You’re being too verbose, which makes me personally find discussion with you rather tiring, and you’re not addressing the actual points I’m making. Let me try to ask some more specific questions
1) Below which point do you want us treating a prior probability as effectively 0, and should never be updated upwards no matter what evidence? E.g. one in a billion? One in a trillion? What’s the exact point, and can you justify it to me?
2) Why do you keep talking about things not being “causally linked”, since all of the examples of Pascal’s mugging given above do describe causal links? It’s not as if I said anything weird about acausal trade or some such, every example I gave describes normal causal links.
Assigning it a probability of 0 is what humans do, after all, when it call comes down to it,
Humans don’t tend to explicitly assign probabilities at all.
If someone walks up to you on the street and claims souls exist, does that change the probability that souls exist? No, it doesn’t.
Actually since people rarely bother to claim that things exist when they actually do (e.g. nobody is going around claiming “tables exist”, “the sun exists”) such people claiming that souls exist are probably minor evidence against their existence.
I wouldn’t debate with someone who assigns a “probability of 0” to anything (especially as in “actual 0″), other than to link to any introduction to Bayesian probability. But your time is of course your own :-), and I’m biting the lure too often, myself.
people claiming that souls exist are probably minor evidence against their existence
Well, it points to the belief as being one which constantly needs to be reaffirmed, so it at least hints at some controversy regarding the belief (alternative: It could be in-group identity affirming). Whether you regard that as evidence in favor (evolution) or against (resurrection) the belief depends on how cynical you are about human group beliefs in general.
You’re being too verbose, which makes me personally find discussion with you rather tiring, and you’re not addressing the actual points I’m making. Let me try to ask some more specific questions
1) Below which point do you want us treating a prior probability as effectively 0, and should never be updated upwards no matter what evidence? E.g. one in a billion? One in a trillion? What’s the exact point, and can you justify it to me?
2) Why do you keep talking about things not being “causally linked”, since all of the examples of Pascal’s mugging given above do describe causal links? It’s not as if I said anything weird about acausal trade or some such, every example I gave describes normal causal links.
Humans don’t tend to explicitly assign probabilities at all.
Actually since people rarely bother to claim that things exist when they actually do (e.g. nobody is going around claiming “tables exist”, “the sun exists”) such people claiming that souls exist are probably minor evidence against their existence.
I wouldn’t debate with someone who assigns a “probability of 0” to anything (especially as in “actual 0″), other than to link to any introduction to Bayesian probability. But your time is of course your own :-), and I’m biting the lure too often, myself.
Well, it points to the belief as being one which constantly needs to be reaffirmed, so it at least hints at some controversy regarding the belief (alternative: It could be in-group identity affirming). Whether you regard that as evidence in favor (evolution) or against (resurrection) the belief depends on how cynical you are about human group beliefs in general.