JGWeissman comments on The Rhythm of Disagreement - Less Wrong

12 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 01 June 2008 08:18PM

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Comment author: cousin_it 24 May 2012 09:48:25PM *  0 points [-]

The expected benefit is 25 cents if the minimum possible contents of an envelope is 1 dollar. More generally, if envelopes are guaranteed to contain more than 100 dollars, then using f(x)=100/x yields expected benefit of 25 dollars, and so on. Also, Eliezer is right that a randomized algorithm can't be Bayesian-optimal in this problem, so for any given prior there's a deterministic algorithm with even higher expected benefit, I guess you can work it out.

Comment author: JGWeissman 24 May 2012 10:06:41PM 1 point [-]

Eliezer is right that a randomized algorithm can't be Bayesian-optimal in this problem, so for any given prior there's a deterministic algorithm with even higher expected benefit

I think the claim is that there must a deterministic algorithm that does at least as well as the randomized algorithm. The randomized algorithm is allowed to be optimal, just not uniquely optimal.

Comment author: cousin_it 24 May 2012 10:31:01PM 1 point [-]

Oh. Sorry. You're right.