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This is so wrong since it implies that a decision is binary, thus taking the opposite decision of a "wrong decision" is well defined and automatically right. W
by chupa-chups 7y ago
This is so wrong since it implies that a decision is binary, thus taking the opposite decision of a "wrong decision" is well defined and automatically right.
Which is hilariously different to reality.
- andrewl 7y agoThe author addresses that in her premise: Each assignment required a yes-no decision.
- mrpara 7y agoWell, in the author's defense, they specifically stated that "Each assignment required a yes-no decision". I agree, though, that there really is no great lesson to be learned here since the real world doesn't work like that. The technical bit about channel capacity was honestly more interesting. It's a neat result (that should be fairly obvious to anyone who's worked with probabilities) with a not-so-great example to illustrate it.
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoAgreed, "Yes/No" is in no way correlated with "50/50 chance". Will I win the lottery? Yes/No. 50/50? My favorite conflation is the "are we in a simulation?" argument. That's a yes/no also, and the ignorant conclusion is that its very likely we are. Without any statistics on the probability either way.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoAlso, Pascal's wager. The presented sides of the bet aren't equal, because on the one hand you have existence of a particular God, and on the other hand its non-existence, whereas in the real world, there's a whole space of possible Gods that people believe in that are not included in the wager.
- dredmorbius 7y ago"Wheareas in the real world" is an interesting phrasing for that poylemma.
- ncmncm 7y agoThat was the premise. But the conditions omit the all-important consequence. "What are your priors?" Suppose 99% of choices have hardly any consequence, and Bob is wrong on 95%. But Bob is right on the most expensive places to fail. Then, choosing the opposite could be disastrous, even though you get 95% of the choices right.