If this could be instantaneously constructed, somehow teleported into existence, then it would continue to exist for a little while (its self-gravity would start to crush it in fairly short order). However that doesn’t guarantee that a violent unicorn must exist, because it requires that unicorns (with their magic, and virgin sensing powers, and whatnot) must already exist in general.īut (and this may be more at the heart of the question), given an infinitely large universe that’s more or less homogeneous (lots of “stuff”, like the part of the universe we can see with telescopes, instead of just being empty forever), then pretty much anything that’s remotely possible, that could conceivably be the result of a string of remotely possible causes (e.g., horse begets unicorn begets violent unicorn), will happen somewhere.Īs a slightly less fantastical example, we can imagine creating, say, an array of Tinker Toys™ linked together and spanning light-years of space. For example, it may be possible to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the probability that a unicorn is violent is 5%, given that unicorns exist (when a scientist says “given”, they’re about to spit out some priors). You can generalize the priors a lot, but you can never quite get rid of all of them. In this general case, you may have a tiny, non-zero probability, but if it’s based on priors that are themselves impossible, then the event itself may also be impossible. The probability that a 4 will be rolled depends on what kind of die is being rolled, if it’s weighted, or even if dice exist. The probability that it will rain depends on the place, time, season, whether or not it rained yesterday, etc. In order to know the probability of getting a particular result, you must have prior knowledge of what die is being rolled.īefore you can find a probability that’s an actual number, you need to know something about the priors. The probability of a particular event is dependent on “priors” or “conditions”.
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