
In Defense of Probability (1985) [pdf] - kdoherty
https://www.ijcai.org/Proceedings/85-2/Papers/064.pdf
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te_platt
If you are interested in a deeper dive into the topics covered in this paper I
would suggest "Probability Theory: The Logic of Science" by E. T. Jaynes

available at[http://www-biba.inrialpes.fr/Jaynes/cpreambl.pdf](http://www-
biba.inrialpes.fr/Jaynes/cpreambl.pdf)

It is probably (ha!) the most enlightening math book I have ever read.

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pureGuano
It's a very good book. Just be aware that it is very one-sided in favor of the
Bayesian view.

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kgwgk
That's what makes it a very good book!

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fperez_org
There's a higher quality PDF available
[here]([http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.13....](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.13.2787&rep=rep1&type=pdf)),
it has a credit footnote: "Converted to electronic version by: Roby Joehanes,
Kansas State University."

That person already did the OCR cleaning (and the fonts are nicer).

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j-pb
Its ironic, today we could really use a paper "in defense of fuzzy logic"

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tnecniv
What is the difference between fuzzy logic and a Bayesian interpretation of
probability?

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ClintEhrlich
Bayesian probability addresses uncertainty about whether an event will/did
occur, but treats the actual occurrence of the event as a boolean value of {0,
1}.

Fuzzy logic recognizes degrees of occurrence, represented by any number
between 0 and 1. Its proponents contend that this allows richer abstraction of
the ways that humans actually perceive and reason about the world. In their
view, probability is just a special case of fuzzy logic, using artificially
restricted truth values.

If you're interested, check out Kosko's "Fuzziness vs. probability."
International Journal of General System 17.2-3 (1990): 211-240
[http://sipi.usc.edu/~kosko/Fuzziness_Vs_Probability.pdf](http://sipi.usc.edu/~kosko/Fuzziness_Vs_Probability.pdf)

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tnecniv
I see, that makes sense.

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jonnycomputer
I could add that truth-likeness might not adequately accommodated by a
subjective-probability degree-of-belief model. For example, while I might
believe both of these propositions to be true, p=1, one is more uhh truth
like:

Donald Trump weighs 107 kg. Donald Trump weighs less than the sun.

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jonnycomputer
I suspect that the author's assertion that the degree of belief model is
sufficient to account for vagueness in propositions cannot really be defended.
Its also obvious the author is not a logician.

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dogruck
Why is there a glaring typo in the first sentence of the abstract?

"In this paper, it is argued that probability theory, when used correctly, is
_suffrcient_ for the task of reasoning under uncertainty."

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xtacy
The paper is probably OCRed.

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mturmon
Good point. The rendering of "sufficient" probably uses the triple-ligature
for "ffi", where all 3 characters are merged.

The author, Peter Cheeseman, is a reputable figure and a solid practitioner.
I'm sure he's just as annoyed that, on the second page, his own name is
misspelled as "Cheesemart" ;-).

People may recognize him as a co-creator of the AutoClass software for
Bayesian clustering, which was very popular in the late 1990s - the
explanatory paper has 1700 citations.

