byrnema comments on Beauty quips, "I'd shut up and multiply!" - Less Wrong

6 Post author: neq1 07 May 2010 02:34PM

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Comment author: kmccarty 11 May 2010 07:00:26AM *  0 points [-]

I don't follow your latest argument against thirders. You claim that the denominator

#(heads & monday) + #(tails & monday) + #(tails & tuesday)

counts events that are not mutually exclusive. I don't see this. They look mutually exclusive to me-- heads is exclusive of tails, and monday is exclusive of tuesday, Could you elaborate this argument? Where does exclusivity fail? Are you saying tails&monday is not distinct from tails&tuesday, or all three overlap, or something else?

You also assert that the denominator is not determined by n. (I assume by n you mean replications of the SB experiment, where each replication has a randomly varying number of awakenings. That's true in a way-- particular values that you will see in particular replications will vary, because the denominator is a random variable with a definite distribution (Bernoulli, in fact). But that's not a problem when computing expected values for random processes in general; they often have perfectly definite and easily computed expected values. Are you arguing that this makes that ratio undefined, or problematic in some way? I can tell easily what this ratio converges to, but you won't like it.