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Missing: any sort of physicist who will tell them both that the forward model says that the sun won't explode for a few billion years, and so far that model hasn't been wrong.
Minor correction: in a few billion years our sun will expand into its red giant death phase.
Also: our star can't go nova by our understanding of astrophysics. If it actually can, then we might need to throw out a lot of astrophysics, including predictions on when our star will expand.
Also also: the odds of the dice giving double 6s is MUCH higher than our sun going nova at any point in time even if it could go nova and was overdue.
That last part is what the Bayesian scientist is wagering on, it's not missing, as op suggested
Ah, gotcha. I tried learning Bayesian probability once and failed utterly. One of the only classes I just barely passed (stat was the other). My brain just barely computes it.
The intuition is exactly your argument:
When the machine says yes it's either because
(1) the sun went nova (vanishingly small chance) and machine rolled truth (prob 35/36) -- the joint probability of this (the product) is near zero
OR
(2) sun didn't go nova (prob of basically one) and machine rolled lie (prob 1/36) -- joint prob near 1/36
Think of joint probability as the total likelihood. It is much more likely we are in scenario 2 because the total likelihood of that event (just under 1/36) is astronomically higher than the alternative (near zero)
I'm skipping stuff but hopefully my words make clear what they math doesn't always
That's a solid intro! Nice.
I think our sun can go nova. What it can't do is supernova based on the Chandrashekhar limit
That is not missing, it's the entire fucking point of the cartoon.
Isn't our sun too small to explode at all? IIRC the sun will expand enough to engulf the earth's orbit but will eventually shrink to a dwarf.
Too small to supernova and black hole, yes. But large enough to have a decent boom. Probably at least red giant, then a nova (explosion casting off outer layers) leaving a white dwarf remnant.
If I'm around by then, my model of medical science progress is wrong ;)
E: I'm wrong. That casting off of the outer gas envelope is not a nova. It's just a death throe of some sort.
Thanks for the update bro!