The information gained is "I have just woken up, drank tea and been asked the question."
Bayesianism and Sleeping Beauty - Page 9
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Reason
United Kingdom2770 Posts
The information gained is "I have just woken up, drank tea and been asked the question." | ||
sam!zdat
United States5559 Posts
edit: and that's not information, because she already knew that that would happen | ||
Boblion
France8043 Posts
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Reason
United Kingdom2770 Posts
The philosopher continues on day 2. He takes the second sleeping beauty and conducts the experiment. Let's say for the sake of argument she flips tails. She wakes up, answers "I'm never getting out of here", is wrong and so set free. The philospher then wakes up the first sleeping beauty who says "I'm never getting out of here" and is again correct. She goes back to sleep, and repeats this process ad infinitum, and is correct every day forever. The philosopher continues on day 3. He takes the third sleeping beauty and conducts the experiment. Let's say for the sake of argument she flips heads. She wakes up, answers "I'm never getting out of here" and is correct. She goes back to sleep, and repeats this process ad infinitum, and is correct every day forever. The philospher then wakes up the first sleeping beauty who says "I'm never getting out of here" and is again correct. She goes back to sleep, and repeats this process ad infinitum, and is correct every day forever Every day he catches a sleeping beauty but sadly only gets to keep every second one that he finds. Regardless, over time he accumulates an infinite number of sleeping beauties, and an infinite number of them answer "I'm never getting out of here" and are correct 99.999**% of the time, only once every second day would a single sleeping beauty out of an infinite number of sleeping beauties be correct in guessing that she was about to leave. Prior to entering into this bargain the chance of the coin flipping heads or tails is 50/50, yes, and the chances of you being a new heads rolling sleeping beauty or a new tails rolling sleeping beauty is still 50/50 after the potion, sleep and tea, yes, but the chances of you being that "lucky" new subject in his experiment on any given day as opposed to just one of his infinite sleeping beauties is...... 1/infinity. | ||
Kukaracha
France1954 Posts
On January 05 2013 07:14 Boblion wrote: I have never denied the usefulness of maths lol. Obviously we have to use this knowledge to make guesses in real-life settings but we are making assumptions, we are theorizing. Again do not mistake the maths with the "real" stuff. Everyone with basic probabilities knowledge can understand the "maths" behind poker (and make the assumption that cards are dealt randomly) on the other hand if you know and understand perfectly the Pseudorandom number generator of a poker site you gonna be rich real quick. There are more things than just the "maths" in poker, you can also get some information by observing the other players (or their cards lol). Knowing the maths will help you tho and on the long run you should be able to beat a guy who have no idea about the basic strenght of the hands. Or you could get unlucky. Stock exchange is way more complicated and i don't really want to discuss this but it is definitly not just about maths (or you could argue that our maths models are not strong enough yet) and there are way too many things involved. Insider trading will make you richer than having 300 IQ and a Fields medal. Or you could go to jail lol. But let's just say that it is like a giant poker game with millions of players and a crazy amount of cheating and randomness. But that's the problem : we make assumptions, "educated guesses" but I don't understand how we can really make an "educated guess" that the coin effectively has a 50% chance to show tails in the time span that interests us. We could obtain heads during our whole lifetime since a century is just an infinitesimal portion of... the infinite. The "rule" that tails and heads appear with a 50% chance each wouldn't be invalidated. And yet it seems that we can observe a certain balance in the occurrance of tails and heads; how come? There surely is a mathematical explanation that the odds appear consistantly in such a small time span. How come you can beat another poker player by making educated guesses, although the probabilities don't necessarily have to be verified within the extremely limited duration of the game? And stock exchange wasn't such a bad example I think... probabilities come into play, just like in behavioural finance. | ||
sam!zdat
United States5559 Posts
edit: what's the difference between a "sleeping beauty event" and an "answering event"? you are treating them the same edit On January 05 2013 10:58 Boblion wrote: I can't follow you guys lol. Poor girl(s). The mad guy should just kill her. this is the correct answer, you win. | ||
Reason
United Kingdom2770 Posts
On January 05 2013 11:34 sam!zdat wrote: Aren't you counting one person a bunch of different times, though? You say "an infinite number of them answer 0 and are right" but isn't that just one person answering over and over again? edit: what's the difference between a "sleeping beauty event" and an "answering event"? you are treating them the same edit this is the correct answer, you win. On January 05 2013 10:56 sam!zdat wrote: So of all the sleeping beauties that enter this situation, all of them correctly reason that there's vanishing hope for them ever to escape, and all of them are correct, even though half of them go free? What is the belief that we are discussing, exactly? edit: and that's not information, because she already knew that that would happen Multiple sleeping beauties entering the situation. Day 1: Finds sleeping beauty, keeps her. beauty count :1 Day 2: Finds sleeping beauty, loses her. beauty count :1 Day 3: Find sleeping beauty, keeps her. beauty count :2 Day 4: .... So no, it's not just one person. It's an infinite number of sleeping beauties because he keeps every second one. | ||
sam!zdat
United States5559 Posts
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Boblion
France8043 Posts
On January 05 2013 11:33 Kukaracha wrote: But that's the problem : we make assumptions, "educated guesses" but I don't understand how we can really make an "educated guess" that the coin effectively has a 50% chance to show tails in the time span that interests us. We could obtain heads during our whole lifetime since a century is just an infinitesimal portion of... the infinite. The "rule" that tails and heads appear with a 50% chance each wouldn't be invalidated. And yet it seems that we can observe a certain balance in the occurrance of tails and heads; how come? There surely is a mathematical explanation that the odds appear consistantly in such a small time span. How come you can beat another poker player by making educated guesses, although the probabilities don't necessarily have to be verified within the extremely limited duration of the game? And stock exchange wasn't such a bad example I think... probabilities come into play, just like in behavioural finance. Help me with this guy please. | ||
sam!zdat
United States5559 Posts
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Reason
United Kingdom2770 Posts
On January 05 2013 11:51 sam!zdat wrote: right, so of all the sleeping beauties, half of them go free, but of all the answering events, a vanishingly small number of them will be correct if claiming "I will go free" right, so before you're just a sleeping beauty with a 50/50 chance of going free or being kept, but once you enter "the process" you're involved in an "answering event", and "vanishingly small" is confusing because you don't know where you are on the spectrum, it's *already* and *always* an *infinitely* small chance in being correct. For infinite sleeping beauties chances = 1/infinity*infinity (probably a lot more complicated way of describing that but it will do lol) For a single sleeping beauty chances = 1/infinity | ||
Boblion
France8043 Posts
On January 05 2013 11:52 sam!zdat wrote: How can I help? I believe that probability is ontologically meaningless. It's just a useful lie. Well at least you think it is useful lol. | ||
Reason
United Kingdom2770 Posts
You don't need any help, he's just trolling or is seriously confused. The answer is, there are infinitely more combinations of heads and tails than there are strings of just heads or just tails, therefore the probability of rolling just heads or tails for a century is so absurdly low that we're talking about you'd have to flip a coin for longer than the universe has been around to get that kind of a spree, that's why. For a simple example. one toss: heads tails two tosses: heads, heads tails, tails heads, tails tails, heads three tosses: heads, heads, heads tails, tails, tails heads, heads, tails heads, tails, heads heads, tails, tails tails, tails, heads tails, heads, tails tails, heads, heads four tosses: no way am I typing all that out See how the second group got much bigger proportionally at 3 tosses? It's even more so at 4, then 5.... We call this exponential. On January 05 2013 11:52 sam!zdat wrote: How can I help? I believe that probability is ontologically meaningless. It's just a useful lie. You don't believe that. | ||
sam!zdat
United States5559 Posts
On January 05 2013 12:09 Reason wrote: you'd have to flip a coin for longer than the universe has been around crucial observation, good work. most people don't think about time I absolutely do. edit: I don't believe there is actually any such thing as randomness. Only things that appear to be random, and because of computational intractability cannot be proved either way. | ||
Boblion
France8043 Posts
I don't know if he is genuinely absurd or if he is just trying to mimick that kind of "humor" but either way it's kinda sad. | ||
farvacola
United States18814 Posts
On January 05 2013 12:30 Boblion wrote: I'm still not sure about him. I just don't know if he is an idiot with a fairly large vocabulary (which makes him more annoying since he can't make a coherent sentence) or if he is just what people call "a troll". Usually "trolls" are rude, outrageous and try to be provocative. Kukaracha just seem childish and absurd. Reminds me of shitty plays like Waiting for Godot or Happy Days lol. Dontchoo be talking bad 'bout Beckett now, ya hear? Waiting for Godot may not be his best work, but I'm betting you've never seen a really good production of it. Happy Days I'm still on the fence about, so I'll give you that much. | ||
Boblion
France8043 Posts
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sam!zdat
United States5559 Posts
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imre
France9263 Posts
On January 05 2013 12:43 sam!zdat wrote: Kukaracha is misunderstood, and Boblion has no sense of humor well someone who can't appreciate absurdism definitely lack some taste. | ||
farvacola
United States18814 Posts
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