EDIT: Wow, this turned into a ramble. I didn't have time to proof it so I apologize if it doesn't make sense.
I'm not sure our guesses (I presume you have not tested the lottery ticket swap experimentally) are actually in conflict. My thesis was not "they think you're cheating", but simply, straightforwardly "they object to any alteration of the dealing rules", and they might do so for the wrong reason - even though, in their defense, valid reasons exist.
Okay, yeah, that makes sense. My instinct is pointing me in the other direction namely because I have the (self perceived) benefit of knowing which friends of mine were objecting. Of note, no one openly accused me of cheating or anything like that. If I accidently dropped the deck on the floor or knocked it over the complaints would remain. The specific complaint, which I specifically asked for, is that their card was put into the middle of the deck.
(By the way, I do not think that claiming arrival at a valid complaint via the wrong reason is offering much defense for my friends.)
Your thesis, being narrow, is definitely of interest, though. I'm trying to think of cases where my thesis, interpreted naturally, would imply the opposite state of objection to yours. Poor shuffling (rule-stickler objects, my-cardist doesn't) might work, but a lot of people don't attend closely to whether cards are well-shuffled, stickler or not.
Any pseudo random event where people can (a) predict the undisclosed particular random object and (b) someone can voluntarily preempt that prediction and change the result tends to receive the same behavior.
(I presume you have not tested the lottery ticket swap experimentally)
I have not tested it in the sense that I sought to eliminate any form of weird contamination. But I have lots of anecdotal evidence. One such, very true, story:
My grandfather once won at bingo and was offered to choose a prize from a series of stuffed animals. Each animal was accompanied by an envelope containing some amount of cash. Amongst the animals were a turtle and a rhinoceros. Traditionally, he would always choose the turtle because he likes turtles but this time he picked the rhinoceros because my father happens to like rhinos. The turtle contained more money than the rhino and my dad got to hear about how he lost my grandfather money.
Granted, there are a handful of obvious holes in this particular story. The list includes:
More stories like this have taught me to never muck with pseudo random variables whose outcomes effect things people care about even if the math behind the mucking doesn't change anything. People who had a lottery ticket and traded it for a different equal chance will get extremely depressed because they actually "had a shot at winning." These people could completely understand the probabilities involved, but somehow this doesn't help them avoid the "what if" depression that tells them they shouldn't have traded tickets.
People do this all the time involving things like when they left for work. Decades ago, my mother-in-law put her sister on a bus and the sister died when the bus crashed. "What if?" has dogged her ever since. The connection between the random chance of that particular bus crashing on that particular day is associated with her completely independent choice to put her sister on the bus. While they are mathematically independent, it doesn't change the fact that her choice mattered. For some reason, people take this mattering and do things with it that makes no sense.
This topic can branch out into really weird places when viewed this way. The classic problem of someone holding 10 people hostage and telling you to kill 1 or all 10 die matches the pattern with a moral choice instead of random chance. When asking if it is more moral to kill 1 or let the 10 die people will argue that refusing to kill an innocent will result in 9 more people dying than needed. The decision matters and this mattering reflects on the moral value of each choice. Whether this is correct or not seems to be in debate and it is only loosely relevant for this particular topic. I am eagerly looking for the eventual answer to the question, "Are these events related?" But to get there I need to understand the simple scenario, which is the one presented by my original comment.
(Incidentally, If you had made a top-level post, I would want to see this kind of prediction-based elimination of alternative hypotheses.
I am having trouble understanding this. Can you say it again with different words?
Have no fear - your comment is clear.
(By the way, I do not think that claiming arrival at a valid complaint via the wrong reason is offering much defense for my friends.)
I'll give you that one, with a caveat: if an algorithm consistently outputs correct data rather than incorrect, it's a heuristic, not a bias. They lose points either way for failing to provide valid support for their complaint.
...I have not tested it in the sense that I sought to eliminate any form of weird contamination. But I have lots of anecdotal evidence. One such, very true, story
We've had these for a year, I'm sure we all know what to do by now.
This thread is for the discussion of Less Wrong topics that have not appeared in recent posts. If a discussion gets unwieldy, celebrate by turning it into a top-level post.