5 ms·

From the Github description, a quote: "In a class I taught at Berkeley, I did an experiment where I wrote a simple little program that would let people type eit

From the Github description, a quote: "In a class I taught at Berkeley, I did an experiment where I wrote a simple little program that would let people type either “f” or “d” and would predict which key they were going to push next. It’s actually very easy to write a program that will make the right prediction about 70% of the time. Most people don’t really know how to type randomly. They’ll have too many alternations and so on. There will be all sorts of patterns, so you just have to build some sort of probabilistic model. Even a very crude one will do well. I couldn’t even beat my own program, knowing exactly how it worked. I challenged people to try this and the program was getting between 70% and 80% prediction rates. Then, we found one student that the program predicted exactly 50% of the time. We asked him what his secret was and he responded that he “just used his free will.”" I can get it to about 60%. Given the algorithm used, it seems like it should be trivial to "trick" it by just cycling through novel 5-grams over and over, but to be honest I can't be bothered to check. And that would be rather contrary to the point of the exercise, if somewhat undercutting of the premise that free will is equivalent or comparable to randomness.

aidenn0 3y ago
> I can get it to about 60%. Given the algorithm used, it seems like it should be trivial to "trick" it by just cycling through novel 5-grams over and over, but to be honest I can't be bothered to check. And that would be rather contrary to the point of the exercise, if somewhat undercutting of the premise that free will is equivalent or comparable to randomness. Right; if you guess completely randomly it will hover around 50%, but if you choose the least-likely 5-gram from your history, then it should end up less than 50%.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ACow_Adonis 3y ago
yes, I've done some of these before. Ive gotten up above 200 key presses at ~50% before getting bored. my secret was decidedly less sexy than free will though. i just had XX years of working as a statistician and having a better intuition as to what random strings and numbers actually look like :/
- sanitycheck 3y ago
  Same here, though I don't have any years of experience working as a statistician. I did have a job where I had to implement a bunch of cognition tests for scientific studies. Initially I worked purely off the research papers describing how the some of the tests work - apparently by presenting a series of random numbers. After I had the first few up and running, the feedback from the researchers was that my random numbers weren't random enough. "Weird", I thought... I had seeds for their sessions so I could reproduce the sequences they'd seen and they looked pretty random to me. In the end it turned out my sequences were "too random", they didn't like any number being repeated, having more than 3 instances of the same number within any 6-digit sequence, and a few other "tweaks". Turns out actual randomness is confusing even for some very experienced and well trained people!
- lupire 3y ago
  How fast can you do those key presses? Do you have a memorized random string? It's easy to be random if you have memorized random (or normal) data that your adversary isn't focused on. For example, early digits of pi work in most cases. Or use a generator to create a sequence to memorize.
  - ACow_Adonis 3y ago
    quite slow and considered actually. i doubt i could pump them out rapid fire, but maybe i should try. i don't have anything memorised and just go off of feel of runs of numbers. i have considered trying to memorise some algorithm, but never done it. i assume that if anyone tried to get me to do these things with a non- uniform distribution I'd probably be screwed, but never tested it.
otabdeveloper4 3y ago
Free will is equivalent to randomness with many (asymptotically infinite) degrees of freedom. Not sure if the experiment tests this. (Pressing a different key or closing the browser tab are also variables in this probability distribution.)
- eigenket 3y ago
  > Free will is equivalent to randomness with many (asymptotically infinite) degrees of freedom. I don't think this is obviously true. I can make a random number generating device with as many degrees of freedom as you like by producing a bunch of vertically polarised photons and measuring their horizontal polarisation. I don't think anyone would describe this system as having "free will". Conversely humans with "free will" don't usually behave very randomly. They often have reasoning (good or bad) and are able to explain why they took whatever actions they took. Free will seems to be qualitatively different to randomness.
  - nonrandomstring 3y ago
    > Free will seems to be qualitatively different to randomness. I was going to suggest reading "The Diceman" by Luke Rhinehart [0]. But then I don't want to do that, because it really messes with some people. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dice_Man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dice_Man
    - smokel 3y ago
      Interestingly, this book is from 1971, whereas a famous duck went through a similar plot already in 1952 [1]. Now, how to decide if I should add this to the Wikipedia entry of "The Dice Man"? [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip_Decision https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip_Decision
      - jhbadger 3y ago
        And Harvey Dent, aka "Two Face", the Batman villain who decides to kill or spare his victims using a coin toss, was first shown in the comics in 1942! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-Face https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-Face
15457345234 3y ago
51%
scythe 3y ago
I got 42% by just tapping the digits of pi according to even/odd.
mcv 3y ago
I just typed randomly and got 50%. Does that mean I've got more free will than you? Is my will random? I've got my doubts, but I don't have anything better either.

aidenn0 3y ago

> I can get it to about 60%. Given the algorithm used, it seems like it should be trivial to "trick" it by just cycling through novel 5-grams over and over, but to be honest I can't be bothered to check. And that would be rather contrary to the point of the exercise, if somewhat undercutting of the premise that free will is equivalent or comparable to randomness. Right; if you guess completely randomly it will hover around 50%, but if you choose the least-likely 5-gram from your history, then it should end up less than 50%.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

ACow_Adonis 3y ago

yes, I've done some of these before. Ive gotten up above 200 key presses at ~50% before getting bored. my secret was decidedly less sexy than free will though. i just had XX years of working as a statistician and having a better intuition as to what random strings and numbers actually look like :/

sanitycheck 3y ago
Same here, though I don't have any years of experience working as a statistician. I did have a job where I had to implement a bunch of cognition tests for scientific studies. Initially I worked purely off the research papers describing how the some of the tests work - apparently by presenting a series of random numbers. After I had the first few up and running, the feedback from the researchers was that my random numbers weren't random enough. "Weird", I thought... I had seeds for their sessions so I could reproduce the sequences they'd seen and they looked pretty random to me. In the end it turned out my sequences were "too random", they didn't like any number being repeated, having more than 3 instances of the same number within any 6-digit sequence, and a few other "tweaks". Turns out actual randomness is confusing even for some very experienced and well trained people!
lupire 3y ago
How fast can you do those key presses? Do you have a memorized random string? It's easy to be random if you have memorized random (or normal) data that your adversary isn't focused on. For example, early digits of pi work in most cases. Or use a generator to create a sequence to memorize.
- ACow_Adonis 3y ago
  quite slow and considered actually. i doubt i could pump them out rapid fire, but maybe i should try. i don't have anything memorised and just go off of feel of runs of numbers. i have considered trying to memorise some algorithm, but never done it. i assume that if anyone tried to get me to do these things with a non- uniform distribution I'd probably be screwed, but never tested it.

otabdeveloper4 3y ago

Free will is equivalent to randomness with many (asymptotically infinite) degrees of freedom. Not sure if the experiment tests this. (Pressing a different key or closing the browser tab are also variables in this probability distribution.)

eigenket 3y ago
> Free will is equivalent to randomness with many (asymptotically infinite) degrees of freedom. I don't think this is obviously true. I can make a random number generating device with as many degrees of freedom as you like by producing a bunch of vertically polarised photons and measuring their horizontal polarisation. I don't think anyone would describe this system as having "free will". Conversely humans with "free will" don't usually behave very randomly. They often have reasoning (good or bad) and are able to explain why they took whatever actions they took. Free will seems to be qualitatively different to randomness.
- nonrandomstring 3y ago
  > Free will seems to be qualitatively different to randomness. I was going to suggest reading "The Diceman" by Luke Rhinehart [0]. But then I don't want to do that, because it really messes with some people. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dice_Man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dice_Man
  - smokel 3y ago
    Interestingly, this book is from 1971, whereas a famous duck went through a similar plot already in 1952 [1]. Now, how to decide if I should add this to the Wikipedia entry of "The Dice Man"? [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip_Decision https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip_Decision
    - jhbadger 3y ago
      And Harvey Dent, aka "Two Face", the Batman villain who decides to kill or spare his victims using a coin toss, was first shown in the comics in 1942! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-Face https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-Face

15457345234 3y ago

51%

scythe 3y ago

I got 42% by just tapping the digits of pi according to even/odd.

mcv 3y ago

I just typed randomly and got 50%. Does that mean I've got more free will than you? Is my will random? I've got my doubts, but I don't have anything better either.