Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Rationality Quotes - July 2009 - Less Wrong

5 Post author: SilasBarta 02 July 2009 06:35PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (181)
Tags: quotes

Comments (181)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 02 July 2009 10:08:21PM 15 points [-]

I don't know how many people I've met who hold beliefs like "in three card stud a four is more likely to come up after an eight than a six." What the fuck? Is the concept of random that hard to grasp?

-- Alphadominance

Comment author: loqi 02 July 2009 11:43:01PM 14 points [-]

It's pretty depressing. Not too long ago, someone I know expressed the belief that red is more likely to come up on a roulette table if the last five spins landed on black. He holds a graduate degree in computer science.

Comment author: CronoDAS 06 July 2009 07:07:55PM 5 points [-]

If all I knew was that the last five spins landed on black, if I had to bet red or black, I'd bet black. There could be a bias in the wheel, although roulette wheels in today's casinos are pretty much free from biases. (I'd still prefer not to bet on roulette at all, though, at least not given the standard casino payouts.)

Comment author: roland 03 July 2009 07:16:36AM 3 points [-]

I don't blame him, it's a fairly common mistake if you don't actively think it through.

Comment author: JulianMorrison 03 July 2009 04:50:04PM 3 points [-]

Representativeness heuristic. It's what humans have as a hardwired probability estimator, unless they learn counter-intuitive maths.

Comment author: Psy-Kosh 03 July 2009 02:31:10AM 0 points [-]

ow ow ow ow ow.

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit