On 3 July 2014 05:16, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> wrote: > On 01 Jul 2014, at 21:16, meekerdb wrote: > > On 7/1/2014 9:40 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > But you don't have to prove something doesn't exist to reasonably fail > to believe that it does. I don't have proof that there is no teapot > orbiting Jupiter, but that doesn't make me epitemologically irresponsible > to assert I don't believe there is one. > > > Careful as "I don't believe there is a teapot" is different from "I > believe there is no teapot". > > Personally, I don't believe that there is teapot orbiting Jupiter, but > why would I believe that there is no teapot? I have no real evidences for > that too. I have only a speculation extrapolated from my limited knowledge > of teapot and Jupiter. > > I might *bet* that there is no teapot, but then I can easily conceive > losing the bet, by the usual "bad luck". > > > How you would bet and at what odds is the real measure of belief. I think > you believe there is no teapot. > > I think that the presence of such teapot is highly implausible. But I > can't be sure. > > I think the presence of my own teapot at home is highly plausible, but I can't be completely sure about that either.
For all we know the solar system may be littered with teapots left by visiting aliens. I wouldn't give the idea house room if designing the shielding on a space craft, and if pressed I would work out the chances of it being true using the Drake equation (with the Arthur Dent modification) and no doubt end up with the probability being exceedingly low. But I don't believe "there is no teapot". I do believe it is highly unlikely that there is one (or more). -- 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 [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
