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Probability, Paradox, and the Reasonable Person Principle

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Re: Probability, Paradox, and the Reasonable Person Principle

#3
post #2

[deleted]

This is not what Peter Norvig advocates or even believes in, but sadly it's an attitude many possess, although in a much more moderate level.

I notice that I am treated quite differently when someone considers me different from them. Everyone has different responses (also depends on how I presented myself), some are curious, some are "strangerly" polite, some are uninterested, some show contempt, some show admiration.

Sadly though, most of those responses have been on the negative side, which is not surprising.

Re: Probability, Paradox, and the Reasonable Person Principle

#6
post #2

[deleted]

Others might have another thought though when I read your comment I rolled my eyes and groaned.

You basically 'well actually'ed the quote. Further, it was to point out something rather obvious, trivial and trite. Lastly, you killed the joke.

When someone 'well actuallys' or 'technically it's ...' Something it tends to end poorly for the person using those terms. Why? Because it has a way of coming across incredibly poorly to the receiving party or parties. There are better ways to engage.

fwiw, i suspect a very common reaction to people reading your post would be something along the lines of 'well, yeah. Of course.' Meaning everyone already understands this, the joke is simply phrased that way to land with people. So, you likely aren't pointing anything out to people they don't already know, you just come across in any number of unflattering ways.

Re: Probability, Paradox, and the Reasonable Person Principle

#7
At first I thought there was a bug in experiment 2b he writes that the sample space should be:

{'BB/?b', 'BB/b?', 'BG/b?', 'GB/?b'}

Because he describes the event as "He is observed at a time when he is accompanied by one of his children, chosen at random."

I thought he also needed to include two more cases:

{'BB/?b', 'BB/b?', 'BG/b?', 'GB/?b', 'GB/g?', 'BG/?g'}

Which again gives us 1/3 probability of both being boys.

but I guess the part that comes after the '/' indicates the observation event.

Re: Probability, Paradox, and the Reasonable Person Principle

#8
post #4

I've always believed the most common responses to St Petersburg Paradox felt incomplete. The biggest miss is not looking at the other side of the transaction. What's the lowest that the casino offering the game would be willing to charge to play it?

I think the gap between what a person would be willing to pay to play this game and what a casino would be willing to charge is the reason that no one plays it.

Re: Probability, Paradox, and the Reasonable Person Principle

#10
The thing about the value of money being roughly logarithmic sent me on a google exploration where I ended up on a suggested "logarithmic flat tax plan". The gist is, you figure out how many times the poverty rate you make, take the log-base-10, and multiple by some flat constant that is the same for everyone - the result would be your tax rate. Right now in the US that constant would be around 9, assuming the same tax scheme would apply to companies that make billions in profits like Apple and Exxon.
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