Fair coins tend to land on the side they started (2023) • Hacker News Board

Re: Fair coins tend to land on the side they started (2023)

#171

Post by layman51 » Wed, Nov 20, 2024, 2:46 AM UTC

Vecr wrote: post #44

TremendousJudge wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was my first objection as well. However, if most people flip coins like that, then the measurements are valid -- the conclusions are about what average people will do, not a perfect mechanical coin flip. Otherwise you're falling in the no true coin flip fallacy.

Yeah, if I'm actually forced to use a coin instead of a computer system, I try to ping the thing off the ceiling and at least one wall (not in that order). Hitting various other things is a benefit, not a downside.

Your point about the coin hitting other things to be more unpredictable reminded me of an interesting blog post[1] about generating cryptographically secure random numbers. The memorable part for me is the suggestion of using five coins of different shapes and sizes so they get shaken a consistent number of times in a large cup.

[1]: https://blog.sia.tech/generating-cryptographically-secure-ra...

Re: Fair coins tend to land on the side they started (2023)

#172

Post by harry8 » Wed, Nov 20, 2024, 3:30 AM UTC

Pr(same side)=0.508, 95% credible interval (CI) [0.506,0.509]

Toss it 100 times, overstating the effect you'd expect it to land on the same side it started 51 times, opposite side 49.

This seems to have been lost in much of the discussion. Employing this in professional NBA basketball you /might/ get one extra toss win per season out of your 100 games compared to any other way of selecting without taking into account the starting side.

Good luck using this!

Re: Fair coins tend to land on the side they started (2023)

#173

Post by quantadev » Wed, Nov 20, 2024, 3:48 AM UTC

I'm not sure I believe this coin flip bias, but I would if lots of other researchers can reproduce it.

If indeed it's happening, the only explanation can be something to do with very deep Quantum Mechanics including multiverse theory, where we're simply "more likely" to be in a universe where the coin ends where it starts. (But honestly it seems like it would take trillions of flips to detect, just as a hunch) So that would make this experiment, believe it or not, akin to the infamous Slit-Experiment in Particle Physics, where multiverses are one way that's theorized as an explanation. That is, we're sort of in "all universes" as s superposition until something interacts in a way forcing us into ONE universe. (i.e. wave collapse)

Along the same multiverse theme, I also have this other wild conjecture (feel free to ridicule it!) which is that AI LLM (Large Language Models) are "tending towards intelligence" during training because at each quantum collapse (of which Model Training has astronomically high numbers, with powerful computer data centers running for months) we're nudged just slightly more probabilistically into a universe where LLMs are "smart" as compared to "dumb", and so when you multiply it all up over months of churning, that puts us into a universe with dramatically smarter AI, because of the sheer number of computations, adding all the probabilities. I realize the training of AI is "deterministic" but nonetheless only quantum probabilities "determine" which universe we collapse into at each QM decoherence. So you can ask WHY is there this 'nudge' towards universes with smart LLMs? Probably because in all future universes we only exist because LLMs save us, or help us in some way, so other timelines/universes are "less" likely.

Re: Fair coins tend to land on the side they started (2023)

#174

Post by LVB » Wed, Nov 20, 2024, 4:05 AM UTC

sandworm101 wrote: post #154

fbartos wrote: post #141

Hi, I'm the first author of the manuscript, so I thought I could answer some of the questions and clarify some issues (all details are in the manuscript, but who has the time to read it ;) Low RPM tosses: Most of the recordings are on crapy webcams with ~ 30FPS. The coin spin usually much faster than the sensor can record which results in often non-spinning-looking flips. Why did we take the videos in the first place…

The NFL still flips coins professionally. I wonder if they have better-than-webcam footage of each flip. Somewhere out there a bookie might be very interested in any potential bias.

Some hi-res footage of an NFL toss: https://youtu.be/-sjAyQcv0oM

Re: Fair coins tend to land on the side they started (2023)

#175

Post by left-struck » Wed, Nov 20, 2024, 4:07 AM UTC

quantadev wrote: post #173

I'm not sure I believe this coin flip bias, but I would if lots of other researchers can reproduce it. If indeed it's happening, the only explanation can be something to do with very deep Quantum Mechanics including multiverse theory, where we're simply "more likely" to be in a universe where the coin ends where it starts. (But honestly it seems like it would take trillions of flips to detect, just as a hunch) So tha…

>If indeed it's happening, the only explanation can be something to do with very deep Quantum Mechanics including multiverse theory

Why would that be the only explanation? that seems like very low down on a long list of possible explanations.

I didn’t read the paper but the author was discussing how some people impart precession onto the coin which is a likely explanation for causing a bias.

Re: Fair coins tend to land on the side they started (2023)

#176

Post by teaearlgraycold » Wed, Nov 20, 2024, 4:44 AM UTC

left-struck wrote: post #175

quantadev wrote: post #173

I'm not sure I believe this coin flip bias, but I would if lots of other researchers can reproduce it. If indeed it's happening, the only explanation can be something to do with very deep Quantum Mechanics including multiverse theory, where we're simply "more likely" to be in a universe where the coin ends where it starts. (But honestly it seems like it would take trillions of flips to detect, just as a hunch) So tha…

>If indeed it's happening, the only explanation can be something to do with very deep Quantum Mechanics including multiverse theory Why would that be the only explanation? that seems like very low down on a long list of possible explanations. I didn’t read the paper but the author was discussing how some people impart precession onto the coin which is a likely explanation for causing a bias.

Any relatively new field of physics gets the same treatment as religion.

Re: Fair coins tend to land on the side they started (2023)

#177

Post by PittleyDunkin » Wed, Nov 20, 2024, 5:05 AM UTC

fbartos wrote: post #141

Hi, I'm the first author of the manuscript, so I thought I could answer some of the questions and clarify some issues (all details are in the manuscript, but who has the time to read it ;) Low RPM tosses: Most of the recordings are on crapy webcams with ~ 30FPS. The coin spin usually much faster than the sensor can record which results in often non-spinning-looking flips. Why did we take the videos in the first place…

How do you control against the prospect of your coin flippers being biased in terms of the videos people choose to upload?

Re: Fair coins tend to land on the side they started (2023)

#178

Post by quantadev » Wed, Nov 20, 2024, 5:10 AM UTC

left-struck wrote: post #175

quantadev wrote: post #173

I'm not sure I believe this coin flip bias, but I would if lots of other researchers can reproduce it. If indeed it's happening, the only explanation can be something to do with very deep Quantum Mechanics including multiverse theory, where we're simply "more likely" to be in a universe where the coin ends where it starts. (But honestly it seems like it would take trillions of flips to detect, just as a hunch) So tha…

>If indeed it's happening, the only explanation can be something to do with very deep Quantum Mechanics including multiverse theory Why would that be the only explanation? that seems like very low down on a long list of possible explanations. I didn’t read the paper but the author was discussing how some people impart precession onto the coin which is a likely explanation for causing a bias.

The fact that some people cause it and some people don't (the coin flip bias) can have an explanation something like having to do with their impact on the causality chain if our universe/timeline. It could be anything from which one of them is older, to which one of them has a future offspring that does something big that has a big impact on the universe (in terms of Butterfly Effect kind of knock-on effects).

But I just don't see a person being able to flip accurately enough cause this. No way. But I'm just playing along here. I don't truly believe this experiment is anything but either a hoax, or mistake.

Re: Fair coins tend to land on the side they started (2023)

#179

Post by quantadev » Wed, Nov 20, 2024, 5:15 AM UTC

teaearlgraycold wrote: post #176

left-struck wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If indeed it's happening, the only explanation can be something to do with very deep Quantum Mechanics including multiverse theory Why would that be the only explanation? that seems like very low down on a long list of possible explanations. I didn’t read the paper but the author was discussing how some people impart precession onto the coin which is a likely explanation for causing a bias.

Any relatively new field of physics gets the same treatment as religion.

Now that so many physicists and legitimate experts (non-quacks) believe in Simulation Theory, we've sort of "merged" physics and Religion. The general agreed upon definition of God is "whatever thing is simulating the universe". Of course all the Religious dogma and mythology stories are things that most of them don't believe.

Re: Fair coins tend to land on the side they started (2023)

#180

Post by beefnugs » Wed, Nov 20, 2024, 5:54 AM UTC

cgag wrote: post #24

I wouldn't be surprised if there is something to it, but I suspected they didn't use legitimate coin flips (because it seems like a large amount of people can't really flip a coin), and looking at the videos confirms it, at least for the flips done by Bartos: https://osf.io/6a5hy/ They're very low RPM and very low time in the air. Nothing I would accept for any decision worth flipping a coin for.

This makes me feel like, similar to everything else, even science is actually a spectrum. Based on how much insanity to put into the testing.

Even if the testing was as many flips as possible over years and years of automated means, with a flipping machine that varies flipping power and angle, and detecting sub-millimeter wearing on the surface of a coin, and every single coin style/size in existence, of every single wear level possible from all positions and angles, through every different combination of typical earth-based air percentages... What does the result really mean? It doesn't actually come up with a "conclusion", its just an accounting of an exact series of events. You will still never use that into the future, you will still describe the act as having a probability of outcome.