I see, your solution seems correct now in retrospect. I mistook scenario 2 for being exactly the same as scenario 1, but the two situations where you are not holding the other ace are indeed twice as likely as having both aces (due to selecting the ace at random), so the answer should be 1/5. Looks like I should brush up on my basic probability...
My posterior probability that you hold two aces should be the same either way
Yes, but the posterior probability is 1/3, not 1/5. p(two aces|AH) = 1/3 (As the possible options are, AH+AS, AH+2D, AH+2C) p(two aces|AS) = 1/3 (AS+AH, AS+2D, AS+2C)
However, if you had interpreted argument 2 as asking p(two aces|ace of hearts OR ace of spades) you would end up with 1/5, which is the same result as the prior p(two aces|have an ace). I think the fallacious reasoning here is that conditioning on the disjunction of having either ace, p(both aces|AH OR AS) = 1/5, does...
As far as I can tell, this article is pure journalistic flair. There seems to be little to almost no sufficient data for the authors of the article to make any of the assumptions they claim in the article.
Looking around Google, there seems to be at most a handful of these 'boskop' brains which were discovered at the start of the 20th century. I think the case for the existence of an entirely new 'superintelligent' species that lived tens of thousands of years ago does not seem plausible, given the lack of evidence for the boskops. There seems to be some ev...
I've sorted MBlume's original list so that it displays all the books of the same location together...however some of the places (living room floor/shelf etc.) are a collection of books on different topics. I may sort them out another time.
Here it is: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=t5Fz_UEo8JLZyEFfUvJVvPA&output=html
Just realized this is the last day before the challenge so I've donated AU$25