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Social Roulette has a 1 in 6 chance of deleting your account

socialroulette.net

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Re: Social Roulette has a 1 in 6 chance of deleting your account

#141
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, it's 1/2 chance since it's either "yes" or "no".

Ahh, the freshman probability theorem. AKA the Lotto player's defense.

Plus I'm feeling pretty lucky today, so how could I lose?

Re: Social Roulette has a 1 in 6 chance of deleting your account

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it is cheating. The chance of the nth person getting the revolver (with no spin) is 1 - (n-1)/6, so the chance of the nth person dying is 1 - (n - 1) / 6 times the chance of a bullet in the chamber which is n/6. You spin and the last one becomes n/6, which means that the game is biased in favor of later starters.

Yeah, but then the sixth person has a 100% chance of dying, I wouldn't call that biased in their favor. It's fairer if everyone just always spins.

They have a 100% chance of dying if the gun gets to them which it will do only 1/6 of the time.

Wherease if the sixth person spins, then they have a 1/6 chance of blowing their brains out and a 1/6 chance the gun gets to them, for a total of only 1/36 chance of no brain, compared to a 6/36 chance of no brain for the first guy, 5/36 for the second guy (5/6 chance that he has to pull the trigger, 1/6 chance he dies if he has to pull the trigger), third guy has 4/6 chance of having to pull the trigger for a combined 4/36 (which reduce to 1/9), fourth guy has a fifty-fifty whether he has to pull the guy which gives him combined 3/36 (which reduce to 1/12), fith guy has to pull the trigger only 2/6 which gives him a measly 2/36 (reduces to 1/18).

That was the spinning case.

In case there is no spin after the first pull of the trigger:

first guy has 1/6 chance of shooting his brains out, which is the same as the last example. Second guy has 5/6 chance of having to shoot, and 1/5 chance of blowing his brains out if he has to fire, for a combined 1/6 (same as the first guy). Guy two has to fire 4/6 and has 1/4 chance of blowing of his head if he has to fire, giving a total of 1/6.

The numbers work through all the numbers.

While it is true that the last person is fucked if he has to shoot, there is also only 1/6 chance he has to shoot, so his odds are as good as the rest of them.

The problem with having to spin the gun in between is that you break the dependent variable that increase the chance of the gun going of on each non-bang but keep the one that lowers the properbility of having to fire.

Re: Social Roulette has a 1 in 6 chance of deleting your account

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but then the sixth person has a 100% chance of dying, I wouldn't call that biased in their favor. It's fairer if everyone just always spins.

They have a 100% chance of dying if the gun gets to them which it will do only 1/6 of the time. Wherease if the sixth person spins, then they have a 1/6 chance of blowing their brains out and a 1/6 chance the gun gets to them, for a total of only 1/36 chance of no brain, compared to a 6/36 chance of no brain for the first guy, 5/36 for the second guy (5/6 chance that he has to pull the trigger, 1/6 chance he dies if…

Hmm, you're right, thanks for the explanation. I was thinking of the iterated 2-person case, but I guess the logic is the same there (you can spin in the beginning of every round, of course).

Re: Social Roulette has a 1 in 6 chance of deleting your account

#144
post #99
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if it's the case that there's a 1/6000 chance that the first guy gets hit, it's 5999/6000 chance that the third guy gets it. (Not true, but it's gesturally correct). So I imagine the odds are much less skewed or NOBODY forgets the spin between rounds. Also, if you don't spin between rounds and you're the 6th person to try it... this isn't really a game of risk anymore.

Why is the parent down voted? He was responding to the hypothetical case that the odds are initially 1/600 due to bullet weight and no one else spins. Granted, he wrote 1/6000 instead of 1/600, but his basic point is correct: if no one else spins, the odds for each of the other 5 players would not remain ~1/6.

Thanks for the nudge! I did misread the hypothetical distribution the parent claimed. I definitely wrote that response in a hurry as a thought experiment to flesh out what the least bizarre rules for R.R. might be, but I was surprised by the vehement negative response.

Re: Social Roulette has a 1 in 6 chance of deleting your account

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to understand even after reading about it :) . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem And I did take probability classes (and passed :) ).

I had the same reaction to the link. But, since I've been checking out the Go language, I decided to whip up a little simulation[1] to prove the claimed probability. And indeed, it is true: choosing the moderator's offer wins 2/3 of the time. [1] http://play.golang.org/p/7ua2ZCSuVD

The trick is to imagine the same scenario but with a billion doors. You choose a door, and then the moderator closes every single door except for yours and one other door. Then it's much easier to see why it's better to go with the other door.

Re: Social Roulette has a 1 in 6 chance of deleting your account

#146
post #104
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if it's the case that there's a 1/6000 chance that the first guy gets hit, it's 5999/6000 chance that the third guy gets it. (Not true, but it's gesturally correct). So I imagine the odds are much less skewed or NOBODY forgets the spin between rounds. Also, if you don't spin between rounds and you're the 6th person to try it... this isn't really a game of risk anymore.

Heh, you really have no idea of what you're talking about, do you? (Or are just plain stupid)

I think he understands better than you, quite frankly.

Re: Social Roulette has a 1 in 6 chance of deleting your account

#147
post #8

Is it really that scary to delete your account? It's really, really easy to reactivate. When I deactivated my Facebook account it was hard to not reactivate it.

I deleted, not deactivated, my account about 2 years ago; it's far more liberating than scary. Of course, I still have an fb account for running ads and using the api's, but neither my name nor personal email is tied to it at all.

In my experience liberating and scary often go hand-in-hand.

Re: Social Roulette has a 1 in 6 chance of deleting your account

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I honestly thought that you would spin before every try, in which case, every test would have the same 1/6 probability of firing.

Which just means you didn't read the comment to which you were replying...

I did, but because I didn't know that in Russian Roulette you are not supposed to spin before each try, I assumed that the guy I was replying to was wrong.

Re: Social Roulette has a 1 in 6 chance of deleting your account

#150

An app using Facebook's API cannot delete objects not created by itself (e.g. cannot delete posts or photos). So either this requires you install a browser extension or it's fake.

Correct; this was a social experiment. The aftermath is explained here: http://fffff.at/when-you-dont-own-yourself/
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