10 Sep 07
Originally posted by agrysonYou're making a good intuitive argument that the argument isn't sound, but I don't think you've put your finger on an actual flaw. We want to base the argument on all the information available to us, which means we want to use the most up-to-date version of the number of humans ever born. Today, it doesn't make sense to apply the argument to past generations, because we know that many humans were born after them, or to future generations, because we do not know if they will even exist. We must base the argument with the "red ball" being the last human ever born (this is what I really mean by "us" or "we"😉.
Well the flaw seems perfectly clear to me. Whatever logic is applied should be able to come up with the same result if applied to earlier or later generations. Both versions of the logic presented come up with pretty much the same answer no matter which generation we apply it to. In the first version of the logic, the second generation of humans were 50% alo ...[text shortened]... inity, there is no useful probability through any means that can give us even a rough estimate.
And also, in your last sentence, are you saying that even after getting the red ball on the eighth trial that you still have no idea, not even a rough estimate, of how many balls are in the machine?