Where we are, it is noticeably dark for later in the morning, at this time of year. I like to jog in the morning before drinking or eating but not in the dark. During these weeks, I keep finding I have to wait longer and longer for the sun, and enough light to really see the road bed. I don't want to step into a hole or stumble on something.
Sometimes it is said that one of our modern ideas that separates us from the ancients is our use of probability. Many questions about how probability might help our thinking can arise. How low does a probability have to be to be small enough to confidently ignore? One author said that the sun has risen a large number of times and given that trend, we might want to assume that it will rise again tomorrow. So, given the dark and the later sunrise, I have reason to pay attention to the time. I look out the window to see it if is really light enough yet. When is the sun going to rise? Seems to take a long time. Is it going to rise today? Maybe something has changed and it won't.
Such thoughts got me remembering the problem of inference. How long a string of sunrises is needed before I can comfortably count on another one? At first, it seems the longer, the better. But then, I think of aging. When I have risen enough times, I may be out of rising power. So, a long string might mean the probability of another rise is lower, not higher. Not only living things but machines, too, age and develop malfunctions. Our garage door, which has behaved well for 24 years, broke today. It needed one of the springs that raise the door replaced.
Sunrise has been taken to be a very reliable occurrence for a very long time. I don't know if it will ever fail but I like the day and the night and I hope I continue to get them both. It seems odd to be staring out at the morning, wondering when it is going to get light, wondering IF it is going to get light. I bet many others have done that sort of wondering, over millennia.
