There is still—almost always—an (arbitrarily) small chance that even “ridiculous” statements turn out to be true.
E.g., maybe the Earth IS flat, and we have just been brainwashed by an advanced alien race to perceive physics such that it appears spherical. Very very very very unlikely, but not impossible.
Note that from Bayes’ Theorem, if your prior is either 0 or 1, then no amount of evidence can change it. Which for a rationalist is a horrible position to be in, since it basically means that you have stopped learning and your beliefs are now disentangled from reality.
Guess I’m not responding to those Holocaust deniers then. Or even to homeopaths or young earth creationists.
Yes indeed.
There is still—almost always—an (arbitrarily) small chance that even “ridiculous” statements turn out to be true.
E.g., maybe the Earth IS flat, and we have just been brainwashed by an advanced alien race to perceive physics such that it appears spherical. Very very very very unlikely, but not impossible.
Note that from Bayes’ Theorem, if your prior is either 0 or 1, then no amount of evidence can change it. Which for a rationalist is a horrible position to be in, since it basically means that you have stopped learning and your beliefs are now disentangled from reality.