What about the idea of grounding the notion of probability in terms of the frequency in the limit of a hypothetical infinite series of trials, what philosophers call "hypothetical frequentism"? The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy discussion of this at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/probability-interpret/#FreInt notes the objection that the limit depends on the order we count the trials, but it seems pretty natural to use temporal ordering in this case. Aside from the philosophical objection that we don't have any clear a priori justification for privileging temporal ordering in this way, are there any objections of a more technical nature to hypothetical frequentism with temporal ordering (scenarios where it would give you a different answer from standard probability theory), or are the objections purely philosophical?
On Mon, Nov 21, 2022 at 7:33 PM Bruce Kellett <bhkellet...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Tue, Nov 22, 2022 at 11:08 AM Brent Meeker <meekerbr...@gmail.com> > wrote: > >> He's wrong that frequentism does not empirically support probability >> statements. He goes off on a tangent by referring to "other gamblers". >> Nothing in physics is certain, yet Deutsch takes a bunch of definite >> assertions and claims they alone are the real physics. >> > > His critique of frequentism is just a recap of arguments that are well > known -- you cannot ground probability theory in frequentism, or the idea > that probabilities are nothing more than ratios of long-run frequencies. > Long-run frequencies might approximate the probabilities, but they cannot > be used to ground probability theory -- for well known reasons. I agree > that he goes off on a number of irrelevant tangents, and he is wrong to > suppose that frequentism is a main-stream theory of probability (at least, > these days). > > Bruce > > On 11/20/2022 4:28 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: >> >> On Mon, Nov 21, 2022 at 2:52 AM smitra <smi...@zonnet.nl> wrote: >> >>> Probability cannot be a fundamental concept in physics as explained >>> here: >>> >>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfzSE4Hoxbc >> >> >> I'm afraid Deutsch is a bit too glib in this lecture. He hasn't, despite >> his best efforts, removed probability from physics. For example, in quantum >> mechanics, he has not explained why, if one measures the z-spin of a >> spin-half particle prepared in an eigenstate of x-spin, one gets only one >> result -- either z-spin-up or z-spin-down. If one has eliminated >> probability, one should be able to explain which result one gets, and why. >> It is no solution to say that with many-worlds, that both results are >> obtained by disjoint copies of the experimenter. The experimenter is just >> one copy, and one would have to explain the result for each individual >> separately. Many worlds does not explain why I, for example, see only >> z-spin-up and not z-spin-down. To make sense of that, we need a viable >> concept of probability and the Born rule. >> >> Bruce >> >> -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLQgSxrbySZNq-1HOFOu_7aie5y3Av3bMcYvB0Gp7hyBHg%40mail.gmail.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLQgSxrbySZNq-1HOFOu_7aie5y3Av3bMcYvB0Gp7hyBHg%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAPCWU3LS%2BbyjV4i8_m6trB4UM9xUOHK0wbQDz%2Bk2sPSX%2BeE3ng%40mail.gmail.com.
