Who is the smartest poster at TL.net? - Page 13

On May 04 2005 18:09 YoUr_KiLLeR wrote:


i wasn't going to respond to any of them, but eh.

the main part wrong with that logic is this. "now if you then remove 98 doors and one of the two remaining ones is correct". if you remove a bunch of possibilities from the original pool, the probability does NOT stay the same. originally, with 100 doors, each one has a 1% chance of being correct. now when you remove 98 of them, how can you argue that the one you didnt pick remains at 1%, while yours is 99? its the same logic you're using.

'one of the two remaining ones is correct'. one in two is 50%. there is no reason why the other door would have a higher probability of being correct. the door you picked doesn't magically stay at 1% while the other door becomes 99%. if you believe thats true, the one you didn't pick could just as easily be 1%, and the one you picked could be 99%. your choice doesn't have a bearing on its chances. as i said, removing some of the possibilities from the pool CHANGES all of the probability completely.

On May 05 2005 02:18 Rekrul wrote:
i'm not the most intelligent but i'm certainly the most rational

On May 04 2005 18:39 YoUr_KiLLeR wrote:


if you know that one of the two doors is correct, nothing gives either door a higher chance of being correct than the other.

On May 05 2005 10:06 draeger wrote:


This argument is a few pages old, but I think I figured out a good way to explain it:

You initially have 100 unmarked doors. When you pick one, you have a 1% chance of getting it right. Based on your posts before, you agree with this (luckily, or else we'd all be in trouble.)

Now here is where you seem to get confused. You have your door with a 1% chance of being right. That means 99% of the time you are wrong and the correct door is somewhere within the other 99 doors. Still following?

Now if the person goes through each of those 99 other doors (which contain the right answer 99% of the time) and one-by-one dismisses doors that are wrong, you are eventually going to be left with one door. Now this door is still on the side that is determined to be 99% correct (as mentioned above) and is the last door remaining. This gives it a 99% chance of being correct.

On May 05 2005 10:26 SickofLife wrote:


That's exactly what everyone else said, but he still didn't get it.

On May 05 2005 12:42 Zerius[TPR] wrote:
I really dont see how you cant see how the door thing works. Its incredibly simple.

On May 04 2005 11:13 Smorrie wrote:
Feuerbach

On May 05 2005 12:03 SCFraser wrote:
Selecting that one door from the pool of 99% is like selecting the entire pool.