Posted by
glen ep ropella on
Dec 05, 2013; 5:34pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Why-I-was-wrong-about-the-nuclear-option-tp7584425p7584449.html
On 12/04/2013 07:39 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Yes (he would say), assuming that you were chosen at random from the
> population of humans, it is a VALID inference from the fact that you can
> break concrete that humans can break concrete. It is valid because we
> would, if we continued to pick random individuals indefinitely come
> ultimately to the correct conclusion, say, that less than .01 percent of
> humans can break concrete. Unfortunately, though valid, this inference is
> extraordinarily "weak". The adjective "weak" seems to relate to how much
> money you should be willing to bet on it. In this case, with the sample
> size at one, and the population at billions, Peirce would advise you to bet
> very little if anything, until you had a much larger sample.
This effectively demonstrates the fragility of logic (or any purely
delusional/mental construct). In practice, were you to go around
actually testing people against concrete, the success rate would
_increase_ over time for 2 reasons: 1) people would game the test and 2)
your test would evolve.
In the end, inference relies, in a rather circular way, on ever more
inference.
--
glen ep ropella -- 971-255-2847
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