The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[eggyk]

That is unfortunately a common misconception: that probabilities are "physical" properties like temperatures or latitudes, that can be measured or calculated in an objective way.

But the truth is like I stated above.

Probabilities cannot be measured by some "You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (p.37)".   

Probability theory cannot produce any specific probability, not even the popular 50% for heads in a coin toss. It only gives math formulas that tell how to keep one's probabilities consistent: like "your probability of heads plus your probability of tails cannot exceed 1.0, and the difference must be your probability of all other outcomes combined, including the coin falling on its edge or being snatched by a magpie in mid-air."  But ultimately all your probabilities will depend on some key probabilities that you can and must choose without a mathematical justification.

Joe throws a die, and his probability of it showing '3' is 1/6 is because he believes that there is only one '3' on that die, and has no reason tho give one side of the cube more probability than any other, and he knows that the probabilities must add to 1.

His grandma Jane is sitting at his side, but her probability of a '3' is 80% because she had a vivid dream where her great-great-grandfather appeared and told her to bet on '3'.  

My probability of a '3' is 50% because I used my parlor magician skills to replace Joe's die by one that has '3' on three of the sides.  Thus I bet $12 on '3' against his $24 on any other number.  Probability theory then tells me that my expected win is 0.5 x $24 - 0.5 x $12 = $12; while the same theory tells him that his expected win is 5/6 x $12 - 1/6 x $24 = $6.

But I did not notice that Penn and Teller are sitting next to me, that they saw my swindle, and that they counteracted it by replacing the die with another one that is heavily loaded on the '4' side. Based on a few test throws they did previosly with that die, their probability of a '3' is only 5%.

But none of us realized that the elderly gentleman sitting next to Joe was his uncle Uri Geller, who proceeded to use his psychokinetic abilities to make sure that the die always came to rest with the '3' side up.  (While bending everyone's car keys as an unintentional side effect.) So his probability of a '3' is 100%.

And all six of us are correct according to probability theory.

This is ridiculous. In every case, for every person, there is a 100% chance of a 3 facing up when the die is rolled because that is the reality of the situation. 5 people just have incorrect starting assumptions. Their "being correct" amounts to "they correctly calculated their answer from incorrect numbers", which means they are wrong. If they were to test their probabilities by rolling the dice over and over, they would quickly be proved wrong, and would have to change their assumptions. 

This gets to the fundamental basis of discussing reality. Unless you are going to start claiming that we are all living in literally different realities, we must assume that everything being said has some underlying factual or logical basis that can be tested in some way. Your underlying assumptions about the VMS are either right or wrong (or a mix) because they are assertions about the properties of reality itself. 

So, if your underlying assumptions used to calculate your probabilities are wrong, your probabilities are likely correctly calculated, but wrong with regards to reality.

Aren't we all trying to get closer to the actual truth here? Not my truth, not your truth, THE truth. The VMS is something. There do exist hypothetical correct assumptions about its nature. We should be trying to determine what they are, and then running probability theory against that. Not whatever this is.

Because I know that many people are already firmly convinced that the text is a heavily encrypted European language, or random gibberish, or Bavarian or Greek or whatever with a non-standard spelling.

If you are convinced that that is the reason people have an issue with your methodology here, please reconsider. This almost feels like its getting tribal. I'm sure many of us here are discussing this in good faith and with an open mind.