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nothrabannosiryesterday at 8:11 PM1 replyview on HN

You use research as an argument, which is valid in a conversation where nobody has any information about specifics. E.g. in the pre-life, before a soul is about to be incarnated, you can point to that research and say: you are more likely than not to behave this way. Were the soul to reply, “no I am not, I know myself”, you could call them delusional.

But you’re talking to a person who can point at their actual life and say: I have been in that exact situation and I can confirm that I did not behave that way.

That’s a new observation, and afai understand Bayesian statistics, this is the moment where we must update our priors: how likely is someone who has observed themselves in the past not to behave that way, to behave that way?

Your argument is now incomplete.

Maybe someone with real understanding of Bayesian statistics can frame this better, or tell me why I’m wrong XD


Replies

threethirtytwoyesterday at 9:23 PM

Well how is his experience valid? He may be lying or unaware or delusional or lying to himself. All very common human behaviors.

> Your argument is now incomplete

If my argument is scientific and it’s incomplete then are all scientific arguments incomplete? If science is our best way of determining fact from fiction in reality then based off of the aforementioned logic isn’t the best possible way for humans to determine truth incomplete?

Also in Your attempt to prove me wrong have you thought about how MORE incomplete his argument was?