Odds Philosophy Question

[gwnn]

and?

And then you'll know what the question is.

[mgoetze]

For me, often I dont really understand the question ..

...but that has never deterred you from posting anyway, has it?

[FM75]

Maybe kindly read the ****** opening post?

 

There were only 2 questions in the OP.

1. Am I making any sense here? - (The answer to that is clearly "no". See my discussion.)
2. If so, any comments?

Perhaps, in light of 2, I should not have made any comments. Clarifying the nature of the problem is necessary. I hoped that the comments might help OP to phrase the problem in such a way that there was a clear problem statement, or question that could actually be answered, since I took it that he had the intent of solving a problem.

[kenrexford]

those who have analyzed this as math problem have missed the point, which meant be l. bviously, all actors go into proper math stion. The questionis of micro mbles.

 

[fromageGB]

those who have analyzed this as math problem have missed the point, which meant be l. bviously, all actors go into proper math stion. The questionis of micro mbles.

Did you mean to add "Am I making any sense here?" ?

[fromageGB]

No, this is an example of the motto "gibberish in" (the thread) and "gibberish out" (Ken's contribution).

[manudude03]

This is Maths for those who know the Monty Hall problem is 50%.

 

I know it's not.

[Vampyr]

If one grouping of bad luck chances can be identified, we might be able to disregard that on the theory that this is a "bad day scenario." You only see, say, 2 of these 10% death sentence scenarios per session. So, if I ignore them, I pay a penalty in the Monday-Tuesday game but have a real good shot at a good game for the Wednesday-Thursday event.

 

I don't understand what you are saying here. If you lose on a 1 in 4 chance on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, this is no way suggests that the positive event is anything other than 1 in 4 on Thursday.

 

It is actually trivial to produce a betting system that gives odds for the player of over 50%.

 

Similarly, betting systems can easily be produced that give a player positive equity. The problem is that the shift into positive territory may occur after you have spent all of the money in the world.

[barmar]

I mentioned earlier that intuitive probability is often wrong. On the other hand, there are psychological reasons why ignoring the mathematical odds can be reasonable.

 

If you bid normally to an odds-on slam, and make it, you just think "It was cold, I didn't have to do anything special". But if you bid a close game or slam, and you find the squeeze to make it, you feel a real sense of accomplishment and get an ego boost.

 

We also play bridge for the intellectual challenge. Overbidding and trying to make it is more challenging, hence more enjoyable.

[kenrexford]

those who have analyzed this as math problem have missed the point, which meant be l. bviously, all actors go into proper math stion. The questionis of micro mbles.

 

 

This (above) seemed rather well articulated, but I will try to explain this again anyway.

 

The math is easy. A win-loss analysis takes all variables and computes a result. That is not my question.

 

Suppose that you decide to view a certain situation as always there, like possession of the mystery queen. You could design a system to ask for it, or you could figure in the likelihood of its presence into the odds. But, instead you decide to just place it where you want it. If you do that move, the odds might change to your favor by simply deciding that the card is where you want it. If it turns out incorrect and not there, then the world is wrong, or you are in an alternate universe, where the Queen is inexplicably not where it should be.

 

Using this approach, your thesis will be right, say, most of the time. Your placement of a 90% likelihood as always there will be right 90% of the time. In that set of events, your chances of something else happening may be more favorable than not, skewed because your universe is now different, by your definition.

 

Religion does this, to a degree. You decide that there is a god, and then address science next. Anything that does not fit the thesis is tossed out as wrong, and the remainder then proves the theory as correct.

 

At bridge, however, this might make some sense. For, if you just decide, for example, that the Queen is always with partner, and partner knows this, then partner will tend to shy away from whatever caused that assumption, which will tend to make the assumption correct. If you assume that partner overbids, and hence underbid, this causes partner to overbid to compensate over time, and thus the theorem over time proves itself.

 

You could counter this movement by going with the assumption and letting chips fall where they may, rather than resisting, by attributing losses to unlucky bad days, or an alternative universe, thereby keeping your own bridge religion pure, notwithstanding the CHO.

 

Or, you could be the offender and decide to simply go with your unsound assumption anyway, as more fun. You end up doing things the other way from the rest, which means that you win some days and lose some days, but you are average fewer days.

[Zelandakh]

Ken, it sounds to me like you are suggesting going back to bidding systems of the 1920s, where it was not possible to find out where such cards as the trump queen were before bidding a slam. It is surely obvious that this is a bad idea. All you are doing is bidding more inaccurately. Sometimes you will come out ahead and sometimes not but the overall effect will be a higher variance and a lower mean. You could achieve the same effect by playing EHAA.

[Vampyr]

What are you on, Ken, and where can I get some of that?

[hrothgar]

This (above) seemed rather well articulated, but I will try to explain this again anyway.

 

The math is easy. A win-loss analysis takes all variables and computes a result. That is not my question.

 

Suppose that you decide to view a certain situation as always there, like possession of the mystery queen. You could design a system to ask for it, or you could figure in the likelihood of its presence into the odds. But, instead you decide to just place it where you want it. If you do that move, the odds might change to your favor by simply deciding that the card is where you want it. If it turns out incorrect and not there, then the world is wrong, or you are in an alternate universe, where the Queen is inexplicably not where it should be.

 

As is oft the case, Robot Chicken is the only plausible response to Ken

 

http://video.adultswim.com/robot-chicken/scientist-mad-with-power.html

[gwnn]

I could also argue that the times when I toss heads are in a different universe, so in this universe coins only ever come out tails. That would be wrong 50% of the time. If you pretend that you will never ever win (the main prize) at the lottery, you will almost be 100% right. But these are not really desirable approximations like cosx~=1-0.5*x^2, it would be more like cosx~1-0.45*x^2, i.e. some of the parameters are inherently wrong and you could imptove them without any additional computational effort.

[kenrexford]

I could also argue that the times when I toss heads are in a different universe, so in this universe coins only ever come out tails. That would be wrong 50% of the time. If you pretend that you will never ever win (the main prize) at the lottery, you will almost be 100% right. But these are not really desirable approximations like cosx~=1-0.5*x^2, it would be more like cosx~1-0.45*x^2, i.e. some of the parameters are inherently wrong and you could imptove them without any additional computational effort.

 

 

If there are an infinite number of universes, then clearly there is a universe in which I always flip heads. So, if each I assumes that I will only flip heads, one of us will be right, and many of us will be uncannily close to right. Some of us will be p'd off with the incredible bad luck.

 

If I can somehow control which universe I am by just deciding it is so, or at least thereby move myself in that direction, I might cause heads to pop up more than makes sense.

 

Consider a problem. Play for the drop or hook when the odds are close? Some go the supposedly anti-percentage way and swear by it. Maybe they are right, and for them it actually is the percentage line. When you hear their explanations, they discount certain situations as not likely, and somehow this works out for them, they claim. Who are we to question this?

[hrothgar]

Consider a problem. Play for the drop or hook when the odds are close? Some go the supposedly anti-percentage way and swear by it. Maybe they are right, and for them it actually is the percentage line. When you hear their explanations, they discount certain situations as not likely, and somehow this works out for them, they claim. Who are we to question this?

 

There is a difference between

 

"The other team is stronger than we are, therefore our best chance of winning is to trade off expected value for variance" and

 

"If I wish really hard, I can delude myself about probability theory"

[barmar]

If there are an infinite number of universes, then clearly there is a universe in which I always flip heads. So, if each I assumes that I will only flip heads, one of us will be right, and many of us will be uncannily close to right. Some of us will be p'd off with the incredible bad luck.

 

If I can somehow control which universe I am by just deciding it is so, or at least thereby move myself in that direction, I might cause heads to pop up more than makes sense.

But how would you know if you can control it? There are some universes where every time you have said "Make it heads", it came out heads, and vice versa. But there's no way to tell whether it's cause-and-effect or just coincidence (since there are an infinite number of universes, some of them will have this correspondence).

 

When you postulate infinite users and all the possible laws that could operate in them, predictability goes out the window.

[fromageGB]

Glad to see you made it back safely, Ken. Some of us were worried.