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Test your “free will” at the Aaronson Oracle

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Re: Test your “free will” at the Aaronson Oracle

#111

Post by tikhonj »

coldtea wrote: post #40

Got it to 0.5991561181434598 after a while (totally random would be "0.5"). Not sure how "free will" comes into play, if there was indeed free will, I could have freely decided to only press one, and the Oracle would have had close to 100% certainty. Rather, what it measures is randomness or predictability, which is not the same thing as free will (especially "after the fact", e.g. after the choice is made).

The "free will" bit is more of a joke than anything, based on a quote from Scot Aaronson's book (explained in the GitHub Readme):

> I couldn’t even beat my own program, knowing exactly how it worked. I challenged people to try this and the program was getting between 70% and 80% prediction rates. Then, we found one student that the program predicted exactly 50% of the time. We asked him what his secret was and he responded that he “just used his free will.”

Re: Test your “free will” at the Aaronson Oracle

#112

Post by 300bps »

loupgarou21 wrote: post #106
coldtea wrote: post #40

Got it to 0.5991561181434598 after a while (totally random would be "0.5"). Not sure how "free will" comes into play, if there was indeed free will, I could have freely decided to only press one, and the Oracle would have had close to 100% certainty. Rather, what it measures is randomness or predictability, which is not the same thing as free will (especially "after the fact", e.g. after the choice is made).

if .5 is completely random, what does it mean that I got it down to 0.4781666666666667? I may have gotten it lower than that, but got tired of taking screenshots. Eventually I ended up back around .53

if .5 is completely random, what does it mean that I got it down to 0.4781666666666667?...Eventually I ended up back around .53

It means you were temporarily a statistical outlier.

Re: Test your “free will” at the Aaronson Oracle

#113

Post by avip »

bumbledraven wrote: post #99

An idea I shared on "Can you behave randomly? (1998)" ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11753194 ) seems relevant here. The keypresses I entered were not predictable by the Oracle. I generated the keypresses by first picking an arbitrary integer in [0,59]. I then (using simple mental arithmetic) used that integer to seed a PRNG by George Marsaglia [1] to generate a stream of pseudo-random decimal digits. For eac…

Can't you invoke a simpler random generator? Let's say primes % 4 ?

Re: Test your “free will” at the Aaronson Oracle

#114

Post by Natsu »

SilasX wrote: post #96
etjossem wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. It tries to measure how random your brain's PRNG is, which has nothing to do with free will. A simple computer has no free will at all, but after being instructed to type randomly, it will score close to 0.5 without fail. The "free will" quote comes from a Berkley quantum computing student, who chose keys as independently of pattern as he could [1], and this seems to take it out of context. It might make sense…

To most people, "how predictable you are" and "whether you have free will" are almost the same question.

Did they predict that I'd wire the {d,f} input to a PRNG? Did they predict that I have a lot of digits of pi memorized, or that I could use the hex 'spigot' formula to generate digits of pi, then convert d=0, f=1 (or the inverse)?

Did they predict which method I'd wire it up with and the exact source of the program I'd use to do so?

I'm going to hazard a 'no', so it looks like I have free will.

Re: Test your “free will” at the Aaronson Oracle

#115

Post by Natsu »

brianpan wrote: post #104
DanielStraight wrote: post #92

You can use its own output against it. (Which means, ironically, it does not follow "know thyself", a maxim said to be from the Oracle at Delphi.) Fixate on a number fairly late in the sequence (the millionths place seems to work well). If that number is 5-9, push 'f'. Otherwise, push 'd'. Keeps it pretty consistently around 0.5.

You got 0.5, but where's your free will now, human?

One could also invoke that free will and simply not play the game at all.

Re: Test your “free will” at the Aaronson Oracle

#116

Post by knodi123 »

DanielStraight wrote: post #92

You can use its own output against it. (Which means, ironically, it does not follow "know thyself", a maxim said to be from the Oracle at Delphi.) Fixate on a number fairly late in the sequence (the millionths place seems to work well). If that number is 5-9, push 'f'. Otherwise, push 'd'. Keeps it pretty consistently around 0.5.

"To maximize your free will, press the key that the robot tells you to."

Re: Test your “free will” at the Aaronson Oracle

#117

Post by shkkmo »

amasad wrote: post #57
mindcrime wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird. When I tried to just "type random" without looking at the keys, it was routinely getting me around 75%. I tried looking at the keys as you described, and my score immediately dropped to around %50 and was even below %50 for a bit. Then it crept back up to around %60 when I started talking to a co-worker while typing.

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

Humans are bad at random number generation, until you train them to do it. Randomness is a skill that can be learned like any other.

Re: Test your “free will” at the Aaronson Oracle

#118

Post by coldtea »

SilasX wrote: post #96
etjossem wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. It tries to measure how random your brain's PRNG is, which has nothing to do with free will. A simple computer has no free will at all, but after being instructed to type randomly, it will score close to 0.5 without fail. The "free will" quote comes from a Berkley quantum computing student, who chose keys as independently of pattern as he could [1], and this seems to take it out of context. It might make sense…

To most people, "how predictable you are" and "whether you have free will" are almost the same question.

Well, those people are wrong I'd say.

Being quite unpredictable just means that you do a lot of random things -- but says nothing about how you came to will them.

If someone, for example, was threatened and ordered to follow for years what a program with millions of suggestions told him to do, he would be very unpredictable, but totally without free will.

And the inverse: one could choose to do the same routine all his life, and thus be very predictable, but it would still be his free choice.

Re: Test your “free will” at the Aaronson Oracle

#119

Post by coldtea »

loupgarou21 wrote: post #106
coldtea wrote: post #40

Got it to 0.5991561181434598 after a while (totally random would be "0.5"). Not sure how "free will" comes into play, if there was indeed free will, I could have freely decided to only press one, and the Oracle would have had close to 100% certainty. Rather, what it measures is randomness or predictability, which is not the same thing as free will (especially "after the fact", e.g. after the choice is made).

if .5 is completely random, what does it mean that I got it down to 0.4781666666666667? I may have gotten it lower than that, but got tired of taking screenshots. Eventually I ended up back around .53

Any random result series has such "unlikely" occurrences -- you can get 100 6 in a row by throwing dice for example, it's just rare. It's the long term convergence that matters.

Re: Test your “free will” at the Aaronson Oracle

#120

Post by Drdrdrq »

jff wrote: post #109

dd if=/dev/urandom count=1024 bs=1 | xxd -b Then I hit "d" for 1, "f" for 0 as I read through the bytes of output. It stuck around 0.5 the whole way, which is what I expected.

Ok, so it works. Did you try to input the letters you chose by yourself?
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