EPTwierdest interview question ever - Page 3
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Jonoman92
United States9109 Posts
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ShadowDrgn
United States2497 Posts
On February 23 2009 11:56 Makiva wrote: 7 live with their conscience intact... You'd probably have permanent brain damage if you went without oxygen long enough for other people to die. | ||
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Caller
Poland8075 Posts
First look for volunteers whom feel that either they have lived long enough, are sick of the world, etc. etc. etc. And I mean actual volunteers. If we get volunteers, each person with a gun shoots them, one at a time. To Maximize my personal gain I need to live. Without a gun: I do not have the benefit of force for me. However, this makes persons with a gun more likely to listen to me. If we try to force people to kill someone with a gun, they will likely try and take somebody down, most likely the most vocal of the group. Therefore, one must guide the guns against those without a weapon: thus, one unarmed man will be sacrificed, probably chosen by false representation (i.e. child molesters). Randomly assign persons to shoot that guy, one at a time, until he is shot. Now, the person with a gun who killed him is guilty of murder. Murder is punishable by death. The killer of this man will be protected as an executioner: thus, they will kill the 2nd guy. Then, we will kill one of the guys who fired a blank: either because they attempted murder or because they tried to spare a murderer. Both are bad people. The people whom have already fired/fired a blank have no methods of force against the rest of us. Thus 3 people will die and we will be freed. If I had a gun: I have an instrument of force: thus I would tell all of the fellow gunmen to kill one of the unarmed persons: since they have no recourse against us, we can kill 3 of them (probably not the youngest/family/w/e) and be freed thusly. Those with the guns have all the power, regardless of whether or not there were blanks or real bullets. | ||
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t_co
United States702 Posts
On February 23 2009 14:10 Jonoman92 wrote: How did they ask you this in an interview? Hand you a sheet of paper explaiing it and then asking what you would do? Seems kind of dumb to me. Yea they did give me a sheet of paper to do the question. Two assumptions I made wer that time was discrete and people could reacted after 1 second. My solution was + Show Spoiler + assumptions: time divided in 3600 intervals. People cannot react simultaneously. Aim in interval t, shoot in interval t+1. We are trying to preserve our own life. How many deaths necessary? 3 deaths How many people? 10 people: 6 gunmen and 4 innocents How many bullets? 3 real 3 fake axioms 1. If someone shoots, you know he can't shoot back anymore (1 bullet per gun) 2. If someone shoots, he/she does not know a priori whether he will kill for certain (real/fake) 3. Any optimal solution must include possibility of all 3 bullets hitting all 3 people 4. Any optimal solution for yourself at any time t in T will be adopted by all other gunmen at the same time t in T 5. Any optimal solution for gunman must fulfill the "suicide rule" (p(survival if you shoot yourself)) --> Then split into gunmen and innocents w/ gun: take out gun. This is important so that no one shoots you because they know you could have a crucial real bullet. Do not point it at someone with a gun, because then the person with the gun will naturally point back at you, and you lower everyone's chances of survival and therefore they have incentive to shoot you. Hence every gunman will either aim at innocent or aim in the air. If you think optimal solution is to aim at innocent, you have to assume that everyone else does so too. Since you shoot after you aim, everyone will adjust their aim by switching targets randomly (optimal solution, proof upon request) until 2 people have 1 gun on them and 2 people have 2 guns on them, people aim by keeping aim on target if they are only one aiming at target, switching aim if target is doubled, and not switching aim to a target with only 1 aimer, and also switching aim randomly if the aiming is 3-1-1-1. After 3597 repeats of this aiming cycle, the probability of optimal aiming with 6 not being achieved with random brownian motion is less than 1 in 10 billion. Then with 6 people shooting at 4 innocents, the chance of doubling up a real bullet is about 7/9. Hence that is not optimal because it violates suicide rule. If you aim at no one, every person with a gun who is pointed at someone has a 1/18 chance of getting killed after everyone else has shot their bullets. If they shoot you when you have a gun pointed at no one, then they have a 1/6 chance (1/2 chance of bullet times 2/6 chance that you have one of 2 remaining bullets) of killing themselves. ALSO If you aim at no one, you increase your chances of survival. This is because with 6 guns aimed at 4 people, there is a chance that 2 real bullets will end up hitting the same person. If you save a bullet, you have a probability of adding to everyone's chances by potentially not wasting a bullet. So you need to add this probability to your own probability, and to the negative 1/18 that each gunman has by not shooting you for not aiming at one of the 4 innocents. This P is bigger than 1/18 (proof upon request). Same goes for the 2nd gunman to point his gun in the air. His P(benefit by reducing wasted shot) is greater than the P(chance he might backstab defenseless gunman in t+1). Hence you won't be killed for aiming gun in the air, and you will increase your own chances of survival. So therefore 2 people will try to aim their guns in the air, but because you guys will make this decision simultaneously, then everyone will aim guns in the air. Then everyone will swing guns down to 4 people. Then everyone will swing guns down in next cycle t. However, since this is repeated game, then people will realize this is retarded and leads to death, hence they will adopt a cycle of random movement with 1/3rd chance of pointing in air and 2/3rd chance of pointing at a random target. Optimal is 4/2 wave, eg 4 shots in 1st wave to 4 targets and 2 in second wave to second 2. The chances that this solution will not happen when everyone is picking randomly is less than 1 in 40 billion across 3597 trials. Once you get 4/2 wave it is easy... just shoot if you are in 4 wave and shoot one of the survivors if you are in 2 wave. The 4 gunmen are not going to care about the chance that you might cap them because there is still a higher chance they would have died from 2 bullets striking the same person. Everyone with guns will do this (remember you assume everyone is rational and play GTO (game theory optimal)). w/out gun: You will be fired upon at least once and have a small chance of fired upon twice. However, since you do not have any weapons, you have no choices to make and you are effectively a null economic actor, hence any actions you make are irrelevant and will not affect GTO solution. So if I were you, I'd go down having some fun, maybe by singing Strangers in the Night or something. | ||
FakeSteve[TPR]
Valhalla18444 Posts
there must be an action before there is a reaction, shooting someone before they pull the trigger potentially fucks everyone if that person had a loaded gun - the bullet in that gun kills no one shoot at the people without guns, one shot at a time until three of them are dead | ||
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Dfgj
Singapore5922 Posts
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Nytefish
United Kingdom4282 Posts
On February 23 2009 21:28 FakeSteve[TPR] wrote: guys with guns can't shoot other guys with guns there must be an action before there is a reaction, shooting someone before they pull the trigger potentially fucks everyone if that person had a loaded gun - the bullet in that gun kills no one shoot at the people without guns, one shot at a time until three of them are dead That's what most people are suggesting, but there's also a problem. What if someone shoots a blank? Then they would become a target. So no one would want to fire first. The OP addresses this issue by introducing some randomness to who shoots as part of an optimal strategy. edit: In fact even if they shoot and kill someone, they still become a target. Possibly an even larger target because they've just become a murderer. | ||
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MarklarMarklar
Fiji1823 Posts
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CharlieMurphy
United States22895 Posts
On February 23 2009 11:51 travis wrote: 1 guy shoots the lock, 2 guys shoot leg straps of one of the guys. that guy goes and gets help so you thought, later bitches! | ||
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Monoxide
Canada1190 Posts
On February 23 2009 12:33 Not_Computer wrote: What if one of the people who had a gun+bullet wasn't able to kill a person, so there would be no bullets left and only 2 people dead. Then the rest of the 7 are gg? how can he not hit someone.... people with guns fire one at a time at first innocent person until he dies... then remaining guns fire at 2nd innocent person....then the 3rd.... | ||
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Thrill
2599 Posts
If i don't have a gun - i device the plan "no killer walks out of here". All gunholders take turns shooting at one unarmed (decided by some random game giving me 25% chance of certain death - it's quite likely that the game will only determine order of aim though, if the first shot fired is a blank, it will probably be generally accepted as divine intervention and the person who finished second in the random game will be the next target) until a real bullet has killed unarmed #1. Once unarmed #1 is dead, the next target becomes the unlucky gunholder who turned out to have a real bullet which is now used. His bullet has already been put to use - others will have an easier time aiming at him, he will have an easier time accepting death. Once he is dead, one real bullet and 0-3 blanks remain. If 0 blanks remain, the decision falls on the last gunholder to either kill someone else or commit suicide. If 1 blank remains - the two gunholders will either agree to a shootoff (probable) or fire at someone randomly (unlikely) - this is best case scenario for me. If 2 blanks remain, the three gunholders will fire at the three remaining unarmed - giving me a 1/3 chance of survival (worst case scenario for me). If 3 blanks remain i will try to propose a 4-way shoot-off giving all remaining gunholders a 25% chance of survival. Reaction time doesn't matter as only one bullet is lethal at this point. Hopefully they'll agree. | ||
TheYango
United States47024 Posts
If you're a gunman, it doesn't matter. The optimal solution is always to shoot 3 people that are unarmed at the start. If you're unarmed, the solution differs. For example, pitting the gunmen against each other (e.g. saying the first gunman to kill an unarmed is a murderer) won't work, because you can't assume that anyone else will be concerned with anything other than survival (since thats the only thing you're concerned about). Since backstabbing each other reduces their chance of survival, you can't assume a gunman would ever shoot another gunman, whether or not they've fired their shot or not. Similarly, if you assume everyone is going to employ an optimal strategy, saying you deserve to live because you gave the the gunmen the idea that lets them all live won't work because all unarmeds will offer that idea simultaneously. If you're unarmed, the only way you can make your odds of survival better than 25% is on the assumption that everyone else in the room is either less concerned with staying alive than you, or less intelligent than you. t_co: you also seem to make the assumption that no one talks to each other, and that people can't sequentially shoot someone, because otherwise, all the gunmen would come to a consensus that no gunman would ever shoot another gunman, and that no two people should ever fire at the same person at the same time. If two people both aim at someone, they'd mutually agree who fires first, and neither of them would be endangered, since backstabbing the person who shot first reduces their own chance of survival. There's no need for randomness at all. | ||
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