0.38 http://i.imgur.com/edu115W.png
I have an algorithm that can guess that sequence right 62% of the time then ;)
Test your “free will” at the Aaronson Oracle
61–70 of 240 posts
Re: Test your “free will” at the Aaronson Oracle
#62I counted up from 0 in binary (excluding leading zeroes) and even with a completely predictable series, it only did slightly better than 50%. I was expecting more (that on-line game of 20 questions was freaky good).
The explanation of how it works says it uses 5-grams to predict the next bit, so if you use any sequence in which all 6-grams occur equally often, this won't be able to predict you at all. Actually, an interesting challenge might be to construct a sequence that gives the Oracle as low a score as possible (is there a nicer simpler way to describe this than simulating the Oracle's code and always choosing what it doesn…
Always choose the one that makes a new 6-gram, or that makes a 6-gram with the fewest previous appearances?
Re: Test your “free will” at the Aaronson Oracle
#63I got mine up to 0.8~ and decided to spend some time trying to out-predict the machine and get my score lower. I got it down to 0.6 before it got really difficult
Re: Test your “free will” at the Aaronson Oracle
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you elaborate on how one's perception of randomness is subject to cultural bias? You do have to realize that frequent runs of repeated characters are expected to appear in a truly random sequence, but that's more a matter of basic reasoning (or perhaps education) than culture.
"FFFFFFFF" or "DDDDDDD" are random sequences if they're generated by a random process, but we [note: I wonder who 'we' means] expect "random" to mean "frequently changing" or "chaotic-looking". This might easily be more about formal education in statistics than about culture, though. I'd expect people from any culture we know about to have the intuitive expectations I mentioned -- identifying randomness with chaos.
Re: Test your “free will” at the Aaronson Oracle
#65When I was little (and had too much free time) I memorized many digits of some transcendental numbers. The only (semi)practical use I've found for that knowledge, is that I can use it as a reasonably good pseudorandom stream. If for some reason I have to choose things pseudorandomly. Pick an arbitrary starting point in pi, and press 'd' for even digits and 'f' for odd digits, I get around 0.49 accuracy with this oracle.
Re: Test your “free will” at the Aaronson Oracle
#66So. I have done a similar thing for a while now. I call it adversarial selection. I ask a participant(p) to guess a number [1,10] repeatedly. After they guess a number, I immediately tell them my guess of their selected number. Immediately after I guess they are instructed to make a new guess and tap the table indicating they have picked a number. The point is to go through these generations very fast.
Often what I'll observe is they try to mimic a random distribution by selecting a number far away from their last selection, but sometimes they somehow catch on and start saying things like the same number (rare) or a number close to it. This gets interesting because they usually start cycling between picking a number far away and close, but they do so with a particular pattern. I'm able to guess their numbers well beyond a random distribution, and it all comes down the the idea that they are trying to make a random number or trick me, which produces a blueprint of behavior.
Re: Test your “free will” at the Aaronson Oracle
#670.5072463768115938[1] but only did it for about 2 minutes (don't want to ruin my keyboard). That seems basically like it's unable to predict.
Re: Test your “free will” at the Aaronson Oracle
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's been a number studies that showed that humans are bad at random number generation. e.g. "Humans cannot consciously generate random numbers sequences" http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17888582
Sure, but I'm curious why looking at the keys seems to matter.
I guess that goes back to the original premise of the experiment. That "free will" is unpredictable. And the way I thought about it is that for me to have a true inclination -- not to just do it "randomly" -- I'd have to look at the keys and feel something.
Re: Test your “free will” at the Aaronson Oracle
#69Seems odd to call it free will. If you were 100% deterministic then sure you have no free will, but predictable, even very predictable is not the same as having no free will.
Has anyone done a control test with an RNG to see what happens?
Re: Test your “free will” at the Aaronson Oracle
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
The explanation of how it works says it uses 5-grams to predict the next bit, so if you use any sequence in which all 6-grams occur equally often, this won't be able to predict you at all. Actually, an interesting challenge might be to construct a sequence that gives the Oracle as low a score as possible (is there a nicer simpler way to describe this than simulating the Oracle's code and always choosing what it doesn…
Always choose the one that makes a new 6-gram, or that makes a 6-gram with the fewest previous appearances?
Sure, is there an easy way to generate that algorithmically without maintaining an explicit history? Is there a well-known sequence with that property? Do Gray codes have it, for example?