Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

33 Questions

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 169 posts

Re: 33 Questions

#71

Post by edsrzf »

mcphilip wrote: post #52

I think first you have to show a question exists that effectively separates identical twins before you spend much time working on broad questions like gender and geography.

Maybe something like "Do you have more older siblings than younger siblings?" would work. One twin has to be born before the other.

That question has some problems, but I feel like it could serve as the basis for a more specific question that would define how an only child or middle child would answer without introducing much bias. It would also have to define how half-siblings are counted and probably some other things.

Re: 33 Questions

#72

Post by DigitalSea »

This seems like it would be a lot of work. The intensity and specificity of the questions that would need to be asked would have to be quite unique. It might be possible, but without excluding people of the world because they get lumped into a group, it seems like maybe 33 questions might not be enough to uniquely identify everyone in the world.

Re: 33 Questions

#73

Post by mcintyre1994 »

mds wrote: post #68
Serplat wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misunderstood. powrtoch proposed having a set of questions in which each individual question is itself very complicated. For example, being a non-practicing Catholic with exactly three children is only one small facet to a single question. By or'ing a bunch of really specific questions together you can come very close to getting exactly 50% of the population to answer yes to a single question.

That's kinda cheating though isn't it? Like chaining a dozen statements on one line with semicolons and going, "look I can write that program in one line!"

That depends what constraints you choose to define on the problem - if they need to be knowable, memorable,... then yes probably. Anyway, sz4kerto has a good comment about using a Karnaugh map which might help see how this works - it's a lot cleverer than just chaining things randomly - but does break a lot of hypothetical arbritary restrictions.

Re: 33 Questions

#74

Post by pavel_lishin »

ghostdiver wrote: post #70
measure2xcut1x wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's my admittedly naive Sunday afternoon spitball on an elegant solution: I like the idea of a human UUID/GUID type identifier. I would also like to think that this is solvable using strictly biological and physical properties, sampled at birth. Otherwise, time and culture factors would seem make it difficult to produce a static set of "apples to apples" questions and answers. I wonder if the right maths applied t…

DNA is your UUID/GUID

Unless you're one of a set of twins/triplets/etc.

Re: 33 Questions

#75

Post by tehwalrus »

ghostdiver wrote: post #70
measure2xcut1x wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's my admittedly naive Sunday afternoon spitball on an elegant solution: I like the idea of a human UUID/GUID type identifier. I would also like to think that this is solvable using strictly biological and physical properties, sampled at birth. Otherwise, time and culture factors would seem make it difficult to produce a static set of "apples to apples" questions and answers. I wonder if the right maths applied t…

DNA is your UUID/GUID

unless you have a twin, or other tuplet siblings.

Re: 33 Questions

#76

Post by S4M »

Do the questions have to be constant over time? If not it can trivially be solved by asking: Are you born before or after time t? 33 times, where t is the median date of birth of your population. You just need to recompute t 33 times (and know the date of birth of every single person in the world).

Re: 33 Questions

#77

Post by ars_technician »

ghostdiver wrote: post #70
measure2xcut1x wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's my admittedly naive Sunday afternoon spitball on an elegant solution: I like the idea of a human UUID/GUID type identifier. I would also like to think that this is solvable using strictly biological and physical properties, sampled at birth. Otherwise, time and culture factors would seem make it difficult to produce a static set of "apples to apples" questions and answers. I wonder if the right maths applied t…

DNA is your UUID/GUID

Unless you're a twin

Re: 33 Questions

#80

Post by pavel_lishin »

edsrzf wrote: post #71
mcphilip wrote: post #52

I think first you have to show a question exists that effectively separates identical twins before you spend much time working on broad questions like gender and geography.

Maybe something like "Do you have more older siblings than younger siblings?" would work. One twin has to be born before the other. That question has some problems, but I feel like it could serve as the basis for a more specific question that would define how an only child or middle child would answer without introducing much bias. It would also have to define how half-siblings are counted and probably some other thi…

It's entirely possible that the twins would not know which one was born first.
Post reply on HN