FlailingAce
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User ID: 1084
FlailingAce
2d ago
If you get a lollipop on Tuesday then you get new information, but the whole premise of the thought experiment is that you don't have any way to distinguish the days, so there's no new information gained. And because of the magical memory erasure that applies to both days.
Either way, I think you're basically right that it should by 2/3, but I don't think it's a paradox or even particularly interesting when properly formulated. The anthropic principle version makes the correct answer instinctual as well as mathematically correct. The Sleeping Beauty version simply uses poor formulation and equivocates on the meaning of probability to make it seem paradoxical, which is why I line up more with the Ambiguous-question position.
FlailingAce
2d ago
Sorry, is your objection that I didn't specify this was a hypothesis?
The impression that I got from watching the documentary is the hypothesis that they are trying to raise awareness of SyG laws, and in particular couching it as a racial justice issue. My hypothetical conclusion is that they may be supportive of juries ruling against SyG defendants. Do you have anything interesting to say about this, or are you just being reflexively combative?
FlailingAce
3d ago
In Silksong (even more than HK), finding a well-hidden secret might unlock a key quest item, or a hidden encounter, or even an entire new zone. It's kind of nuts, and it did mean I missed some big things by playing without a guide, but I loved it anyway.
If you like this open-ended exploration aspect, I would personally recommend Dark Souls 1 over any of the others. The world design is reminiscent of Hollow Knight, in that things are surprisingly connected and non-linear, and you can indeed discover whole new zones by stepping off the beaten path. The big fights are also pretty varied and interesting. Of all the FromSoft games, that's the one I most wish I could play fresh and discover everything again.
FlailingAce
3d ago
Thanks for the clarification. Does reasonable doubt standards apply to all those provisions? In this case, the killer reported that the woman she shot said "I'll kill you" and was banging on her door - assuming it's true, is that sufficient for a reasonable fear? for 'imminent' danger?
How would you go about shooting someone you thought was attacking you? Let them in first? If someone is on my property trying to break in to my house, Stand your Ground clearly applies.
The issue that was apparently more significant in the conviction was the discrepancy between the woman's self-reported timeline of the events and the real timeline, as I mentioned. But that discrepancy only overcomes reasonable doubt if there's a viable alternative, namely that the white woman shot the black woman in cold blood. This in turn relies on the context of the conflict between them, which was argued as racially motivated.
Regardless, I'm talking about the documentary, in which the creators made it clear they think it was a racial issue. Again, they specifically cite disproportionate death rates of black Americans under SyG laws. What about that do you dispute?
FlailingAce
3d ago
Similarly, in the Sleeping Beauty problem, there are 4 equal-probability possibilities (Monday/Tuesday) x (heads/tails), and you waking up gives you information that restricts you to three of them.
This is just not true. Waking up doesn't give you any information, because you already know that you will wake up. You are 100% expecting to wake up.
In other words, given this scenario, Sleeping Beauty should pre-commit to the coin landing on tails with a 2/3 probability when she's asked about it. There's nothing that happens at the point of waking that changes the information she has. But this is intuitively incorrect, because a fair coin has a 1/2 probability of landing on tails, so it doesn't make sense to commit to a wrong answer. This is because 'probability' here is being used in two different ways - in the first, about our estimation about how the world actually is or was in the past, and in the second on a physical outcome in the future that can go different ways. That's why we're getting confused.
Ultimately the thirder position is analogous to the anthropic principle, and I think the problem is better conceived of like this:
Imagine there's a computer program running on a server, and after a fair coin flip, if the coin is heads, the program continues as normal, but if the coin is tails, the program is copied and now two identical programs are running. Knowing only that the coin flip has occurred and nothing else, what probability should the program give to the coin having landed on heads?
This gets rid of all the sleeping and memory erasing that just confuses the issue. The only question is, does the anthropic principle hold?
FlailingAce
3d ago
This seems kinda flimsy, but again, does anyone actually care?
Just as an anecdote, the editor of the Tangle newsletter (which I recommend) considers this extra-judicial killing to be one of the worst things the Trump administration has done.
This is an insane normalization of what should be a major, stop-you-in-your-tracks, likely illegal use of military force. After the first strike in early September, we criticized the lack of evidence for the government’s claims, questioned the legality of the attack, and called the military operation that killed 11 to be Trump’s most lethal use of executive authority yet. Now, the United States has struck at least three more boats off the coast of Venezuela, and we don’t know who was on the boats, what they were carrying, where they were headed, if they were in international waters at the time, or even how many the U.S. has struck.
And in a later post:
One of the most alarming aspects of this situation was that, in the case of at least one of the men who was killed in the strike, some evidence emerged that he was a fisherman. One of the survivors of the recent strike did have a prior record of trafficking drugs, but the other man, from Ecuador, was released by his country and won’t be charged because they said there was no crime to charge him with. In other words, it’s possible that the Trump administration just killed at least one innocent person. At the very least, they declined to detain and charge someone on U.S. soil they just got done trying to kill extrajudicially.
That this administration had not been fighting narcoterrorists but actually killing innocent fishermen off the coast of Venezuela was already something a few journalists had theorized. When Colombia’s president condemned the strikes, Trump pulled U.S. aid to the country, rather than admit a potential mistake.
People care, there's just not much anyone can really do about it.
There's a moderately interesting documentary now on Netflix called 'The Perfect Neighbor', which uses police footage to tell the story of one case of Stand your Ground (SyG) killing. The way the piece is framed attempts to demonstrate that the killing was racially motivated. The mixed-race community is shown in a positive light, and includes plenty of footage of the kids in the community reporting that the eventual killer used racial epithets towards them, although there's no hard evidence of this. They also put up some statistics at the end that indicate that killings have increased in SyG states, and that SyG killings target blacks at a higher rate. In the end, the Stand your Ground defense doesn't hold up and the killer is convicted of manslaughter.
The publication and pushing of this documentary, to me, shows that SyG is on the rise culturally - otherwise why would Hollywood feel the need to push back against it? What's striking to me is that this was the case they chose to highlight, given the fact that the SyG defense failed. I won't go too into the details of the case, but the main weakness was that the killer reported a longer timeline from when she called the police to come help here to when she shot and killed the woman on her doorstep, which they argued indicated she didn't really fear for her life but instead set the whole thing up to get away with killing her neighbor. Franky, if I were on the jury I would probably have acquitted, just on the basis of how SyG works. As far as I understand (IANAL), the only requirement for self-defense under SyG laws is reasonable fear of death/harm. In this case, it really seems like the jury concluded there wasn't a reasonable fear because the killer was racist.
My takeaway from the whole thing is that it seems the makers of the documentary are implicitly arguing that juries should nullify the SyG defense. The documentary was not directed towards the voting populations of states likely to adopt SyG laws, but rather towards blue tribe types who sympathize with minority communities. I don't think it's a mistake that this outcome was publicized on Netflix, I think it's meant to be an example. (Edit: I'll add that I initially thought the takeaway would be the opposite - that the woman would be acquitted and this would be an example of why these laws shouldn't exist. I was quite surprised when they convicted her.)
I'm curious if anyone else watched this documentary and had a different take.
FlailingAce
5d ago
This is true of all free apps and sites, because the only way to monetize them is ad revenue, meaning doom-scrolling is always optimal. Incentives will out.
There are still variety and innovation to be found in paid services, as well as some that are funded by donations or the like. Whether that's subscription-model newsletters/sites that provide unique analysis, paid dating services that provide 'expert' matchmaking, or hell just look at video games - every free game has the same garbage time sink model, meanwhile indies that cost $5 can still be fantastic.
"If you didn't pay for a product, you are the product" applies universally. If something is important to you and provides value, go pay for the real thing. The 'internet' only sucks because it's free.
FlailingAce
5d ago
This makes Trump's reaction utterly bizarre to me.
As a three-time Trump voter, I just have to say - the man needs to be put out to pasture. By all accounts you are correct when you posit that his emotions are making him irrational. I personally believe that he was originally quite an impressive and intuitive leader, but the stress and partisanship of the last ten years appear to have degraded any nuance in his personality and thinking. We are swiftly approaching Joe Biden territory. I just wish he were being stage-managed as well as Joe was.
You'll notice that I didn't make any claims about the basis or the consequence of this statistic, or about the fairness of SyG laws in general. My comment is about what the creators of the documentary were intending by including these statistics.
If SyG laws become framed as a racial justice issue, this will tend to polarize the debate on partisan lines, which I think is unfortunate. And if some juries rule against SyG defendants on the basis of racial justice, which I think is possible, that could damage the integrity of the courts and create more animosity.
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