Sorry, I meant to say that he can rule out it being the case that the coin landed heads and that this is Day2. — Pierre-Normand
Do you agree that from the sitter point of view, the probability that the coin landed tails is 2/3?
Once John Doe awakens, he can rule out the possibility of it being Day 2 of his participation, and so can you. — Pierre-Normand
Once you have been assigned to John Doe, your credence (P(H)) in this proposition should be updated from 1/2 to 2/3. This is because you were randomly assigned a room, and there are twice as many rooms with participants who wake up twice as there are rooms with participants waking up once. — Pierre-Normand
In this modified scenario, imagine Monty picks one of the unchosen doors at random and reveals a goat by chance. — Pierre-Normand
So there are two ways for the participants to approach the problem:
1. I should reason as if I am randomly selected from the set of all participants
2. I should reason as if my interview is randomly selected from the set of all interviews — Michael
From the external point of view of the experimenter, it makes sense that the tree probabilities add up to more than one since the three outcomes are non exclusive. The events (Tails & Monday) and (Tails and Tuesday) can (and indeed must) be realized jointly. The intersection zone in the Venn diagram highlights the fact that those two events aren't mutually exclusive. The perspective (and epistemic position) of Sleeping Beauty is different. When she is awoken, those three possible states are mutually exclusive since it is not possible for her to believe that, in her current state of awakening, the current day is both Monday and Tuesday. Her credences in the three mutually exclusive states that she can be in therefore must add up to 1. — Pierre-Normand
There are four people, each assigned a number (unknown to them) between 1 and 4. Two of them are to be put to sleep at random, determined by a single coin toss: if heads then 1 and 2 are put to sleep; if tails then 3 and 4 are put to sleep.
After the coin toss one of the two is put to sleep first. For each of the remaining three, what is the probability that they will be put to sleep? Is it 1/3, because there are three of them and only one is to be put to sleep, or is it 1/2, because that was the probability before the first was put to sleep?
I agree with the idea that Sleeping Beauty's credence in H is updated to 1/2 after she learns that her current awakening is occurring on a Monday. The question is what was this credence updated from, before she learned that the current day was Monday. At that point she could not rule out that the current day was Tuesday. Does that not imply that her credence in H was lower than 1/2 before she learned that the day was Monday? Before she learned that, all three mutually exclulsive areas of the Venn diagram represent possible states for her to be in. She therefore should have non-zero credences for each one of them. — Pierre-Normand
The probability that the coin will land heads and she will be woken on Monday is 1/2.
The probability that the coin will land tails and she will be woken on Monday is 1/2.
The probability that the coin will land tails and she will be woken on Tuesday is 1/2.
As the Venn diagram shows, there are two (overlapping) probability spaces, hence why the sum of each outcome's probability is greater than 1.
As one of the 2^100 participants who has just been awoken, your credence that you've been assigned the winning ticket numbered 2^100 should be equal to (or slightly greater than) the probability that you haven't, given that half the participant interviews (plus one) are with participants assigned the winning ticket. — Pierre-Normand
I would like the halfer to explain why ruling out the Tuesday scenario doesn't affect their credence in the coin toss outcome at all. — Pierre-Normand
We must rather imagine that in the unlikely event that the coin lands heads 100 times in a row, 2^101 persons get pulled from the waitlist (or else, only one person does). In that case, if you are one random person who has been pulled from the waitlist, it is twice as likely that your have been so pulled as a result of the coin having landed heads 100 times in a row than not. It is hence rational for you to make this bet and in the long run 2/3 of the people pulled from the waitlist who make that bet with be right. — Pierre-Normand
I'm not sure why you think this is absurd. Compare again my lottery study example. Suppose there are one billion people on the waiting list. If a coin lands heads 20 times in a row, then, 100 million people get pulled from the list. Else, one single person gets pulled from the list. I am then informed that I got pulled from the list (but not whether I am alone or one from 100 million). Is it absurd for me to believe that the coin landed heads 20 times in a row? My credence in this proposition should be roughly 99% — Pierre-Normand
In Sleeping Beauty's case, your intuition that her credence in the high probability of the sequence of heads ought to be absurd apparently stems from your unwillingness to contemplate the possibility of her being able to updating it on the basis of her knowledge that she might be awoken an even more absurdly large number of times as a consequence of this very unlikely event. — Pierre-Normand
There is a space of possible awakening/interview events A that are being characterised by the day in which they occur ((M)onday or (T)uesday) and by the state of a coin that has been flipped prior to them occurring ((H)eads or (T)ails). P(H) = P(T) = 0.5. — Pierre-Normand
One clue to this is to let SB bet on the outcome that her credence is about and see if her betting behavior leads her to realize the EV she is anticipating. — Pierre-Normand
I would rather say that the experience works by ensuring that Sleeping Beauty finds herself being awoken in circumstances that she knows to be twice as likely to occur (because twice a frequent) as a result of a coin having landed heads than as a result of this coin having landed tails. — Pierre-Normand
But in that case P(Awake|Heads) should, consistently with this interpretation, refer to your being awakened at all conditioned on the case where the coin landed heads. This is (1/3+2/3)/2 = 0.5 — Pierre-Normand
If you mean P(Awake) to refer to the probability of your being awakened at all (on at least one day) then P(Awake) is indeed 0.5. — Pierre-Normand
I am then using Bayes' theorem to deduce the probability of a random awakening having occurred on a Tuesday. — Pierre-Normand
Let's say that there are three beauties; Michael, Jane, and Jill. They are put to sleep and assigned a random number from {1, 2, 3}.
If the coin lands heads then 1 is woken on Monday. If the coin lands tails then 2 is woken on Monday and 3 is woken on Tuesday.
P(Tuesday|Awoken) = (P(Awoken|Tuesday) / P(Awoken)) * P(Tuesday)
Sleeping Beauty is awoken with probability 3/4 on an average day (Monday or Tuesday). On Tuesdays, she is awoken with P = 1/2. Therefore, P(Awoken|Tuesday) / P(Awoken) = (1/2)/(3/4) = 2/3.
This (2/3) is the Bayesian updating factor. The unconditioned probability of her being awoken on Tuesday is 1/2. The updated probability therefore is P(Tuesday|Awoken) = (2/3)*(1/2) = 1/3, as expected. — Pierre-Normand
This is not a probability. It's a ratio of probabilities. The updated probability P(Heads|Awoken) is 2/3. The quoted ratio being larger than one just reflects the fact that Bayesian updating results in a probability increase in this case. — Pierre-Normand
It makes it twice as likely that individual bets are winning bets. Right? Likewise in Sleeping Beauty's problem, the fact that she is being awoken twice when the coin lands heads makes is more likely that a randomly selected awakening is the result of a coin having landed heads. — Pierre-Normand
After being woken up, which of these is the most rational consideration?
1. The coin almost certainly didn't land heads 100 times, and so this is most certainly my first and only interview, or
2. If this experiment was repeated 2100 times then the total number of interviews after the coin landed heads 100 times is greater than the total number of interviews after it didn't, and so if I was to pick an interview at random from that set then there is a greater probability that that interview would have followed the coin landing heads 100 times.
I think the first is the most (and only) rational consideration.
[Although] the second is true ... given that the experiment isn't conducted by picking an interview at random from that set and dropping Sleeping Beauty into it, it's also irrelevant.
P(Selected|Heads) / P(Selected) is 2/1.5 = 4/3. — Pierre-Normand
You're inviting us to imagine ourselves in Sleeping Beauty's shoes to support the halfer position. — Pierre-Normand
To make this scenario more directly analogous to the original problem, let's imagine that Sleeping Beauty, upon each awakening, can not only express her belief about the coin toss but also place a bet on it. In the long run, she would profit from taking the bet as a thirder, further reinforcing this position. — Pierre-Normand
Your two definitions of E[z] aren't equivalent. — sime
Yes, I see that. So why are you redefining y? — sime
No covert redefinitions of y are happening — sime
It's contradictory expectation values don't appeal to faulty reasoning given acceptance of the premises. — sime
Rather the switching argument is unsound, for among it's premises is an improper prior distribution over x, the smallest amount of money in an envelope. And this premise isn't possible in a finite universe.
Intuitively, it's contradictory conclusions makes sense; if the smallest amount of money in an envelope could be any amount of money, and if the prior distribution over the smallest amount of money is sufficiently uniform, then whatever value is revealed in your envelope, the value of the other envelope is likelier to be higher. — sime
You can be sure that the expected value for the other envelope is 5/4 of that of the one you have. — SolarWind
If I understand right, if the coin is heads 100 times, she wakes up on Monday and is not woken up on Tuesday. If the coin is not heads 100 times, she wakes up on Monday and Tuesday? Then the experiment ends. — fdrake
Michael - you ruined my mind again god damnit. — fdrake
I'll analyse that case if you can describe it very specifically. Like in the OP. — fdrake
if it’s heads 100 times in a row I wake you up 2101 times, otherwise I wake you up once
Because SB wakes up more on tails, a given wake up event is more likely to be caused by a tail flip that a head flip. — PhilosophyRunner
the probability of you seeing heads when you wake up is conditional on how often you wake up for heads and how often for tails — PhilosophyRunner
I was talking about frequency not probability. — PhilosophyRunner
