Questions tagged [probability]
Use for questions about chance and likelihood, and attempts to define "probability" logically and metaphysically.
25 questions from the last 365 days
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Interdisciplinary work on the anthropic principle: can a physicist do publishable philosophy on that topic? [closed]
Apologies for the wall of text. In the end it’s still a very compressed version of what I wanted to say.
My relevant background
I’m a postdoc in mathematical physics. My PhD was centered around the ...
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Is there a difference between "quantitative" and "qualitative" data?
I have seen ample talk both on here and in many philosophy articles that talk of probability may not make sense without objective, historical data.
For example, L. von Mises in Probability, Statistics ...
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Probability of it raining when it is in fact raining
Tried posting this question om Math SE but no satisfactory responses were forthcoming.
My question is, what is Pr(it is raining) when it's raining?
The answer feels straightforward, when it is raining,...
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Is there an asymmetric standard applied to zero probability events?
In Bayesian literature, probabilities are considered subjective, and it is recommended to never assign a zero probability to anything. This is because a zero probability as a credence implies that you ...
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If the fine-tuning argument doesn't prove improbability, is it rational to believe I won the lottery a billion times in a row?
The fine-tuning argument essentially tries to argue that it is improbable for the universe to be the way it is by pure happenstance.
A counter to this argument is that the universe is not improbable ...
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Evolution or instantaneous creation [closed]
Is the lack of the "in between" species expected during the process of evolution enough to disregard it as an origin of the variety of creatures on the planet over the theory of ...
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Are physical coin toss sequences really equally unlikely?
Suppose you have a coin that you just finished tossing 1,000 times and about 50% of the time it landed on heads, and 50% of the time it landed on tails, so you deem it to be fair.
Now, you are asked ...
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How does one resolve competing intuitions in philosophy?
At the risk of this being partially related to psychology (but perhaps not fully), I wanted to highlight this with an example. Suppose you have the following:
Event A: you predict a coin lands on ...
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Does the concept of an unknown probability make sense? [closed]
It seems common in the world and even in philosophy circles to say that we don’t know the probability of certain kinds of events. For example, one may say that we don’t know the probability of life ...
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In what ways has probability been applied or argued to have a role in ethical theory or moral decision-making?
Any thoughts? This question has been bugging me.
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Is similarity more fundamental than probability?
As philosophers like Alan Hajek have argued, there is no such thing as an unconditional probability of an event. Whether we realize it or not, all probabilities are conditional on a particular ...
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Have philosophers ever defined a notion of "luck" or "surprise" that is separate from probability?
I’ve been reflecting on the idea of luck, and I wonder if there is a way to define it objectively, or at least close to objectively.
We often use the concept of probability to describe the likelihood ...
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Is objective bayesianism and frequentism ultimately the same thing?
Bayesianism says that probability is a degree of belief and it is a system where one has prior probabilities for hypotheses and then updates them based on evidence.
Objective Bayesianism says that one ...
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Can probability be an ontological field with topological structure? [closed]
I'm exploring a conceptual framework I've been developing called Field-Topology Probability Theory (FTPT). It proposes a reinterpretation of probability - not as an abstract, epistemic measure, but as ...
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Did Hume think that probabilistic arguments are trivial restatements?
In David Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature, he has the following passage:
We are next to consider what effect a superior combination of chances can have upon the mind, and after what manner it ...
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