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The
"grue" property is defined as:
- x
is grue if and only if x is green and is observed before
the year 2000, or x is blue and is not observed before
the year 2000.
This is a "weird" property
but there is no obvious reason why we couldn't make up such a
property. Now, let us pretend that the x referred to above are
actually emeralds. Further, pretend that we have observed many
emeralds and they have all been green and thus have had the property
"grue". Then, intuitively, this should increase our
belief that the next emerald we observe will be green and that
it will be grue. This intuition is fine until New Years Eve in
1999. Now our pretend emeralds observed in 2000 should be grue
and therefore blue and not green. Strange.......Is it still strange
if we pretend x are marbles rather than emeralds.
Why
is this strange?
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