5 ms·
At first I was stuck at ~0.95 but I was just striking the keys really fast but then I concentrated and looked at the keys and really tried to feel which key I w
by amasad 10y ago
At first I was stuck at ~0.95 but I was just striking the keys really fast but then I concentrated and looked at the keys and really tried to feel which key I wanted to press and it worked. I was able to score lower ~0.4. I'm computationally irreducible for now.
- mindcrime 10y agoWeird. When I tried to just "type random" without looking at the keys, it was routinely getting me around 75%. I tried looking at the keys as you described, and my score immediately dropped to around %50 and was even below %50 for a bit. Then it crept back up to around %60 when I started talking to a co-worker while typing.
- amasad 10y agoThere's been a number studies that showed that humans are bad at random number generation. e.g. "Humans cannot consciously generate random numbers sequences" http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17888582 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17888582
- mindcrime 10y agoSure, but I'm curious why looking at the keys seems to matter.
- amasad 10y agoI guess that goes back to the original premise of the experiment. That "free will" is unpredictable. And the way I thought about it is that for me to have a true inclination -- not to just do it "randomly" -- I'd have to look at the keys and feel something.
- shkkmo 10y agoHumans are bad at random number generation, until you train them to do it. Randomness is a skill that can be learned like any other.
- amasad 10y agoDo you have any resources on how to become better at randomness?
- ConceptJunkie 10y agoNo, but I've got some dice here.
- shkkmo 10y agoI don't, but if you are curious I know Allen Neuringer studied training random behavior in animals and humans via reinforcement.
- paulgb 10y agoWell, if your score is .4, a computer could predict you with .6 accuracy just by predicting what you will press and then guessing the opposite :)
- Vraxx 10y agobut how does it know to use the opposite for him and not for other guesses? I make a similar mistake when I try to remember something by noting "it's not the choice I'm naturally inclined to choose, it's the other one". After I get used to using that heuristic, the correct choice becomes the one I'm naturally inclined to do, but then I have trouble remembering "is it the choice I'm inclined to do or the opposite". I've since ditched that heuristic when I realize I'm doing it because it is quite detrimental.
- amasad 10y agoThat's the trouble with game theory-like heuristics. To a layman like me it's unclear how many times do you want to recursively apply it. The 2/3 of the average guess game is an interesting illustration where if you take the game theory approach and recursively apply it you'll end up with 0 all the time: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guess_2/3_of_the_average https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guess_2/3_of_the_average
- Practicality 10y agoI think this more just highlights the problem of trying to predict behavior when there are only two options.
- joaorj 10y agoYou went from incredible predictable to better than random? Wow, now that's impressive!