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?
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 (possible but improbable)
- Elon Musk using your login for REASONS(possible but improbable)
- Stephen Hawking (impossible)
- Queen Victoria (impossible)
etc ...
do we really need to eliminate all the impossible? i'm not sure it really moves us along finding the OP, even if we do.
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.
Academics play a major role in what we remember about more than 100 years ago, much more than actual success when the book was published. Octave Mirbeau was much much more popular than Marcel Proust when they were both active, but you probably know much more about the latter.
Honestly, Conan Doyle is a Victorian Tom Clancy or Robert Ludlum, rather than any high-falutin literary author. That's a big part of why he is still remembered.