Re: MATH: Followup to Bayesian story problem

From: Cory Przybyla (recherchetenet@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat Mar 29 2003 - 12:32:22 MST

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    --- "Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" <sentience@pobox.com>
    wrote:
    > Followup story problem:
    >
    > Q. Suppose that there are two barrels, each
    > containing a number of
    > plastic eggs. In both barrels, some eggs are
    > painted blue and the rest
    > are painted red. In the first barrel, 90% of the
    > eggs contain pearls and
    > 20% of the pearl eggs are painted blue. In the
    > second barrel, 45% of the
    > eggs contain pearls and 60% of the empty eggs are
    > painted red. Would you
    > rather have a blue pearl egg from the first or
    > second barrel?
    >
    > A. Actually, it doesn't matter which barrel you
    > choose! Can you see why?

    ummm, because you get a blue pearl egg either way,
    based on the sentence "Would you rather *have a blue
    pearl egg* from..." or was this a mistake and
    something else was to be the catch?

    > --
    > Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
    > http://singinst.org/
    > Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for
    > Artificial Intelligence
    >

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