Thank you Lee and Glen both, Yes, I could not disagree.
There is an interesting question, Glen, on which I don't have a dog in the fight either way. Is the worry about induction only (or even mostly) about the origin of conjectures, or is it (equally much, or even mostly) about the source of confidence in conjectures? The issue of what we would like to regard as truth values seems to me to suggest at least large weight on the latter. I think, "truth" descending from a common root of "trust" and so forth. I look forward to Lee's particular refutation, because I was wondering whether I would argue against the same point myself, say for flipping coins where there are only two possibilities, and trying to decide whether it is better to expect that the next one will be the same as previous ones, or not. But even there, I might niggle with something on algorithm complexity and description length, and argue that it is "harder" to expect a violation of a long string of repeats, than it is for a short string. But, I look forward to listening to Lee's refutation. All best, Eric On Mar 28, 2012, at 4:06 PM, lrudo...@meganet.net wrote: > Eric Smith: > >> every child knows there can be no discussion of induction that is not >> predicated on the availability of infinities. > > Not so (independent of what every child knows)! I have to rush off > but will try to get back to this later. > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
