Not really; Before you know the outcome, saying "my numbers will be 5, 11, 17, 33, 36, and 42" is privileging the hypothesis. (unless you had other information which allowed you to select that specific combination)

And even if those numbers, by pure chance, were correct, there is still a reason it was a bad decision (in the 'maximizing expected utility' sense) to buy a ticket. Which is what I meant when I said that you can't have expected to win.

Comment author: Alsadius 24 March 2012 05:20:00PM -1 points [-]

I just needed an example using definite numbers(so you can judge retrospectively), and not a sequence that millions of people would pick like 1,2,3,4,5,6. For sake of argument, assume I found them on the back of a fortune cookie. Or better yet, just stick a WLOG at the front of my sentence.

And I agree, buying lottery tickets implies a bad way to make decisions, even if you wind up winning. I'm hardly trying to shill for Powerball here. Just saying winning the lottery is always a good thing, even if playing it isn't.

Comment author: BlackNoise 24 March 2012 06:17:48PM * 1 point [-]

I think my problem is with this "Judge Retrospectively" thing. Here's what I think:

Decisions are what's to be judged, not outcomes. And decisions should be judged relative to the information you had at the time of making them.

In the lottery example, assuming you didn't know what number would win, the decision to buy a ticket is Bad regardless of whether you won or not.

What I got from this:

you will have been retrospectively wrong not to have bought

Is that you think that if you had a (presumably random) number in mind, but did not buy a ticket, and that number ended up winning, then your decision of not buying the ticket was Wrong and that you should Regret it.

My problem is that this doesn't make sense: We agree that playing a lottery is Bad (Negative sum game and all that), and we don't seem to regret not heaving played with the specific number that happened to have won. Which is good, since (to me at least) Regretting decisions made in full knowledge you had at the time of decision seems Wrong.

If this is not what you meant and I'm just bashing a Straw Man, please tell me.

Comment author: Alsadius 25 March 2012 06:16:09PM 0 points [-]

I think there's a difference between a decision made badly and a bad decision. Playing the lottery is a decision made badly, because you have no special information and it's -EV. But if you win, it's a good decision, no matter how badly made it was - the correct response is "That was kind of dumb, I guess, but who cares?".

Of course, the lottery example is cold math, so there's no room for disagreement about probabilities. It's rather different in the case of things like literary analysis, to get back to where we started.

BlackNoise comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 11 - Less Wrong

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