= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
No, it looks perfectly fine to me; "8 reds and 4 blues" is the same evidence as "10 red and 6 blues", or for that matter, as "104 reds and 100 blues" (in that context) - what counts is the difference, not the ratio.
Surely that can't be correct.
Intuitively, I would be pretty ready to bet that I know the correct bookbag if I pulled out 5 red chips and 1 blue. 97% seems a fine level of confidence.
But if we get 1,000,004 red and 1,000,000 blues, I doubt I'd be so sure. It seems pretty obvious to me that you should be somewhere close to 50/50 because you're clearly getting random data. To say that you could be 97% confident is insane.
I concede that you're getting screwed over by the multi-verse at that point, but there's got to be some accounting for ratio. There is no way that you should be equally confident in your guess regardless of if you receive ratios of 5:1, 10:6, 104:100, or 1000004:1000000.
Why does it need to be a hidden random timer? Reward yourself if you stayed on task for the past 30 minutes. (Hmm, I think we've just reinvented the Pomodoro Technique.)
Incidentally, have you (or others who use schemes like this) considered using intermittent reinforcement? Like, instead of just rewarding yourself upon meeting the victory condition, you flip a coin to see if you get the reward. It seems the obvious thing to do if you're going for the whole inner pigeon thing.
Hmm, reward myself after a fixed interval of 30 minutes? That's just crazy enough to work! (I have heard of the Pomodoro technique before, and I'm not quite sure why I didn't just go for that at the start.)
The hidden random timer is to make myself resilient to extinction and ingrain the habit even without reward. Although, randomly choosing to reward at the end of pomodoros would work too. IIRC, intermittent time interval is the reward structure that survives the longest without extinction, whereas a variable ratio reward structure creates the most vigorous workers.
Also, I think what you describe is a conditional reinforcer and not an intermittent one. What I mean by that is after a long enough time, they subject would become attached to the coin flip itself as a partial reward. Kind of like clicker training for animals, or how a shot at a jackput pull is a reward even when it doesn't payout. Then you could use the stronger conditional training systems...
Your suggestion is brilliant. Aaaand now I've got "write a gamblerdoro app" on my to-do list.
In response to
Open thread for January 1-7, 2014
Dumb reinforcement question: How do I reward the successful partial-completion of an open ended task without reinforcing myself for quitting?
Basically I'm picking up the practice of using chocolates as reinforcement. I reward myself when I start and when I finish. This normally works very well. Start doing dishes -> chocolate -> do dishes -> finish doing dishes -> chocolate. It seems viable for anything with discrete end states.
Problem - I've got a couple long term tasks (fiction writing and computer program I'm making) that don't have markers, and I can put anywhere from 30 minutes to 3 days into them without necessarily seeing a stopping point. I'm worried that rewarding chocolates whenever I get up from working will (in the long run) reinforce me to quit more frequently. I don't want to end up with a hummingbird work ethic for these tasks.
How should I reinforce to maximize my time-on-task?
(So far my best plan is to write a smartphone app that creates a hidden random timer between 5-55 minutes (bell curve) that goes off, and I reward myself chocolate if I'm on task when the alarm activates. But there's logistical hurtles and it seems like quite a bit of work for something that might be solved easily otherwise. Plus, I don't know what possible bad behavior that might incitivize.)
In response to
comment
by
on
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 28, chapter 99-101
By the time a capable wizard (Dumbledore) was on the scene, Hermione was dead.
I doubt there's anything unicorn blood can do that phoenix tears can't, so.
In response to
comment
by
on
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 28, chapter 99-101
I'd think that unicorn blood has unique properties on phoenix tears.
Otherwise Quirrel would be tracking down Phoenixes and... showing them the first 5 minutes of 'Up' or something.
Yes. Better not use LW-specific lingo in a survey intended for lurkers as well as contributors. (I was going to change it but forgot to; done now.)
I normally understand the LW use of 'taboo'.
It's just that 'taboo sex' brings up its own meaning/mental image faster.
In response to
2013 Census/Survey: call for changes and additions
Possible new question: “Who are you living with?” with answers “Alone”, “With parents (and/or siblings)”, “With roommates”, “With partner/spouse (and/or children)”, and “Other”.
(And maybe “Have you had sex in the last 30 days?” with answers “Yes”, “No”, and “Depends on what you mean by ‘sex’”.)
[De-jargonified in response to Xachariah's comment]
"Taboo 'sex'" might want to be rephrased though.
Until I saw Luke's response I thought it meant "Yes", "No", and "Yes, and it was really kinky sex!"
"Vote in primaries" is a bit US-specific. How about "vote in national elections only" and "vote in other elections" (which would cover primaries, elections for local government, etc.)? Something like that, anyway.
"Voting in primaries" is US specific, but it is significantly stronger than "voting in other elections." We have an order of magnitude more people voting in state elections than in primaries.
In fact, it's probably the strongest thing that you can do to influence politics in America. It's significantly rarer than volunteering to help elect parties or writing letters to your senator, and everyone who's at a primary already does those things.
I'd like a question about how politically active people are. Tentatively suggested list of answers: vote, vote in primaries, do research before voting, involved with parties, tries to influence legislation by contact with people who can affect it directly, has run for office.
"Do research before voting" seems like a strange formulation. It's has a ring of pulling an allnighter before an exam.
Everyone does research before voting according to them.
My family members aren't familiar with even the most basic differences between the executive and legislative branches, and routinely make mistakes that would be cleared up with a 1st year understanding of government. They attribute blame/praise to one branch that they couldn't possibly be responsible due to how the separation of powers works.
But they've all "done their research, and [they] know a lot better than [I] do about who to vote for."
In response to
The 50 Shades of Grey Book Club
This seems dangerous. Last time I did something like this, I became a huge fan of ponies.
= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d){kind=logo}
What getting a ratio of 1000004:1000000 tells you is that you're looking at the wrong hypotheses.
If you know absolutely-for-sure (because God told you, and God never lies) that you have either a (700,300) bag or a (300,700) bag and are sampling whichever bag it is uniformly and independently, and the only question is which of those two situations you're in, then the evidence does indeed favour the (700,300) bag by the same amount as it would if your draws were (8,4) instead of (1000004,1000000).
But the probability of getting anything like those numbers in either case is incredibly tiny and long before getting to (1000004,1000000) you should have lost your faith in what God told you. Your bag contains some other numbers of chips, or you're drawing from it in some weirdly correlated way, or the devil is screwing with your actions or perceptions.
("Somewhere close to 50:50" is correct in the following sense: if you start with any sensible probability distribution over the number of chips in the bags that does allow something much nearer to equality, then Pr((700,300)) and Pr((300,700)) are far closer to one another than either is to Pr(somewhere nearer to equality) and the latter is what you should be focusing on because you clearly don't really have either (700,300) or (300,700).)
Maybe I should back up a bit.
I agree that at 1000004:1000000, you're looking at the wrong hypothesis. But in the above example, 104:100, you're looking at the wrong hypothesis too. It's just that a factor of 10,000x makes it easier to spot. In fact, at 34:30 or even a fewer number of iterations, you're probably also getting the wrong hypothesis.
A single percentage point of doubt gets blown up and multiplied, but that percentage point has to come from somewhere. It can't just spring forth from nothingness once you get to past 50 iterations. That means you can't be 96.6264% certain at the start, but just a little lower (Eliezer's pre-rounding certainty).
The real question in my mind is when that 1% of doubt actually becomes a significant 5%->10%->20% that something's wrong. 8:4 feels fine. 104:100 feels overwhelming. But how much doubt am I supposed to feel at 10:6 or at 18:14?
How do you even calculate that if there's no allowance in the original problem?