Search Results

An explanation is analogous to data compression. We have a large amount of data, that we explain with a short, simple rule. For example, you may plot a lot of (x, y) points and draw a regression lin …

Yes, it is knowledge. "X = X" is not so trivial that it fails to be knowledge. It's actually a little subtle: what does "X = X" actually mean? For this we need to know what "=" means, which is the …

Well, first of all, the probability of a conjunction of two events is never more, and usually less, than the probability of either event alone. P(A ∩ B) <= P(A) and P(A ∩ B) <= P(B) for any events A …

Most people can picture things and places when their eyes are closed. Some people apparently can't. These people are said to have aphantasia. If you're asking this question, maybe that's you? Peop …

Let me see if I understand you correctly. You are saying: A. Whether a person is justified in holding a belief X is a question of whether they have sufficient evidence that directly supports X. B. Whe …

This is essentially maximum likelihood estimation. If you replace your credence levels with probability distributions, finding truth values for your propositions that maximize the credence (subject t …

Everything is uncertain, including uncertainty, for the simple reason that your brain is just a machine, and machines can fail for a variety of reasons. If you're willing to accept that something as …

It's conceivable that science will go through an infinite series of progressively finer explanations as you say (or potentially infinite but actually only during the finite time humans exist). This p …

Some numbers can be found in the wiki article on Cyc: The back-of-the-envelope calculations by Doug, Alan, and their colleagues (including Marvin Minsky, Allen Newell, Edward Feigenbaum, and John McC …

Well, the truth itself is the way things are, and like you're saying, there isn't so much we can do to further define that. It just is. But there's a second consideration, which is that humans make cl …

It's not about which particular people consider it justified. A million people can all be wrong together. Whether they do or don't consider it justified has no bearing on whether it actually is justif …

A good question. Every machine is fallible, including the human brain; this means that when the human brain comes up with any conclusion, there is always the possibility it made an error and came to t …

Your argument hinges on whether the sentences doubting the existence of language are themselves instances of language with perfect certainty. If I doubt that this sentence right here is an instance of …

You are right. A sound mathematical proof remains sound regardless of how many people disagree with it or what their qualifications are. We may think of Cantor, who was ridiculed by mathematicians of …

It comes down to how you choose to define the word, "knowledge." Naively, we might define "knowledge" as something you can be absolutely sure of with no chance of being proved wrong. But when we consi …