Thursday, April 10, 2025

The missing link in Bayes' Theorem

Bayes' Theorem implies that if you have sufficiently strong priors, evidence to the contrary does not matter. It is, sort of a "proof" (the irony of this word in this context is not lost on yours truly) of "whatever you believe is true, is true".

But where's the catch? What makes the argument sound so flimsy?

It just occurred to me what the problem is -- the assumption that "death" is real.

Our idea of objective truth is that it is dictated and judged by "death" and "death" alone.

The only way to finally determine whether somebody is delusional or not is whether they die while following their beliefs. Anything else seems to be a matter of opinion, where upon civilized people agree to disagree.

But what if they don't die? If the idea of death is truly illusional, *then* we must accept, in a kind of collegial spirit, that all opinions held by fellow souls must be equally valid. To denounce anyone's opinion is to curse with death -- ineffective of course, but to the accurser it is.

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