Re: probability vs. statistics (was Re: Model of induction)

Posted by gepr on Dec 13, 2016; 3:36pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Model-of-induction-tp7588431p7588450.html


Excellent!  My opponent will be very happy when I make that concession.  It's interesting that, for this argument, I've adopted the Platonic perspective despite being a constructivist myself.  And it's interesting that my current position (that the math world is extant and static) seems to rely a bit on viewing probability theory as a special subset of math overall.  But that perspective seems to encourage me to think about the ontological/metaphysical aspects.  Perhaps it's only because I'm not a mathematician.

Thanks!

On 12/13/2016 05:00 AM, Eric Charles wrote:

> I don't have an answer per se, but I have some relevant information:
>
> Back in the early days of statistics, one could become a pariah in the eyes
> of the field if it became suspected one had surreptitiously used Bayes'
> Theorem in a proof. This was because the early statisticians believed
> future events were probable. They really, deeply believed it. They were
> defining a new world view, to be contrasted with the deterministic world
> view. If you smoked, there was a probability that in the future you might
> get cancer; it was not certain, nothing was predetermined. In such a
> context, any talk of backwards-probability is nonsensical. After you have
> lung cancer, there is not "a probability" that you smoked. Either you did
> or you did not; it already happened! Thus, at least for the early
> statisticians, people like Fisher, time was inherent to claims about
> probability.
>
> Now, it is worth noting that one can wager on past events of any kind,
> given someone willing to take the bet. And in such a context, Bayes'
> Theorem can be mighty useful. The Theorem is thus quite popular these days,
> but that is a different matter. Whatever the results of such equations are
> --- between 1 and 0, having certain properties, etc. --- so long as the
> results refer to past events, Fisher and many others would have insisted
> that the result is not "a probability" that said event occurred.
>
> Also, from what I can tell, as mathematicians became more prevalent in
> statistics, as opposed to the grand tradition of scientist-philosophers who
> happened to be highly proficient in mathematics, such
> ontological/metaphysical points seem to have become much less important.

--
␦glen?

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