4 ms·
I wonder how humans would respond to a prompt '(without mechanical assistance) with 80% probability say Left, and with 20% say Right' across a population. I ca
by NeoTar 2y ago
I wonder how humans would respond to a prompt '(without mechanical assistance) with 80% probability say Left, and with 20% say Right' across a population.
I can think of a few levels that people might try to think about the problem:
Level 0: Ignore the probabilities and just pick whichever you feel like, (would tend to 50:50)
Level 1: Say the most with the greatest probability - Left (would tend to 100:0)
Level 2: Consider that most people are likely to say Left, so say Right instead (would tend to 0:100)
Level 3: Try to think about what proportion of people would say Left, and what would say Right, and say whichever would return the balance closest to 80:20...
Presumably your result would depend on how many people thinking on each level you have in your sample...
- spiffytech 2y agoI've seen people do this with Twitter polls with tens of thousands of respondants. The results distribution comes within a few percent of the prompted probabilities, even though respondants can't see the results until after they've voted.
- cortesoft 2y agoThis sounds a lot like a Keynesian Beauty Contest (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_beauty_contest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_beauty_contest), where you are trying to make a selection based on what you think other people are going to choose. If I really wanted to give an accurate answer in this case, I would probably choose some arbitrary source of a number (like my age or the number of days that have gone by so far this year), figure out the modulo 5 of that number, then say 'Right' if the modulo is 0, and 'Left' otherwise. Obviously there are some flaws in this approach, but I think it would be as accurate as I could get.
- patapong 2y agoFun question! I think the following would be a viable strategy without communication: Think of an observable criterion that matches the target distribution. For example, for 80-20: - "Is the minute count higher than 12?" (This is the case in 80% of cases) - "Do I have black hair?" (This is apparently also the case in 80% of cases) Then, answer according to this criterion. If everyone follows the same strategy, even if the criteria selected differs between each individual, the votes should match the target probability. Unless I am making a logical mistake :)
- michaelt 2y agoLevel 4: Clearly, the Schelling point requires a number everyone knows, which is evenly distributed across the population, modulo 10. Let's use year of birth modulo 10. For me that's 2, so I'll say Left.