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"the sure-thing principle states that a decision maker who would take a certain action if he knew that event E obtained, and also if he knew that the negation o

"the sure-thing principle states that a decision maker who would take a certain action if he knew that event E obtained, and also if he knew that the negation of E obtained, should also take that same action if he knows nothing about E." using "obtain" in it's archaic, old-french, meaning of roughly "succeed". Wikipedia math pages are generally useless for non-experts, but this is a new one!

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saghm 8y ago
Appears to be updated to more natural language now; I guess a Wikipedia editor saw your comment!
hinkley 8y ago
It now says occurred instead of obtained. No set of pages in Wikipedia imply “we hate everybody else” quite like the math pages. It’s like the math folks have either forgotten that Wikipedia is for communicating with people, they just don’t care, or they don’t know how. Every time I read a math page on Wikipedia I want to go watch a Feynman lecture as eye bleach.
- striking 8y ago
  I'm very thankful for Simple English Wikipedia for this reason. Compare the vanilla Set page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_(mathematics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_(mathematics) with https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set. It's too bad there aren't more of these pages, as they are honestly excellent quick resources.
- a-nikolaev 8y ago
  Hahaha, yeah. Imo best math lecturers actually do provide a lot of intuition behind the discussed material. Otherwise I feel like they don't understand the topic themselves that well. (Exceptions are rare, but possible tho.) Other resources like http://mathworld.wolfram.com/ http://mathworld.wolfram.com/ (and I think, there is also a proof wiki, or math wiki?). Such resources can be more useful, even if they are not as extensive as Wikipedia, they win in consistency between the articles and better at providing intuition and background information.
thaumasiotes 8y ago
When E is true and stative, the state of E obtains. The meaning is current and has absolutely nothing to do with "succeeding": http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=obtain&sub=Search+WordNet&o2=&o0=1&o8=1&o1=1&o7=&o5=&o9=&o6=&o3=&o4=&h= http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=obtain&sub=Sear... > (v) prevail, hold, obtain (be valid, applicable, or true) "This theory still holds." The mistake in the section you quote is labeling E an "event" rather than a state.
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saghm 8y ago

Appears to be updated to more natural language now; I guess a Wikipedia editor saw your comment!

hinkley 8y ago

It now says occurred instead of obtained. No set of pages in Wikipedia imply “we hate everybody else” quite like the math pages. It’s like the math folks have either forgotten that Wikipedia is for communicating with people, they just don’t care, or they don’t know how. Every time I read a math page on Wikipedia I want to go watch a Feynman lecture as eye bleach.

striking 8y ago
I'm very thankful for Simple English Wikipedia for this reason. Compare the vanilla Set page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_(mathematics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_(mathematics) with https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set. It's too bad there aren't more of these pages, as they are honestly excellent quick resources.
a-nikolaev 8y ago
Hahaha, yeah. Imo best math lecturers actually do provide a lot of intuition behind the discussed material. Otherwise I feel like they don't understand the topic themselves that well. (Exceptions are rare, but possible tho.) Other resources like http://mathworld.wolfram.com/ http://mathworld.wolfram.com/ (and I think, there is also a proof wiki, or math wiki?). Such resources can be more useful, even if they are not as extensive as Wikipedia, they win in consistency between the articles and better at providing intuition and background information.

thaumasiotes 8y ago

When E is true and stative, the state of E obtains. The meaning is current and has absolutely nothing to do with "succeeding": http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=obtain&sub=Search+WordNet&o2=&o0=1&o8=1&o1=1&o7=&o5=&o9=&o6=&o3=&o4=&h= http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=obtain&sub=Sear... > (v) prevail, hold, obtain (be valid, applicable, or true) "This theory still holds." The mistake in the section you quote is labeling E an "event" rather than a state.

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