= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
TheOtherDave comments on Raising the forecasting waterline (part 1) - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (108)
Well, yes. But ought I believe that a yes/no question I have no idea about is as likely as its negation to have been asked? (Especially if it's being asked implicitly by a situation, rather than explicitly by a human?)
[comment deleted]
Ratio of true statements to false ones: low. Probability TraderJoe wants to make TheOtherDave look foolish: moderate, slightly on the higher end. Ratio of the probability that giving an obviously false statement an answer of relatively high probability would make TheOtherDave look foolish to the probability that giving an obviously true statement a relatively low probability would make TheOtherDave look foolish: moderately high. Probability that the statement is neither true nor false: low.
Conclusion: أنا من (أمريك is most likely false.
That's interesting.
I considered a proposition like this, decided the ratio was roughly even, concluded that TraderJoe might therefore attempt to predict my answer (and choose their question so I'd be wrong), decided they'd have no reliable basis on which to do so and would know that, and ultimately discarded the whole line of reasoning.
I figured that it would be more embarrassing to say something like "It is true that I am a sparkly unicorn" than to say "It is false that an apple is a fruit". Falsehoods are much more malleable, largely as an effect of the fact that there are so many more of them than truths, also because they don't have to be consistent. Since falsehoods are more malleable it seems that they'd be more likely to be ones used in an attempt to insult someone.
My heuristic in situations with recursive mutual modeling is to assume that everyone else will discard whatever line of reasoning is recursive. I then go one layer deeper into the recursion than whatever the default assumption is. It works well.
Sadly, I appear to lack your dizzying intellect.
I used to play a lot of Rock, Paper, Scissors; I'm pretty much a pro.
It is possible that you may have missed TheOtherDave's allusion there.
The phrase sounded familiar, but I don't recognize where it's from and a Google search for "lack your dizzying intellect" yielded no results.
Wait. Found it. Princess Bride? Is it in the book too, or just the movie?
Preempt: None of you have any way of knowing whether this is a lie.
The parent of this comment (yes, this one) is a lie.
The parent of this comment (yes, this one) is a lie.
The parent of this comment is true. On my honor as a rationalist.
I would like people to try to solve the puzzle.
This comment (yes, this one) is true.
I think the solution is that you have no honor as a rationalist.
PBEERPG.
I assume you mean without looking it up.
My answer is roughly the same as TimS's... it mostly depends on "Would TraderJoe pick a true statement in this context or a false one?" Which in turn mostly depends on "Would a randomly selected LWer pick a true statement in this context or a false one?" since I don't know much about you as a distinct individual.
I seem to have a prior probability somewhat above 50% for "true", though thinking about it I'm not sure why exactly that is.
Looking it up, it amuses me to discover that I'm still not sure if it's true.
I voted with what I thought my previous estimate was before I'd checked via rot13.
[comment deleted]
It seems like my guess should be based on how likely I think it is that your are trying to trick me in some sense. I assume you didn't pick a sentence at random.
[comment deleted]
[comment deleted]
The transliteration does, but the actual Arabic means "V'z Sebz Nzrevpn".
So in fact TraderJoe's prediction of 0.5 was a simple average over the two statements given, and everyone else giving a prediction failed to take into account that the answer could be neither "true" nor "false".
Not according to google translate. Incidentally, that string is particularly easy to uncypher by inspection.
[comment deleted]
Yeah, that's an interesting discrepancy.
All questions that you encounter will be asked by a human. I get what you mean though, if other humans are asking a human a question then distortions are probably magnified.
Some questions are implicitly raised by a situation. "Is this coffee cup capable of holding coffee without spilling it?", for example. When I pour coffee into the cup, I am implicitly expressing more than 50% confidence that the answer is "yes".
What I'm saying is that what's implicit is a fact about you, not the situation, and the way the question is formed is partially determined by you. I was vague in saying so, however.
I agree that the way the question is formed is partially determined by me. I agree that there's a relevant implicit fact about me. I disagree that there's no relevant implicit fact about the situation.
Nothing can be implicit without interpretation, sometimes the apparent implications of a situation are just misguided notions that we have inside our heads. You're going to have a natural tendency to form your questions in certain ways, and some of these ways will lead you to asking nonsensical questions, such as questions with contradictory expectations.
I agree that the apparent implications of a situation are notions in our heads, and that sometimes those notions are nonsensical and/or contradictory and/or misguided.