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I remember being taught this technique in my discrete math class last semester. At first blush, it seemed utterly ridiculous. One could still infer the result
by Synthetase 15y ago
I remember being taught this technique in my discrete math class last semester. At first blush, it seemed utterly ridiculous. One could still infer the result, the true signal.
It was only after some consideration from the human side I realized did I begin to realize the psychological appeal. I can feel in my gut the psychological appeal of hiding behind the throw of a dice but the mind still rebels and the mere paper of plausible deniability it provides.
EDIT: I say this not because I misunderstand the technique mathematically. Indeed, this was one of the more enjoyable topics covered. One could still infer the probability an individual was telling the truth depending on the strength of the fuzzing signal.
I am merely expressing my puzzlement at this quirk of psychology.
- saurik 15y agoBecause you aren't asking the same person the same question over and over again, and in fact only have a single data point for each person, there is no way to "infer the result, the true signal": the "plausible deniability" this yields isn't just a psychological trick, but is actually mathematically sound; in the end you can determine things about the population as a whole, but you cannot determine who was forced to say "yes" and who volunteered a "yes".
- saurik 15y agoI've gotten a sufficiently large number of upvotes from this comment that I feel compelled to follow up after having gotten a (half) night's sleep: you are asking the pollee multiple /different/ questions, and if there are correpations between the answers (which the poller suspected to bd the case in this article) you actually can deduce information about each individual sith increasingly high probability ". If this what the person I responded to meant by "true signal", then he is correct.