rationalistic probability(litterally just throwing shit out there)
Science relies on philosophy and the current philosophy of science is limited and in some cases useless. We need a new epistemology that is not scientific in nature to answer big questions.
The scientific method in principle is as follows; predict, test, interpret, theorize, repeat, this has major problems. The root of the issue is that for any set of data there are theoretically infinite possible explanations. In modern science we have no way to distinguish between these different possibilities. Oftentimes Occam’s Razor is used as an intuitive fill in for reasoning but intuition is known to be flawed at least in some circumstances. The reason why our scientific method will never realize this flaw from within the paradigm is because this critique is in principle unverifiable by scientific tests therefore unknowable through scientific methods. The reason for why the scientific method still works regardless of this is because it takes the simplest model based on akums razor therefore no matter what it can still make relatively easy predictions that are often correct if they are not correct then the model is changed.
What I am interested in is not what is predictable but what is true and real so in order to answer these questions we need a new paradigm. We can start with the principle of limiting what might be to what is possible this can be done using mathematics for example something can not both be and not be. But how do we place probabilities on things that are possible. In order to do this we need to have a starting principle of probability for one we can use bayesian methods in order to adjust probabilities with observations for example if we flip a coin and we get heads 10 out of 10 times we can make a distribution of the probabilities of each of the probabilities of getting heads. But this relies on an assumption: that all the possibilities are of equal starting distribution. But there is no proof that this is the case. What we are looking for is the philosophical foundation of probability theory. This comes in the form of what I am calling the theorem of equal probability: this theorem states that if given a random statement out of the set of all true or false statements then this statement is 50 percent likely to be true. This is because the set of all truth statements consists of two subsets one being statements tsub p the primary statements and the other being tsub i the inverse of the primary statements since every statement has inverse tsub can also be said to contain the inverse of the statements of t usb i in other words it goes both ways. The average truth value of t sub i = 1- avg t sub p thus the average of t sub p and t sub i is .5 in other words the average probability of a statement being true if given a random statement is 50 percent. From this we can have a starting distribution.
But this seems to present a paradox if the probability of a is fifty percent and the probability of b is also fifty percent then the probability of a and b is 25 percent but this seemingly contradicts our original statement. What i argue is that only irreducible statements:statements that can not be phrased in terms of and without using or and can not be phrased in terms of or without using and. This necessarily brings up the question what what objects are irreducible as these irreducible statements correlate to this irreducible objects. For that i will leave it up to the philosophers to debate.
This maybe would have made more sense as a Discord message in a rat server?
genuinely want to know why this got 21 downvotes. i am new to the culture of less wrong.
is it because?
1: the ideas are trash
2:the formatting is trash
3:it is incomprehensible
seriously please tell me
sinceraly
-not the sprayer
I downvoted because it’s self-declared shit and I don’t want shit on LessWrong.
That (and the misspelling in the title) primed me not to read very carefully, but what I did read was enough of #2 and #3 that I can’t even tell if there are coherent ideas present, so your #1 option can’t be evaluated.
oh, wait—the “theorem of equal probability” really does seem like trash. you’d need a LOT of support for what probability even meansbefore it was useful,even if i turns out to be a theorem.
first of all thank you for your response.
thank you for your precision, in the future i will assure you that i will try to be more clear in my writing(this is hard for me being both autistic and dyslexic) but even with this your downvote is understandable.
do you have any critique of the idea?
I’ll try.
True and real things are the absolutely most predictable things there are. Predictions of the false or unreal will sometimes be wrong. They’re absolutely not the same thing, but predictions are the closest we have to truth, until we experience the truth.
Note that probability is in the predictor, not (necessarily) in the universe itself. Truth is what happens, with probability 1.
Here’s the problem. This is just wrong. There are infinite numbers of true and false statements, so it’s not defined what possible “random” distribution of statements even means. If you show your work on why you say “theorem”, I’ll be able to point out the flawed axiom or step you used.
if u can’t even tell if there are coherent ideas present, downvoting is socioepistemologically bad. imagine universalising this reaction across the website, and ask urself what happens to the ideas that are so novel that they don’t neatly fit into existing explanatory paradigms.
imo, u shud only downvote stuff u think is bad after u understand them. socially disincentivising illegible stuff seems quite bad in general.
if otoh u downvote bc it seems to neglect existing work in related fields, see the underappreciated value of original thinking below the frontier. we don’t want to disincentivise ppl from reinventing stuff. if they came up w schmobability theory on their own, i’d encourage them to expand on it, rather than risk collapsing the seed by making them learn abt Bayes.
My guess is that this post was going over well-trodden ground, being mostly wrong yet taking kind of an authoratiative tone anyway, and doing so in a format that suggested it lacked any revision at all? I think the topics you’re grappling with are understandable things to be confused about, but on LessWrong, it’s generally treatead as better to express one’s uncertainty in a tone of uncertainty; and if the topic seems like one people should definitely have already poured some resources into exploring, e.g. probability theory, then asking if those explorations exist + where they might be seems like an obviously better approach to your confusion than a confident, free-form ramble. (Then, if those resources themselves leave you with confusion, you can express it and work on the problem from there. Alternatively, you could work through the whole problem yourself from first principles, and potentailly provide a novel and correct take on the topic; just, you did neither, which is probably where the downvotes came from.)
I guess, for existing resources which cover probabilitty theory, I’ve personally found explanations that spring out of attempts to build rational, probabalistic agents out of computers to be the most useful? Maybe read some of the articles linked on this page.
Sorry if this came off as condescending.
Edit: Actually, if talking to another sapient would be helpful here, I either recommend talking to chat-gpt about your probability confusions, or extend an offer to chat personally in private.
first of all thank your for the time to write your response as i said i am new here and it means a lot.
i am sorry if my post came off as authoritative but to me it seems you came off more as authoritative than i did. i generally think that it is better to write something novel and wrong than regurgitate already said information. if you have critiques of my ideas as you suggest by saying “(Then, if those resources themselves leave you with confusion, you can express it and work on the problem from there. Alternatively, you could work through the whole problem yourself from first principles, and potentially provide a novel and correct take on the topic; just, you did neither, which is probably where the downvotes came from.)” please express them, i cannot in a short way express how much i want my ideas to be critiqued. to me i seems that I did the latter of the two methodologies you presented—albeit with some changes---, at the very least i attempted to. again if you disagree then state why.
by the way i said “literally throwing shit out there” which seems clearly not authoritative.