Suppose you are presented with a game. You are given a red and a blue envelope with some money in each. You are allowed to ask an independent party to open both envelopes, and tell you the ratio of blue:red amounts (but not the actual amounts). If you do, the...
The term "supernatural" is frequently used in discussions related to skepticism. I am trying to establish the category that people refer to with this term. All uses of this term appear to imply a separation of concepts and events into two disjoint categories: "natural" and "supernatural". Some examples of things...
Suppose I tell you I have an infinite supply of unfair coins. I pick one randomly and flip it, recording the result. I've done this a total of 100 times and they all came out heads. I will pay you $1000 if the next throw is heads, and $10 if...
One useful definition of Bayesian vs Frequentist that I've found is the following. Suppose you run an experiment; you have a hypothesis and you gather some data.
I'm not sure whether this view holds up to criticism, but if so, I sure find the latter much more interesting than the former.
This has been the most fun, satisfying survey I've ever been part of :) Thanks for posting this. Can't wait to see the results!
One question I'd find interesting is closely related to the probability of life in the universe. Namely, what are the chances that a randomly sampled spacefaring lifeform would have an intelligence similar enough to ours for us to be able to communicate meaningfully, both in its "ways" and in general level of smarts, if we were to meet.
Given that I enjoyed taking part in this, may I suggest that more frequent and in-depth surveys on specialized topics might be worth doing?
Maybe we've finally reached the point where there's no work left to be done
If so, this is superb! This is the end goal. A world in which there is no work left to be done, so we can all enjoy our lives, free from the requirement to work.
The thought that work is desirable has been hammered into our heads so hard that it's a really, really dubious proposition that actually a world where nobody has to work is the ultimate goal. Not one in which everyone works. That world sucks. That's world in which 85% of us live today.
I've first read this about two years ago and it has been an invaluable tool. I'm sure it has saved countless hours of pointless arguments around the world.
When I realise that an inconsistency in how we interpret a specific word is a problem in a certain argument and apply this tool, it instantly transforms arguments which actually are about the meaning of the word to make them a lot more productive (it turns out it can be unobvious that the actual disagreement is about what a specific word means). In other cases it just helps get back on the right track instead of getting distracted by what we mean when we say... (read more)
Suppose you are presented with a game. You are given a red and a blue envelope with some money in each. You are allowed to ask an independent party to open both envelopes, and tell you the ratio of blue:red amounts (but not the actual amounts). If you do, the game master replaces the envelopes, and the amounts inside are chosen by him using the same algorithm as before.
You ask the independent observer to check the amounts a million times, and find that half the time the ratio is 2 (blue has twice as much as red), and half the time it's 0.5 (red has twice as much as blue). At this... (read 1173 more words →)
Addressed by making a few edits to the "Solution" section. Thank you!
All fair points. I did want to post this to main, but decided against it in the end. Didn't know I could move it to main afterwards. Will work on the title, after I've fixed the error pointed out by VincentYu.
I've reviewed the language of the original statement and it seems that the puzzle is set in essentially the real world with two major givens, i.e. facts in which you have 100% confidence.
Given #1: Omega was correct on the last 100 occurrences.
Given #2: Box B is already empty or already full.
There is no leeway left for quantum effects, or for your choice affecting in any way what's in box B. You cannot make box B full by consciously choosing to one-box. The puzzle says so, after all.
If you read it like this, then I don't see why you would possibly one-box. Given #2 already implies the solution. 100 successful predictions must... (read more)
I'm not sure I understand correctly, but let me phrase the question differently: what sort of confidence do we have in "99.9%" being an accurate value for Omega's success rate?
From your previous comment I gather the confidence is absolute. This removes one complication while leaving the core of the paradox intact. I'm just pointing out that this isn't very clear in the original specification of the paradox, and that clearing it up is useful.
To explain why it's important, let me indeed think of an AI like hairyfigment suggested. Suppose someone says they have let 100 previous AIs flip a fair coin 100 times each and it came out heads every single time,... (read more)
While I disagree that one-boxing still wins, I'm most interested in seeing the "no future peeking" and the actual Omega success rate being defined as givens. It's important that I can rely on the 99.9% value, rather than wondering whether it is perhaps inferred from their past 100 correct predictions (which could, with a non-negligible probability, have been a fluke).
The term "supernatural" is frequently used in discussions related to skepticism. I am trying to establish the category that people refer to with this term.
All uses of this term appear to imply a separation of concepts and events into two disjoint categories: "natural" and "supernatural". Some examples of things typically classified into "supernatural": God, ghosts, telepathy, telekinesis, aura. Things typically classified as "natural": animals, rocks, talking, earthquake, body temperature.
I will try to follow the advice given in Similarity Clusters and try to establish some verbal hints as to what causes a concept to be classified into either similarity cluster.
One idea I had is the following: anything we expect to be able to... (read 394 more words →)
Suppose I tell you I have an infinite supply of unfair coins. I pick one randomly and flip it, recording the result. I've done this a total of 100 times and they all came out heads. I will pay you $1000 if the next throw is heads, and $10 if it's tails. Each unfair coin is entirely normal, whose "heads" follow a binomial distribution with an unknown p. This is all you know. How much would you pay to enter this game?
I suppose another way to phrase this question is "what is your best estimate of your expected winnings?", or, more generally, "how do you choose the maximum price you'll pay to... (read 175 more words →)
Indeed, terse "explanations" that handwave more than explain are a pet peeve of mine. They can be outright confusing and cause more harm than good IMO. See this question on phrasing explanations in physics for some examples.