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What comes next: π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, ...?

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Re: What comes next: π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, ...?

#31

Post by Symmetry »

ralfd wrote: post #20

I actually did find the "nightmare dilemmas" on the site more interesting. http://www.thebigquestions.com/2012/03/22/another-nightmare/ -------------------------------- -------------------------------- Today’s Dilemma In front of you are two childless married couples. For some reason, it’s imperative that you kill two of the four people. Your choices are: A. Kill one randomly chosen member from each couple. B. Kill b…

That's actually a fairly neat question for sifting different types of Utilitarians. Do you care about other people's happiness, or about their utility as they define it? In B you're really screwing over one of the couples, but they won't be around to be unhappy about it.

Re: What comes next: π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, ...?

#32

Post by Symmetry »

jl6 wrote: post #22

Given an arbitrarily long or short sequence of numbers, random or otherwise, it is possible to find a polynomial which interpolates them, hence gives a reasonable rule for finding the next number in the sequence.

Usually the right next number in a sequence is the one with the lowest entropy, but of course the answer that the post's author says is the "correct" one is far from the simplest way to generate the same sequence of 7 numbers.

Re: What comes next: π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, ...?

#33

Post by mikeash »

ralfd wrote: post #20

I actually did find the "nightmare dilemmas" on the site more interesting. http://www.thebigquestions.com/2012/03/22/another-nightmare/ -------------------------------- -------------------------------- Today’s Dilemma In front of you are two childless married couples. For some reason, it’s imperative that you kill two of the four people. Your choices are: A. Kill one randomly chosen member from each couple. B. Kill b…

I'd go for B. The experience is bound to be highly memorable for the surviving couple, which should let the dead couple be well remembered.

Re: What comes next: π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, ...?

#34

Post by mikeash »

civild wrote: post #13
conanite wrote: post #5

This reminds me of another "surprise" series: 0, 1, 2, 720!, ...

You gave it away with a slight error - the sequence is 0, 1, 2, 720... For the curious, the sequence follows factorial (!) applied twice, i.e. (0!)!, (1!)! etc. (3!)! is 720, and (4!)! is 6.20448402 × 10^23.

His sequence (corrected to 1, 1, 2, 720!, ...) would work for the factorial applied three times. Although the ! pretty much gives it away then.

Re: What comes next: π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, ...?

#35

Post by roberto »

ralfd wrote: post #20

I actually did find the "nightmare dilemmas" on the site more interesting. http://www.thebigquestions.com/2012/03/22/another-nightmare/ -------------------------------- -------------------------------- Today’s Dilemma In front of you are two childless married couples. For some reason, it’s imperative that you kill two of the four people. Your choices are: A. Kill one randomly chosen member from each couple. B. Kill b…

I'd go for B. Here's my line of thought:

Even though they asked me to be remembered, and I care for them, after they're dead it doesn't matter to them if they are remembered or not. There is no harm in them not being remembered, because they are not there to be harmed.

Re: What comes next: π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, ...?

#36

Post by jerf »

Symmetry wrote: post #32
jl6 wrote: post #22

Given an arbitrarily long or short sequence of numbers, random or otherwise, it is possible to find a polynomial which interpolates them, hence gives a reasonable rule for finding the next number in the sequence.

Usually the right next number in a sequence is the one with the lowest entropy, but of course the answer that the post's author says is the "correct" one is far from the simplest way to generate the same sequence of 7 numbers.

Entropy is relative to your encoding scheme plus or minus a constant. Usually you can ignore this fact when dealing with large amounts of information, because almost all human-interesting encoding schemes are related by relatively small constants, but when handed a small set of numbers it suddenly dominates as the constant for very reasonable schemes relative to other very reasonable schemes can exceed the size of the bits given to you in the form of the original numbers.

This argument basically collapses back down to, no, there still isn't enough information in a short sequence to identify the next number truly uniquely.

Re: What comes next: π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, ...?

#37

Post by aqme28 »

icode wrote: post #4

What means the "d" in those formulas?

The differential. It's an operator meaning "infinitely small slice of ..."

Since the Integral symbol represents an infinite sum, Integral( (f(x)*dx) ) is an infinite sum of infinitely small x-wise slices of f(x), thus giving you the area under the curve f(x).

Re: What comes next: π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, ...?

#38

Post by ebaysucks »

ralfd wrote: post #20

I actually did find the "nightmare dilemmas" on the site more interesting. http://www.thebigquestions.com/2012/03/22/another-nightmare/ -------------------------------- -------------------------------- Today’s Dilemma In front of you are two childless married couples. For some reason, it’s imperative that you kill two of the four people. Your choices are: A. Kill one randomly chosen member from each couple. B. Kill b…

The most basic requirement for a healthy societies is reproduction, females are the bottleneck in reproduction so killing both males is least bad in the long run.

If a war was expected in the short run, kill one couple as to forego some reproduction in exchange for a soldier motivated to fight.

Killing the two females would result in two depressed soldiers, so I would only pick this option if I was losing the war badly and needed the two males as cannon fodder - essentially killing all four.

Re: What comes next: π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, ...?

#39

Post by Splines »

roberto wrote: post #35
ralfd wrote: post #20

I actually did find the "nightmare dilemmas" on the site more interesting. http://www.thebigquestions.com/2012/03/22/another-nightmare/ -------------------------------- -------------------------------- Today’s Dilemma In front of you are two childless married couples. For some reason, it’s imperative that you kill two of the four people. Your choices are: A. Kill one randomly chosen member from each couple. B. Kill b…

I'd go for B. Here's my line of thought: Even though they asked me to be remembered, and I care for them, after they're dead it doesn't matter to them if they are remembered or not. There is no harm in them not being remembered, because they are not there to be harmed.

Keep in mind that there is a non-zero cost to the un-remembered, in that they may be cognizant that they will not be remembered prior to their death.

I would tell the couples that I am going to choose A, but instead choose B.

Re: What comes next: π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, ...?

#40

Post by Splines »

pestaa wrote: post #10
benjoffe wrote: post #2

While the story at the end about the bug report is humourous, it's a pretty mean thing to do. Perhaps 3 days lost work was longer than the expected damage, but one would imagine it would waste at least a few hours of someone's time, which is not something I'd feel good about. On an unrelated note, sometimes using a computer not configured to British English I get spelling corrections for words like "humourous" above,…

The first thing I would have done if I was assigned to this case is to check whether it is really a bug or just a feature.

3 days does sound like a long time if you're an expert in the product.

If they weren't, then those 3 days are very likely well spent.

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