But then the dream is doing zero work: your friend could simply say God told him the proof of the conjecture, and your situation is the same—if the proof checks out then you need to compare base rate for gods delivering math proofs and your friend secretly having a hobby of being a mathematician and succeeding etc to see whether it changes your beliefs.
And delivering a mathematical proof is surely not what >99% of God’s previous statements were doing.
And delivering a mathematical proof is surely not what >99% of God’s previous statements were doing.
How do you know? People mention “divine inspiration” quite frequently. The point is that the statement is untestable and thus irrelevant, not that it is most likely false.
I don’t think the version with the math proof is meaningless in a probabilistic sense; my point is that the meaning comes from an additional factor unrelated to the dream, and I think Hobbes would agree that in the absence of any additional aspect of God speaking to the dreamer such as prophecies (objectively verifiable, like the proof!) there’s no reason to believe him. But these additional aspects are the strange and unusual things which might oblige Hobbes to believe him, not the speech in a dream.
And delivering a mathematical proof is surely not what >99% of God’s previous statements were doing.
Why is that relevant? To see the flaw in your reasoning replace “God” with “mathematician X” and notice that >99% of mathematician X’s previous statements aren’t delivering mathematics proofs either.
But then the dream is doing zero work: your friend could simply say God told him the proof of the conjecture, and your situation is the same—if the proof checks out then you need to compare base rate for gods delivering math proofs and your friend secretly having a hobby of being a mathematician and succeeding etc to see whether it changes your beliefs.
And delivering a mathematical proof is surely not what >99% of God’s previous statements were doing.
How do you know? People mention “divine inspiration” quite frequently. The point is that the statement is untestable and thus irrelevant, not that it is most likely false.
I don’t think the version with the math proof is meaningless in a probabilistic sense; my point is that the meaning comes from an additional factor unrelated to the dream, and I think Hobbes would agree that in the absence of any additional aspect of God speaking to the dreamer such as prophecies (objectively verifiable, like the proof!) there’s no reason to believe him. But these additional aspects are the strange and unusual things which might oblige Hobbes to believe him, not the speech in a dream.
Why is that relevant? To see the flaw in your reasoning replace “God” with “mathematician X” and notice that >99% of mathematician X’s previous statements aren’t delivering mathematics proofs either.
Statements in general was not the reference class.