33 Questions
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33 Questions
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Re: 33 Questions
#2These need to be questions that are invariant over a lifetime:
- Were you born in the northern hemisphere or southern?
$2^{33}$ is sufficient for those alive now, but the human population is a dynamic function. Set a bit when the person dies?
Re: 33 Questions
#3"As an example, having the questions "Are you male?" and "Are you below the median age?" will not work "
First question is "Are you male?". Made me laugh.
Re: 33 Questions
#4"As an example, having the questions "Are you male?" and "Are you below the median age?" will not work " First question is "Are you male?". Made me laugh.
You can have one, but not both.
Re: 33 Questions
#5"As an example, having the questions "Are you male?" and "Are you below the median age?" will not work " First question is "Are you male?". Made me laugh.
I should reword that sentence to make the point clearer. As psuter said, you can have one but not both
Re: 33 Questions
#6"As an example, having the questions "Are you male?" and "Are you below the median age?" will not work " First question is "Are you male?". Made me laugh.
I should reword that sentence to make the point clearer. As psuter said, you can have one but not both
It was much more clear after having it pointed out to me.
Re: 33 Questions
#7These need to be questions that are invariant over a lifetime: - Were you born in the northern hemisphere or southern? $2^{33}$ is sufficient for those alive now, but the human population is a dynamic function. Set a bit when the person dies?
The Northern Hemisphere has roughly 90% of the population[1]. That is far from 50% what we should be looking for.
Re: 33 Questions
#8Very interesting thought experiment. A few random thoughts:
Reminds me of Panoptic by the EFF: https://panopticlick.eff.org/
Everyone's ID would change as time passed (if they move, if they age, if they get a sex change, etc).
The best questions for this are inherently "irrelevant", since "relevant" questions tend to be statistically linked. So, questions like "Was the second letter of your first girlfriend's middle name between A and M?" is better than "Were you younger than 20 when you had your first girlfriend?", since we can likely guess the latter based on the other statistics.
It's very unlikely every ID will be unique if only asking 33 yes/no questions. I mean, look at two twins living together -- very few questions will be able to differentiate between them.
I think it's possible to do based on a random snapshot in time, however less possible if it's meant to last a lifetime.
I also think the questions exist, but not in a manner that we'd be able to come up with on our own. As in, I believe that a program that knew every detail about every human could create 33 yes/no questions that differentiated people, however I don't believe we could do it ourselves.
I also wonder how many questions would be required to ask non-yes/no questions and get a completely unique ID for everyone. For example, questions like "weight? languages spoken? birth place?".
Re: 33 Questions
#9These need to be questions that are invariant over a lifetime: - Were you born in the northern hemisphere or southern? $2^{33}$ is sufficient for those alive now, but the human population is a dynamic function. Set a bit when the person dies?
Even with questions invariant over a lifetime, edge cases like identical twins (same gender, same age, likely same upbringing, etc) are likely to mess with it.
Re: 33 Questions
#10Seems impossible to me, for example what question would separate two identical twins( identical in dna and when born ).
And let's say you find such a question, there is no way that question would divide half of the population.