It could be apocryphal, and it doesn’t help that it seems like something I heard about a long time ago, but as far as I know, when you start to drown the best of your intentions are overcome by your instinct for self preservation. However, Google turns up a result from the Telegraph about a recent case in which someone may indeed have drowned himself in a bucket of water, although there seems to be some confusion over the case. Thanks for calling me on it—I really am now, in fact, not certain I couldn’t.
I couldn’t think of a better example at the time, though, so the spirit of the argument will have to stand in for its questionable veracity.
When an inmate is found drowned in a bucket of water in a cell with three other inmates, my first theory is not suicide while the other inmates are sleeping.
You’re right, and I won’t argue it. The idea of not impossible is one I have difficulty with, though. In my original post, replace with , for lack of a better alternative. With anosognosia, that thing is “recognize left-arm paralysis”. The reason I didn’t stick with that is because I don’t know if I have anosognosia or not, which is another layer of uncertainty. Stripped down, though, this is what I’m saying: it seems I should be uncertain about things I know to be certain, and that seems dishonest. I understand the argument against infinite certainty, and that 0 And 1 Are Not Probabilities. Perhaps it’s because, as EY suggests, people often say “I can’t be certain” simply to establish themselves as rational rather than actually assessing probability. Perhaps it’s simply because I dislike an infinitely uncertain universe. Of course, the universe isn’t interested in what I like. The map, as ever, is not the territory.
You should say that something is impossible, without intending that to mean zero probability, if you can safely antipredict that event. Antiprediction means that you think of an event as if it can’t happen. Intuition resulting from thinking of a sufficiently low-probability event as impossible is more accurate than intuition resulting from thinking of it as still possible.
Antiprediction is a very interesting suggestion. Your aggressive reasoning in this thread has changed the way I think about a few things. Well done, and thanks!
It could be apocryphal, and it doesn’t help that it seems like something I heard about a long time ago, but as far as I know, when you start to drown the best of your intentions are overcome by your instinct for self preservation. However, Google turns up a result from the Telegraph about a recent case in which someone may indeed have drowned himself in a bucket of water, although there seems to be some confusion over the case. Thanks for calling me on it—I really am now, in fact, not certain I couldn’t.
I couldn’t think of a better example at the time, though, so the spirit of the argument will have to stand in for its questionable veracity.
When an inmate is found drowned in a bucket of water in a cell with three other inmates, my first theory is not suicide while the other inmates are sleeping.
In a Macedonian jail, accused of raping and murdering four elderly women? I had the same reaction.
Even if no examples of this were available, it’s not the kind of evidence that is enough to claim that something is impossible.
You’re right, and I won’t argue it. The idea of not impossible is one I have difficulty with, though. In my original post, replace with , for lack of a better alternative. With anosognosia, that thing is “recognize left-arm paralysis”. The reason I didn’t stick with that is because I don’t know if I have anosognosia or not, which is another layer of uncertainty. Stripped down, though, this is what I’m saying: it seems I should be uncertain about things I know to be certain, and that seems dishonest. I understand the argument against infinite certainty, and that 0 And 1 Are Not Probabilities. Perhaps it’s because, as EY suggests, people often say “I can’t be certain” simply to establish themselves as rational rather than actually assessing probability. Perhaps it’s simply because I dislike an infinitely uncertain universe. Of course, the universe isn’t interested in what I like. The map, as ever, is not the territory.
You should say that something is impossible, without intending that to mean zero probability, if you can safely antipredict that event. Antiprediction means that you think of an event as if it can’t happen. Intuition resulting from thinking of a sufficiently low-probability event as impossible is more accurate than intuition resulting from thinking of it as still possible.
Antiprediction is a very interesting suggestion. Your aggressive reasoning in this thread has changed the way I think about a few things. Well done, and thanks!