From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Thu Sep 15 2005 - 16:24:23 MDT
Russell Wallace wrote:
> On 9/15/05, *Eliezer S. Yudkowsky* <sentience@pobox.com
> <mailto:sentience@pobox.com>> wrote:
>
> Actually, I also need to specify that at least one nonblack object is
> known to exist in every possible world; along with the requirement that,
> in at least one possible world containing nonblack ravens, the ratio of
> these nonblack ravens to all other nonblack objects does not approach
> zero; and the requirement that the proposition "All ravens are black"
> not initially have prior probability equal to zero; in order for my
> general conclusion to hold that randomly sampling a nonblack object and
> finding it to be a nonraven ALWAYS increases the probability assigned to
> the proposition "All ravens are black." (Assuming I haven't missed any
> other necessary assumptions.)
>
> You also need to assume the world has no structure.
>
> Suppose in real life you looked around at random, saw a white speck, and
> on closer inspection found it to be a white crow. That's a nonblack
> nonraven, but it would actually count as strong evidence _against_ the
> proposition that all ravens are black: crows and ravens are closely
> related, and if the one species can produce the occasional albino, the
> other probably can too.
Yes, sorry, I'd stated that condition previously but left it out on my
restatement.
-- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://intelligence.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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