Re: Peter Bernstein

From: Frederic Blanc-Brude
Affiliation: JBB
Address: frederic@jensenblancbrude.com
Date: 24 May 2007
Time: 10:39:11

Comments

Isn't Bernstein's point that in a deterministic world, where all causation linkages would be known, there would be no risk? This goes back to Glyn's point (in his paper) about whether you believe that risk is an objective or subjective notion. Bernstein seems to be taking the subjectivist view: probabilities do not exist, they are just a reflection of our ignorance. “We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.” (Laplace 1809) or course determinism itself is a belief that one does not have to have.

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