What is your PhD in?

It seems some people like to sport "philosophy" in the same fashion the emperor strutted around in his new clothes.

You are still avoiding my question.

Sure I did, you said a whole lot of nothing.

You didn't answer the question.

Superficial nonsense. What actual skills do you have that could be used to advance STEM research?

It is a good thing then that I don't have a burning desire to persuade you.

Personally, I think philosophy is for those who are not focused enough for STEM study and research. However, don't worry, as you can keep piggybacking off the findings and pretend it was your own brilliance.

The simple fact that it is there is not a reason to include it. Determining what information to include is part of the process, you need actual justification, especially considering that your apporach leads to an impossible outcome. And I am only concerned with formal justifications.

There has been no justified reason at all as to why we should engage in fantasy over reality.

In relation to the problem in the OP:

Why do you need to include Y, Michael? There is no justified reason to do that.

It does not provide updated information for the original uncertainty of X or 2X, which is reason enough to leave it out and it will absolutely give untrue information. One of the values in your domain is not true, one of your subjective possible outcomes is not an objective possible outcome. So why are you modeling the subjective, when you can model the objective? Why is your subjective model superior to an objective model?

What is the point if you are just modeling yourself? Math and science should help us diverge from the self and step closer to the truth.

In the end all that philosophy really tells us is what we already knew

The more I read the responses to this thread, the more appreciation I grow for a good quality book.

I think the linear framework humans tend to think in makes hard determinism inviting to people. When we think about cause and effect we tend to think in terms of if A then B; however, what if there was an agent of causation in which if A then B was not true? Instead, as the stream of cause and effect passes through this agent it becomes if A then B or C or D, or even if A then {B, C, D}, or any other possible combination.

If I have the capacity for reason in such a way that I can assess possible outcomes of cause and effect, and I have force that I can apply to the world around me, then why can't I influence the posterior chain?

In fact by claiming I am a summation of cause and effect, you place me as part of cause and effect with all the same powers, and if external forces can shape my path, then it seems only reasonable to assume so can internal forces.

You are anthropomorphizing cause and effect. Objective cause and effect has no will of its own, that is a human trait.

Hard determinism is very black and white, which is why people grasp on to it; however, I think things are a bit more involved, and like I said the concept just has too many holes.

Correlation does not necessitate causation. So many people make that mistake, it is likely by far the most common error when assessing "evidence."

Seems like you made a choice to me.

We make choices all the time, some we make on the spot while others we take time to think about. That much should not be in dispute. In fact when we take time to study the various possible outcomes of our choices, new options may even arise for us to choose from. Options that we would have not considered before, but are now possible paths because we decided to invest more time in making our decisions. This seems a bit more involved than you are giving it credit for.

You can choose to respond to this post or not. That much should be self evident, which is intersubjectivally verifiable.

A bit of a side note, but I find it hypocrital how many non-believers reject God due to lack of evidence, but eagerly accept hard determinism even though it suffers from the same lack of evidence. Seems like selective skepticism to me.

Hard determinism has many flaws that should be kept in mind. It is an unfalsifiable claim, which means it should not be used as a standard for proof. It leads to infinite regression, since it states everything is the result of cause and effect.

However, I think the biggest error is the lack of defined systems, hard determinism precives all of existence as one system, which may be true but at the same time it leaves no account for local systems and their role. If everything is cause and effect then so is the human system, so why would we not consider the influence of the human themselves? They certainly have a role in all of this.

So I find the whole arumgent of hard determinism full of holes, unconvincing and just an inadequate explanation.

Let me know when you have learned enough to understand the difference between determinism and hard determinism.

The error is in making new assumptions based on Y. Before you see Y you know that envelope A, the one you were given, has the possibility to be X or 2X. Which reminds true even after seeing Y, as you don't know if it is Y equals X or 2X. So as to the uncertainty as to if you have X or 2X, which determines what envelope B is, Y provides no useful information, therefore it is not appropriate to change your existing uncertainty based on Y. If you change your assumptions based on Y then you include false information into solution and that is why you get misleading results.

If hard determinism were true, the function of decision making doesn't then fall into the hands of a normal human being. — GreyScorpio

If determinism is true, everything is both a cause and effect, that includes humans.

Your statement here shows how little thought you have put into this, we are very much shaped by the other humans around us.

You are the one that set the standard of proof. It would be nice if "philosophers" actually tried to live up to such standards, but I guess when it comes down to it that is asking a bit much of them.

don't think you have any right to tell me what I should believe. — GreyScorpio

In fact I think this could be considered a counter example against the concept of hard determinism. If I push a rock it has no choice but to roll the direction I will it; however, if that rock could resist my push then that is something else. It means it has a force or will to disrupt that line of cause and effect, which would result in a new line of cause and effect.

I don't think you have any right to tell me what I should believe. — GreyScorpio

If hard determinism were true, and I am an external agent then by your standards my function would be to tell you what to believe and you would have to comply, which makes the fact that you have decided to resist my external influence a contradictory and interesting decision.

just like we cannot understand the concept of God. — GreyScorpio

Gods are fantasies created by human imagination; it is not that hard to understand.

I posted the solution on the 6th post. However, without the stubborn refusal of reality, then I doubt many of the threads on these philosophy forums would go much of anywhere.

If you don't know what free means in the context of free will, then how is it possible you have empirical evidence against it? I think you need to get your thoughts in order before you decide what you believe.

Where is your empirical evidence? I thought this thread was about proof. Considerating that hard determinism is unfalsifiable I have my doubts your statement there is anything more than an opinion.

You just demonstrated free choice.

The subconscious mind makes some choices for you from learned behavior of the conscious mind. If you drive the same route to work everyday then your subconscious mind makes the decisions of where to go for you; the initial route, however, was chosen by your conscious mind. Of course the conscious mind can stop the process at any time and make the choice to drive a different way to work, or not even go to work.

Pick one:

A

B

C

Paralleling an example can be useful, but it also can be misleading. I rather stay focused on the problem in the OP.

If you don't change your assumptions upon seeing Y this problem becomes direct and accurate to solve.

The distribution in the other letter cannot be [Y/2, 2Y] as one of those values simply does not exist. You have still created a sample space with impossible outcomes. The truth is that Y is not usable information. The error is making new assumptions based on Y.

Well the whole expected value approach has some interesting aspects to it.

If A1=Y=X then B1=2X or if A2=Y=2X then B2=X, where Y is the amount you see opening envelope A and X is the unknown amount originally selected by the facilitator.

Then in case one

B1 > Y

In case two

Y > B2

So B1 >Y> B2

Which means

P(A1)Y+P(B1)2X > P(A2)Y+P(B2)X or more importantly P(A1)Y+P(B1)2X is not equal to P(A2)Y+P(B2)X.

So since you don't know which case you are in after seeing Y and they are not equal you can't really calculate the expected value. Now if you never opened A and never saw Y, that is a different story. So the only rational thing to do is pretend Y does not exist, then subjectively you can treat case one and case two with the same algebra.

*Edit

Or rather I should say that the inclusion of Y makes calculating the expect returns impossible.

I think it has more to do with set theory than probability.

Personally, I think there is a general misconception on these forums that Bayesian inference is an excuse to model the subjective rather than the objective; however, that approach is too open to observer bias. Priors assumptions need to be fully justified as does the posterior. Not only do we need to scrutinize the prior but also what information is acceptable for our posterior and perhaps for these reasons a Bayesian inference is just not appropriate for this problem.

My problem with this is that I feel like the numbers are just being bent until you get the answer you want.

There are two things we can use probability models for; making predictions and to better understand relations by creating an accurate model. You got the mid range you are looking for, but does your model explain the problem correctly?