Spike ,'Conversations with Dead People'
Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, duct tape, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.
Poor warrior anemones. I wonder if other anemones offer them support... like, say, enemy anemone amenities.
eta: Of course, other sea creatures might steal them, resulting in enemy anemone amenities for manatees.
Or if the manetees provide them: enemy anemone manatees amenities.
enemy anemone manatees amenities
that's insanity
And, if there was only the one type of amenity, it would be enemy anemone manatee amenity monotony.
Unless you weren't sure. Then it'd be enemy anemone manatee amenity monotony, apparantly.
The Bayesian approach is very powerful if you can put in some prior probabilities, collect some data, and then revise the probability estimates based on the fit of your model to the data. After several iterations you can arrive at an efficient and accurate answer. But if there are no data-based iterations? If you start and end the process with your own assumptions, which are of unknown quality? I just don’t understand what has been accomplished.
That's a great point to make about Swinburne, although I think he has a lot more going for him than "assumptions ... of unknown quality". He gives all sorts of philosophical arguments for the quality of his assumptions. They're assumptions that don't exactly have empirical data going for them or against them. Still, his project--trying to prove the existence of God using all of the universe as the data to be explained (e.g., what is the probability of there being a universe given an all-loving, all-powerful God)--must look quite weird from a scientist's point of view.
A friend of mine's slogan used to be "No brain, no pain," which covers quite a lot of Massachusetts drivers.
I go away for a few hours, and philosophy breaks out!
I'm a little rusty with my probability, but does the probability of there being a universe given an all-loving, all-powerful God have anything to do with the probability of an all-loving, all-powerful God given the existence of the universe?
Still, his project--trying to prove the existence of God using all of the universe as the data to be explained (e.g., what is the probability of there being a universe given an all-loving, all-powerful God)--must look quite weird from a scientist's point of view.
Yes, it's a BIG project in a way that most science is not. Most scientists have to accept that their career will be spent in a sort of professional myopia-always focused on the next little step. I think it was Goethe who said that "the scientist must live as though he is going to be 300 years old." By contrast philosopy and mathematics are BIG and can focus on the horizon.
I'm a little rusty with my probability, but does the probability of there being a universe given an all-loving, all-powerful God have anything to do with the probability of an all-loving, all-powerful God given the existence of the universe?
If you know the marginals (the unconditional probability of a universe and the unconditional probability of an all-loving, all-powerful God) then the relationship between Tommy's two probabilities can be found through the Bayesian techniques used by Swinburne. If you don't know the marginals then you can't answer the question.
I'm a little rusty with my probability, but does the probability of there being a universe given an all-loving, all-powerful God have anything to do with the probability of an all-loving, all-powerful God given the existence of the universe?
I think I would argue no, as I think your first conditional probability is 1. (That is, an ALAPG would necessarily have both the desire and power to create a Universe, to spread his beneficence.) If it is 1 regardless of the value of the second conditional probability, they'll be independent in the statistical sense.