My (revised) claim is that the hypothesis where the sun rising every day until explosion / star death / heat death / planetary destruction / other common cataclysmic event of the types we usually expect to end the rising of the sun is a simpler one than any hypothesis where we observe the sun not rising before observing such a cataclysmic event or any evidence thereof (e.g. the Earth just happened to stop rotating during that 24-hour period, maybe because someone messed up their warp engine experiment or something)¹.
The “the odds are evenly divided between the two” part of the grandparent does need revision in light of this, though.
The fun part of this one is that it doesn’t mean the sun stops rising forever, either. And if the Earth also stopped revolving around the sun… well, then we have one hell of a problem. Not that yearly daylight cycles isn’t a problem for a crazy load of other reasons, that is. Diving face-first into a star just sounds a bit more unpleasant and existentially-dooming.
In fact, the sun will not rise every day. It’s not clear if the physics where things can happen forever is simpler than physics where things cannot.
Point taken. I was oversimplifying it in my mind.
My (revised) claim is that the hypothesis where the sun rising every day until explosion / star death / heat death / planetary destruction / other common cataclysmic event of the types we usually expect to end the rising of the sun is a simpler one than any hypothesis where we observe the sun not rising before observing such a cataclysmic event or any evidence thereof (e.g. the Earth just happened to stop rotating during that 24-hour period, maybe because someone messed up their warp engine experiment or something)¹.
The “the odds are evenly divided between the two” part of the grandparent does need revision in light of this, though.
The fun part of this one is that it doesn’t mean the sun stops rising forever, either. And if the Earth also stopped revolving around the sun… well, then we have one hell of a problem. Not that yearly daylight cycles isn’t a problem for a crazy load of other reasons, that is. Diving face-first into a star just sounds a bit more unpleasant and existentially-dooming.
Are you being deliberately obtuse? When Laplace asked “what is the chance the Sun will rise tomorrow” he was obviously describing a 24 hour period.
The point is that concise hypotheses are trickier than they seem.