polymathwannabe comments on Open Thread August 31 - September 6 - Less Wrong

5 Post author: Elo 30 August 2015 09:26PM

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Comment author: evand 01 September 2015 02:59:41PM 1 point [-]

I'm looking for a good demonstration of Aumann's Agreement Theorem that I could actually conduct between two people competent in Bayesian probability. Presumably this would have a structure where each player performs some randomizing action, then they exchange information in some formal way in rounds, and eventually reach agreement.

A trivial example: each player flips a coin in secret, then they repeatedly exchange their probability estimates for a statement like "both coin flips came up heads". Unfortunately, for that case they both agree from round 2 onwards. Hal Finney has a version that seems to kinda work, but his reasoning at each step looks flawed. (As soon as I try to construct a method for generating the hints, I find that at each step when I update my estimate for my opponent's hint quality, I no longer get a bounded uniform distribution.)

So, what I'd like: a version that (with at least moderate probability) continues for multiple rounds before agreement is reached; where the information communicated is some sort of simple summary of a current estimate, not the information used to get there; where the math at each step is simple enough that the game can be played by humans with pencil and paper at a reasonable speed.

Alternate mechanisms (like players alternate communication instead of communicating current states simultaneously) are also fine.

Comment author: polymathwannabe 01 September 2015 04:26:00PM 2 points [-]

How about some variation on Bulls and Cows?

Comment author: evand 01 September 2015 04:47:51PM 0 points [-]

That seems like fertile ground for exploration, but no probability / agreement variation immediately springs to mind. Did you have something specific in mind?

Comment author: polymathwannabe 01 September 2015 06:38:23PM 0 points [-]

Have several people try to guess the same number, with everyone able to see everyone's guesses and results.

Comment author: evand 01 September 2015 06:42:07PM 0 points [-]

But then everyone has the exact some information, right? I'm specifically looking for something that's like Hal Finney's game, in that the different players have different information, and communicate some different set of information (some sort of knowledge about the state of the world, like their posteriors on the joint data).