Probability & Predictive Inference

Primes about reasoning under uncertainty using probability itself: conditional probability, base-rate effects like the false positive paradox, the eventual realisation of low-probability events, and applied inference in prediction and auction settings.

8 primes in this family — primes that sit near one another in abstraction space (k-means over structural-signature embeddings). Each is shown with its short description.

• Auction Theory — Auction behavior analysis.
• Conditional Probability — Re-normalize a probability measure to the information context that is taken as given.
• Eventual Realisation of Possibility — In a system subject to many independent trials, every outcome with non-zero per-trial probability eventually occurs, so design posture shifts from per-trial prevention to containment.
• Expected Value — Average a random quantity against its probability measure: the resulting linear functional compresses a distribution to its first moment while discarding dispersion, tails, and other shape.
• False Positive Paradox — Under a rare base rate, most positive flags are wrong even when the detector is highly accurate.
• Foreseeing (Prediction) — Predict future states.
• Probability — Quantifies uncertainty and likelihoods.
• Reference class problem — Choose which relevant comparison class should govern a probability or generalization about one case when that case belongs to many classes with different rates.