Dempster-Shafer and Reasoning About Sets
Postedabout 2 months agoActiveabout 2 months ago
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Dempster-Shafer TheoryEpistemologyProbabilistic Reasoning
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Dempster-Shafer Theory
Epistemology
Probabilistic Reasoning
The article discusses Dempster-Shafer theory and its application to reasoning about sets, sparking a discussion on its relevance and notation clarity.
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Nov 4, 2025 at 3:19 AM EST
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about 2 months ago
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I agree that DS is computationally prohibitive, but another way out (aside from probability, which I don't like either) is with various systems of fuzzy logic (or you can just go with the most expressive one under the lovely name \L\Pi 1/2).
(BTW I am also exploring approach to uncertainty based on untyped lambda calculus, where each term is interpreted as a kind of "model of the world". Uncertainty degree is given by whether the term has a normal form or not. If it has not, then it is certain, while if it has a normal form, it means that additional assumptions/arguments need to be supplied to specify the model further.)
In the worst case scenario there are efficient approximation methods which can be used.
For example when the author says:
P(Q ⊆ X | ∀ x ∈ Q (x = 1))
This is equivalent to P(Q ⊆ X | Q = {1}), which further simplifies to P(1∈X).
This seems to be a type error (isn't X supposed to be a set of binary variables?), and also an awfully cumbersome way to write P(1∈X).
Anyone have some idea what the article is trying to say?
See: https://fitelson.org/PrSAT/, and the linked paper: https://fitelson.org/pm.pdf
The paper starts off slow, but have patience to read up to section 4, Applications, which is kind of surprising.