[lit-ideas] Re: Back to Popper (and further back to Hume)

Are these African swans or European swans?

yrs,
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----- Original Message ----- From: "John McCreery" <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx> 
To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, November 23, 2006 10:53 PM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Back to Popper (and further back to Hume)



On 11/24/06, Eric Yost <eyost1132@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


______

You are given a proposition: "All swans are white".

You are given three boxes to test the proposition.

You open Box 1: in it is a white swan.

Box 2: is empty.

Box 3: you are not allowed to open. Until, that is, you have
found a way to say _as a probability_ what should _probably_
be in the box.



As any decent statistician will tell you two observations are far too
small a sample to say anything about the probability of a third.

John

--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
http://www.wordworks.jp/

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