[YG Conlang Archives] > [jboske group] > messages [Date Index] [Thread Index] >
On Mon, 13 Jan 2003, Jorge Llambias wrote: > > la xod cusku di'e > > >I believe that one of the 10 coins in my pocket is painted green. If I > >yank out a coin, I MUST admit there is a 1/10 chance of it being green. > >There is no choice. > > I have 10,000,000 coins. I have a scale I use to tell whether a > coin is fake or not. For each coin, I can use the scale to tell > that it is not fake: each coin weighs 1g. I have a bigger scale > I can use to weigh them all together. In this scale, they weigh > 9,999,995 g. I conclude that some coins must be fake, but I have > no (easy) way of knowing which ones. > > Would you say that I'm irrational because the scale I use does > not have infinite precision? Or should I just say that I have > no certain beliefs, given that I know that the scale I use > has finite precision? You'd be irrational if you followed the "paradox" and, even after performing that weighing and learning that some coins are fake, each time I hold up one of the coins you insist (without weighing it) that you are certain it's not one of the bad ones. If you have 10M beliefs, and one is wrong but you don't know which, then you are only (1 - 1/10M) certain of each of them. -- // if (!terrorist) // ignore (); // else collect_data ();