Talk:Sunrise problem

message: ...What? Jaberwocky6669 16:21, Aug 9, 2004 (UTC)
:My thoughts exactly.  From a Frequentist position (as I, apparently, hold), the question boils down to one of "how many days have there been where the sun hasn't risen?"  Add to that the normal definition of a day:  namely, an interval of time, at the beginning of which the sun rises; at some point during which, the sun sets; and at the end of which, the sun is just about to rise again.  Then the question is a tautology -- it's not a day if the sun doesn't rise!  Tomorrow is the day after today, and hey presto! the truth value of the statement "the sun will rise tomorrow" is certain, even if tomorrow doesn't happen.
:If you didn't follow the (fairly tight) argument, suffice it to say I don't think the question of the sun's rising tomorrow has any real meaning -- it *will* rise tomorrow, by definition and the laws of physics.  Wooster 10:26, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Others

message: "We just need a hypothetical random process that determines the fact that the sun will rise tomorrow or not. Based on past observations, we can infer the parameters of this random process, and from there evaluate the probability that the sun will rise tomorrow." I don't think randomness is necessary for the Bayesian concept of probability at all. Or rather, I'm quite sure it isn't. ;-) INic 22:41, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You are totally correct; this should be changed. Bayesian probabilities need not have anything to do with random processes, and indeed the description for the prior probability of the sun rising as having something to do with a hypothetical random process is totally wrong and misleading. For you and I the probability of the sun rising tomorrow is extremely close to one because we well understand the physics involved. A newborn child, however, who knows nothing of physics and has only been alive during the daytime, may well be justified in assigning a rather lower probability. (Bjfar (talk) 04:54, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Randomness

message: You're probalby forgetting the polar midnights. There likely are some people in the Amundsen-Scott base who would find this problem quite amusing.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.77.235.169 (talk) 19:16, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Haha yes, there are quite a few people up north in my country that will not see the sun for over a month now. But Laplace didn't think of this case, I guess. iNic (talk) 06:48, 18 December 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Excuse me

message: This section should pretty much just be removed I think. It makes no sense whatsoever to me. Why should the probability that a randomly selected star will explode before the morning have anything to do with the probability that our star will explode before then? At the very least we should restrict our selection to main-sequence stars of similar mass and age to our own, which of course result in a zero probability of impending nova, but I think this line of reasoning adds little to the article and obscures the philosophical foundation of the problem. (Bjfar (talk) 05:08, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. I think the only reason this section could stay there is if there was some source in the previous literature which this section is based on. I've found only one mentionhttps://books.google.lt/books?isbn=1107028280 of 'many suns' in Google books, but it is from 2018, so it could be based on this very section. It is unclear as neither of the paragraphs cite anything. Valentas.Kurauskas (talk) 13:46, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: One day, many suns