ciphergoth comments on Drawing Two Aces - Less Wrong

14 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 03 January 2010 10:33AM

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Comment author: ciphergoth 03 January 2010 03:53:46PM 2 points [-]

Before drawing the cards, I decided randomly whether to "prefer" hearts or spades, so that if I had both cards I would tell you about the preferred one. That gives me twelve scenarios, of which five result in the answers that I gave you, of which I hold both aces in only one. Therefore 1/5.

If your second question was instead "Are you holding the Ace of Spades?" as in Scenario 1, then I'm twice as likely to answer "Yes" in the instance that I really have both aces as I was before - ie there are now six scenarios allowed by my answers and I hold aces in two, so the probability becomes 1/3 as stated.

This is too easy - where's the catch? Is a more counterintuitive version of this on the way?