but then again: I’m not certain.
Very well written, I just wanted to confirm something, I was under the impression that since nothing has 100% certainty, nothing can have a 0% uncertainty, you could get closer and closer, but you can never actually reach it. If I’m wrong or misunderstanding this I would appreciate it if someone would correct me, thanks.
That’s my understanding as well. I was trying to say that, if you were to formalize all this mathematically, and took the limit as number of Bayesian updates n went to infinity, uncertainty would go to zero.
Since we don’t have infinite time to do an infinite number of updates, in practice there is always some level of uncertainty > 0%.
There are some forms of doubts that you can easily reduce by simply adding more observations but not all. Seeing an infinitive amount of white swans doen’t help you to completely rule out the black one.
MarsColony_in10years: Yeah, thanks. Sorry about the nitpicking.
ChristianKl: I think an infinite number would allow you to rule out the possibility (of a black swan that is). I thought that the problem was simply that we could never get an infinite number of them, but then again: I’m not certain.
To the extend that the word infinitive makes sense, you can see an infinitive number of white swans without seeing a black swan.