New book suggests Arthur Conan Doyle based Moriarty on George Boole • Hacker News Board

Re: New book suggests Arthur Conan Doyle based Moriarty on George Boole

#21

Post by YeGoblynQueenne » Fri, Nov 16, 2018, 3:56 PM UTC

ysr23 wrote: post #12

Kurtz79 wrote: post #8

"Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth." I'm sure Boole approved of that. Fascinating how these two contemporaries achieved immortal fame through completely different disciplines. I wonder if in 100+ years people will rememeber prominent writers or scientists of this age?

"Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth." is that the actual quote? Maybe not enough coffee on my part but i am having difficulty with it. By eliminating impossible, which strikes me a fairly redundant thing to do, we are left with probable and improbable? Your post could have been written by: - Kurtz79 (probable) - Marlow79 using your login for REASONS (possi…

That's a very good point, however eliminating the impossible (or just improbable) is a necessary first step towards finding "the truth".

Then all you need is a good prior, to allow you to tell the truth from the nontruth. And the er, simplest prior is the Occamist prior- that the simplest explanation is the most likely to be true.

Going by which, Kurtz79 is the most likely author of the post above, since that's the simplest explanation that is not impossible (or improbable).

Edit: it's "simplest" in the sense it doesn't require REASONS.

Re: New book suggests Arthur Conan Doyle based Moriarty on George Boole

#22

Post by Upvoter33 » Fri, Nov 16, 2018, 5:39 PM UTC

... and Boole is the great great grandfather of Geoff Hinton (back propagation, etc.). The plot thickens!

Re: New book suggests Arthur Conan Doyle based Moriarty on George Boole

#23

Post by DoctorOetker » Fri, Nov 16, 2018, 6:12 PM UTC

Some of you may like this interview with Arthur Conan Doyle, he explains why he created the Sherlock Holmes novels

Rough summary: previously the detective genre had detectives ultimately point out the perpetrator without actually explaining to the reader how and why they came to this conclusion, i.e. the detectives and perpetrators were simple roles in a story, and the story never actually described the process of investigation, which the Sherlock Holmes novels did, irrespective of whether they were realistic or not... Then he starts ranting about spirituality and ghosts and other quackery, like his own "experiences", ... I guess fantasy has its positives and negatives

https://youtu.be/rZFdH76H1lA

Re: New book suggests Arthur Conan Doyle based Moriarty on George Boole

#24

Post by DoctorOetker » Fri, Nov 16, 2018, 6:18 PM UTC

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #20

>> Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s first Sherlock Holmes story appeared in 1887. Holmes’ remarkable conclusions were based on data, logic, statistics, probability, deduction and proof. Actually, they were based on logical abduction . Not deduction. Abductive reasoning (also called abduction,[1] abductive inference,[1] or retroduction[2]) is a form of logical inference which starts with an observation or set of observations…

to be entirely fair, it's not how we teach math and logic to students and readers, but all our axioms (which we still can't verify) are the result of abductive reasoning. Sometimes we discovered that a specific abductive reasoning was superfluous and could be derived from other axioms, turning the ex-axiom into a theorem. So the current axiomatic systems and their applications seem entirely deductive usages, but the axioms are in fact still of an abductive nature... this is much more visible in domains like physics, where the teeth of time has not yet gnawed as thoroughly as in the foundations of mathematics...

Edit: just adding: Some day physics might appear like an entirely deductive system (apart from a very small set of axioms or postulates), and hard to discern from the field of mathematics