3 ms·
This seems like a reformulation of the birthday paradox. That someone has a specific name is incredibly unlikely, but that someone has a name is almost guarante
by mbb70 3y ago
This seems like a reformulation of the birthday paradox. That someone has a specific name is incredibly unlikely, but that someone has a name is almost guaranteed. Situations/phrasing can trick out intuition into paying attention to former more than the latter.
- danbruc 3y agoThis has barely anything to do with the name, the actual question is how many people would lie about their name in that situation. If nobody lied about their name, then you would know with certainty what that person's name is, if everybody lied about their name, then you would still have no idea, except that it probably is not Mark Xu. Note that this probability is highly context dependent, the chances that your new coworker lies about his name is probably orders of magnitude smaller than that someone you just randomly met in an online chat does so.
- singron 3y agoThis is the dartboard paradox. If you throw an ideal dart at a dartboard that hits exactly 1 point, the probability that it hits any particular point is 0, but the probability that it hits a point is 1.