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We think this cool study we found is flawed. Help us reproduce it

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Re: We think this cool study we found is flawed. Help us reproduce it

#151

Post by gus_massa »

simias wrote: post #135
denton-scratch wrote: post #130

> so that if another person is shown your sequence of digits from 1 to 6, he/she should not be able to tell whether these numbers were produced by a real die or just “made up” by somebody. That instruction is a flaw in the experiment. It's always impossible to tell, for any given sequence, whether it was produced by a fair die. There's nothing an experimental subject can do to make the impossible more impossible. > t…

>It's always impossible to tell, for any given sequence, whether it was produced by a fair die. If the sequence is long enough you can model how likely it is to have been produced by a fair die. Are all numbers equally distributed? Are some numbers more likely to follow or not follow other numbers? Are some patterns repeating? Of course any sequence can be produced by a fair die, but you can still create some objecti…

> Can you roll a fair die a thousand times and only get 6s?

Anecdote time:

A few years ago with my friends we were discussing how easy is to roll 5 dices simultaneously and get the same result in all of them. This is a possible way to win a popular game here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generala We estimated how often you can roll the dices and the probability, and we estimated that you must try during 2 or 3 hours to get that result.

We were young, had a lot of free time, so one of my friend started rolling 5 dices while he was talking with us and eating. After about 2 hour he got the 5 equal dices in a roll. (IIRC he tried again, with a similar result.)

(Note that 2 or 3 hours is consistent with how this outcome is used in the game to win automatically. It's possible to get this in a normal game, but it's not super common.)

Also, each time you add a dice, the time increase exponentially. With 6 dice it's 14-21 hours, like a day. With 7 dice it's like a week. With 9 dice is like a month. With 10 dice is half a year. 1000 dice will take longer (and x6 if you want to get only 6s instead of any repeated number).

(Note that parallelizing this to all humans only adds 14 dices. If everyone on Earth start rolling 24 dices, it will take like half a year until one of us get 24 equal dices.)

Re: We think this cool study we found is flawed. Help us reproduce it

#152

Post by prolyx »

bombcar wrote: post #114
icambron wrote: post #113

I agree with the article that the study is flawed in its unwillingness to exclude the all-H and all-T answers. But I’ll go further: the original study is just silly. “Make a sequence that looks random” is sort of a nonsensical ask. Looks random to whom? To our algorithm, is what they meant. There’s no such thing as a randomness test that can look at a sequence and decide “is it random?”, so this algo measures somethi…

I suspect many of the “bad” responses are smart aleks saying “11111111” is just as likely a “62536164”.

111111 is just as likely as any other number. However, in practice, humans are far more likely to think of 111111 than other numbers, so we exploit the difference between the probability a human guesses a number vs. the probability of rolling a number on a fair dice. "Did I just roll a sequence X or am I lying?" vs. "What is the probability I roll sequence X next?" are quite different questions, if by "lying" you mean you are not drawing the sequence from a fair, random source.

Re: We think this cool study we found is flawed. Help us reproduce it

#153

Post by elif »

I believe this is conflating distribution with randomness.

Having played too many games and rolled too many real and pseudorandom dice, i know streaks are the rule not the exception, and that completely missed rolls likewise expectable.

Using this model of randomness, i tried to create sequences that matched. The result is it says i have 60 year old brain. I did the prompt again, but simply /ensured there were no missed rolls/ and i have an under 60 brain?

In reality, i believe the odds of rolling all 6 sides using 10 dice rolls are relatively low... but in order to be "random" enough that seems like a prerequisite??

Re: We think this cool study we found is flawed. Help us reproduce it

#154

Post by Ygg2 »

HWR_14 wrote: post #150
denton-scratch wrote: post #130

> so that if another person is shown your sequence of digits from 1 to 6, he/she should not be able to tell whether these numbers were produced by a real die or just “made up” by somebody. That instruction is a flaw in the experiment. It's always impossible to tell, for any given sequence, whether it was produced by a fair die. There's nothing an experimental subject can do to make the impossible more impossible. > t…

> It's always impossible to tell, for any given sequence, whether it was produced by a fair die. There's nothing an experimental subject can do to make the impossible more impossible. That's just not true. Or feel free to play a game with me. We'll roll a 20 sided die. If it comes up 20, you give me a ten. If it comes up any other number, I'll get you a dollar. Nice EV on that! Oh, the die has come up 20, 20, 20, 20,…

It can still be a fair die.

The context implies it's not, but it's only unlikely, not impossible.

See https://youtu.be/8Ko3TdPy0TU

It introduces a 10 billion human second century i.e. 3.1 x 10^19. If your chance times it is greater than 1 then it's definitely plausible to be done by someone, somewhere.

Re: We think this cool study we found is flawed. Help us reproduce it

#155

Post by edflsafoiewq »

ahwvd37js wrote: post #143

From the original paper [1]. > Paradoxically, participants with a scientific background may perform worse at producing random sequences, thanks to a common belief among them that the occurrence of any string is as statistically likely as any other (a bias deriving from their knowledge of classical probability theory), which further justifies controlling for Field of education, simplified as humanities v. science. [1]…

> Finally, the variable Paranormal Belief was included as it has been related to RIG performance in previous studies.

Re: We think this cool study we found is flawed. Help us reproduce it

#156

Post by denton-scratch »

HWR_14 wrote: post #150
denton-scratch wrote: post #130

> so that if another person is shown your sequence of digits from 1 to 6, he/she should not be able to tell whether these numbers were produced by a real die or just “made up” by somebody. That instruction is a flaw in the experiment. It's always impossible to tell, for any given sequence, whether it was produced by a fair die. There's nothing an experimental subject can do to make the impossible more impossible. > t…

> It's always impossible to tell, for any given sequence, whether it was produced by a fair die. There's nothing an experimental subject can do to make the impossible more impossible. That's just not true. Or feel free to play a game with me. We'll roll a 20 sided die. If it comes up 20, you give me a ten. If it comes up any other number, I'll get you a dollar. Nice EV on that! Oh, the die has come up 20, 20, 20, 20,…

I would; would you? The Gambler's Paradox says you shouldn't (I'm assuming your 20-sided die isn't crooked).

Incidentally, you haven't made your case that you can ever tell whether a given sequence was produced by a fair die. You've just asserted it, and then suggested a game that doesn't illuminate anything.

Re: We think this cool study we found is flawed. Help us reproduce it

#157

Post by amelius »

drexlspivey wrote: post #115
kzrdude wrote: post #78

I was trying to find a mental way to do a true coin toss. Anyone has ideas for how to truly dig into some randomness? Maybe most would think it's impossible, but aren't we at least better placed to do this better than deterministic machines (or maybe we are not - the true free will debate :)?

I took the digits of a random phone number in my memory (excluding area code) H for odd T for even

Your network operator might use blocks of numbers where many share the first or last digits.

Re: We think this cool study we found is flawed. Help us reproduce it

#158

Post by amelius »

mootzville wrote: post #109
kzrdude wrote: post #78

I was trying to find a mental way to do a true coin toss. Anyone has ideas for how to truly dig into some randomness? Maybe most would think it's impossible, but aren't we at least better placed to do this better than deterministic machines (or maybe we are not - the true free will debate :)?

There are now Quantum Random Number Generators on the market. I've seen hardware ones that use PCIe. Here's a university that apparently is now providing a qrng service for free with live streaming: https://qrng.anu.edu.au/

Author asked about mental ways to come up with random numbers. A "QRNG" is obviously not purely mental.

Re: We think this cool study we found is flawed. Help us reproduce it

#159

Post by whatever1 »

HWR_14 wrote: post #150
denton-scratch wrote: post #130

> so that if another person is shown your sequence of digits from 1 to 6, he/she should not be able to tell whether these numbers were produced by a real die or just “made up” by somebody. That instruction is a flaw in the experiment. It's always impossible to tell, for any given sequence, whether it was produced by a fair die. There's nothing an experimental subject can do to make the impossible more impossible. > t…

> It's always impossible to tell, for any given sequence, whether it was produced by a fair die. There's nothing an experimental subject can do to make the impossible more impossible. That's just not true. Or feel free to play a game with me. We'll roll a 20 sided die. If it comes up 20, you give me a ten. If it comes up any other number, I'll get you a dollar. Nice EV on that! Oh, the die has come up 20, 20, 20, 20,…

B-but statistics taught me that the events are independent! Take my 10!

Re: We think this cool study we found is flawed. Help us reproduce it

#160

Post by somehnacct3757 »

If you're forced to pick random numbers between 1 and X in your head, pick instead from a wider range of numbers and then modulo X. Your brain will legitimately have no idea what number you're picking.

e.g. for a range 1-6, pick from 100-250 instead and modulo 6 plus 1.

There are of course brand new biases at play (is your new range cleanly divisible by X?) But it's enough to tamp down the original biases you're worried about

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