Emile comments on Bead Jar Guesses - Less Wrong

17 Post author: Alicorn 04 May 2009 06:59PM

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Comment author: Emile 05 May 2009 10:16:13AM 2 points [-]

That's an important information, and one that wasn't included in the specification of the problem - hence some people in the comments arguing that 0.5 may not be that stupid.

Comment author: Alicorn 05 May 2009 05:22:54PM 0 points [-]

Okay, I'll bite - did anybody really think Omega might have been asking for the probability that the first bead would be a Communist?

Comment author: MrHen 05 May 2009 05:27:10PM *  3 points [-]

No, but if the first bead was communist I sure am going to start thinking the rest of the beads were communist. Those silly communes always stick together.

With more seriousness, I am guessing Emile was talking about the revelation that the contents of the jar were restricted by "color" as in one of twelve colors.

Comment author: Emile 05 May 2009 08:14:24PM 0 points [-]

I wasn't talking about communism, I don't know where you picked that up. I was just saying that the assumption "Omega's choice of question is uncorrelated to the actual bead color" is missing, and should be explicitly stated.

Otherwise, it's reasonable to assign non-null probabilities to the propositions "There are beads of only N colors, and red is one of them", for various values of N (2? 12? Whatever)

Cameron Taylor makes the same point in another comment.

Comment author: timtyler 06 May 2009 01:15:55AM 0 points [-]

Would you increase or decrease the probability on the basis of this information?

Comment author: Emile 06 May 2009 06:07:50AM 0 points [-]

Decrease - wouldn't you?

Comment author: timtyler 08 May 2009 08:09:03PM 1 point [-]

I'm not sure what I would do - probably ask for more information about this Omega fellow.