coolguy8472 This is just like saying if 1,000,000 people each try to eat a fully grown elephant in 2 seconds the probability of someone doing so is greater than if 5 people try. Wrong! The probably is always 0.
When it comes to the lottery the chance of winning, or guessing that someone will win, is the same for everyone. Guesswork doesn’t change this, it only a\narrows the margin down that SOMEONE will guess correctly.
Witnessed experiences (illusionary of otherwise) are not in the same ball park. — I like sushi
It's my best guess. Because the claim that claims more eyewitnesses has more persuasive power to some people. Double and triple hearsay is a persuasive enough topic for courts to at least discuss the issue before rejecting the idea of it being valid persuasive evidence. — coolguy8472
It's my best guess. — coolguy8472
Double and triple hearsay is a persuasive enough topic for courts to at least discuss the issue before rejecting the idea of it being valid persuasive evidence. — coolguy8472
Mathematically speaking they call such things “impossible” not “improbable” - like jumping to the moon. It is also impossible for sand to be randomly blown around and construct a sculpture of my face. Entropy doesn’t allow this. — I like sushi
Hearsay only provides evidence of the overheard (or otherwise recorded) statement being made. It's not evidence for the content of the claim. — Echarmion
Some people? What do you think? What are your reasons? Isn't this why you opened a discussion on a philosophy forum? — SophistiCat
Look up what "hearsay" means. "Double hearsay" would be something like "My cousin heard from her hairdresser that X won the lottery." Your case is completely different. — SophistiCat
Isn't the Bayesian position that there is no qualitative distinction between assumptions and knowledge? It's all just probabilities with different values. — Echarmion
Why can't evidence of the overheard also be considered evidence of the content of the claim? — coolguy8472
The reason Bayesian probability has been so controversial is in it's non-frequentist interpretations and usage of "prior" distributions, for when "prior" distributions are non-controversially applied they ironically represent objective posterior knowledge. And it makes no sense whatsoever to interpret flat priors as representing the state of ignorance of an experimenter, unless that prior is redundant in playing no role whatsoever in subsequent inferences.
If an assertion of ignorance was to influence the calculation of an expectation, then by definition the assertion isn't of ignorance but of knowledge or assumption. — sime
Statistically speaking yes. Impossible is 0. Improbable is near 0. — Coolguy
By definition, a hearsay witness has no information on the actual event in question. Hearing a claim does not make that claim more or less likely (unless the claim is about being overheard). — Echarmion
Is "Person 2"'s claim have a slightly higher probability of being correct due to the number of eye witnesses they claim are available? I'm just talking about the claim on its own, without doing further investigation like questioning the witnesses or any other analysis — coolguy8472
I think that numbers matter here. 10 witnesses make for a stronger case than just 1 or no witness at all. Multiple accounts that agree in content make it objective because it is unlikely that so many people are wrong about something. One person alone could be mistaken, hallucinating, deluded, etc.
However it seems that the value of witnesses is relative. 10 witnesses may be better than one/no witness but a 100 witnesses is better than just 10 witnesses. I think the number of witnesses should fit the nature of the claim. More out-of-the-ordinary the claim the more witnesses required. — TheMadFool
I would say instead "has no certain information on the actual event in question" it has possible information of the actual event in question. Because the claim on its own cannot scientifically verified need not imply that it follows that the likelihood of the hearsay being true is unchanged. — coolguy8472
All things being equal though I do think that more eyewitnesses make the claim slightly more likely. Unfortunately this is why people exaggerate or make stuff up to deceive others. For that reason I'd also say the more unlikely the claim and the more incentive to the lie, the less of an improvement the odds become when claiming more evidence within the claim. — coolguy8472
Hearsay evidence can increase the reliability of the witness, and thereby increase the likelihood of the claim being true. But it's not about the substance of the claim, that's what "hearsay" means. — Echarmion
You still haven't explained how this is supposed to work. Just claiming to have witnesses is just another claim. — Echarmion
I'm talking about in probability theory, not about practical persuasion in a court of law. If you were to:
1) grab the population of people who ever claimed to have won the lottery and have an eyewitness to back them up who actually won the lottery
2) divide it by the total number of people who claimed to have won the lottery and have an eyewitness to back them up
3) grab the population of people who claimed to have ever won the lottery and have 10 eyewitnesses to back them up who actually won the lottery
4) divided it by the total number of people who claimed to have won the lottery and have 10 eyewitness to back them up
5) compare these ratios
6) I think you would have a slightly higher ratio of people who claim more eyewitness testimony also have a slightly higher percentage of being correct in their claim — coolguy8472
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