Rationality Quotes April 2013

Vaniver

Another monthly installment of the rationality quotes thread. The usual rules apply:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be upvoted or downvoted separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, Overcoming Bias, or HPMoR.
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

Another monthly installment of the rationality quotes thread. The usual rules apply:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be upvoted or downvoted separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, Overcoming Bias, or HPMoR.
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

There's an easier way: look at the time.

Seconds are even? Type 'f'. Odd? Type 'd'. (Or vice-versa. Or use minutes, if you don't have to do this very often.)

A while ago there was an article (in NYTimes online, I think) about a program that could beat anyone in Rock-Paper-Scissors. That is, it would take a few iterations, and learn your pattern, and do better than chance against you.

It never got any better than chance against me, because I just used the current time as a PRNG.

Edit: Found it. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/science/rock-paper-scissors.html?_r=0

Edit2: Over 25 rounds, 12-6-7 (win-loss-tie) vs. the "veteran" computer. Try it and post your results! :)

10-5-10 against veteran by trying to predict the computer and occasionally changing levels of recursion.

Second try: 14-16-15 by trying to act randomly (without conciously using an algorithm).

0MarkusRamikin13y

9-6-10 here out of 25 rounds, using current time. :( I remember doing way better than this a few months ago, just by playing naturally. Gonna blame sample size...

0James_Ernest13y

Somehow managed 16-8-5 versus the veteran computer, by using the articles own text as a seed "Computers mimic human reasoning by building on simple rules..." and applying a-h = rock, i-p = paper, q-z = scissors, I think this is the technique I will use against humans (I know a few people I would love to see flail against pseudo-randomness).