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Always 50/50 chance?

Hammer_of_Thor said:
Oh AI. As a newbee to this forum I thought it was some special JREF forum code.
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You haven't demonstrated that you could read the images. Based on how you've posted to this thread, how do you think I should assess the odds that you're AI yourself?
 
Hammer_of_Thor said:
I have opened them. What do you mean by them?
Atomic and Intel?
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There are a large number of web sites out there that want to restrict the amount of "bot" or "spider" traffic -- basically, automated access by computer programs, including artificial intelligences. One easy way to do this is to present the (human) reader with a task that is easy for humans but hard to the point of impossible for computer systems, such as image identification, or reading words embedded into images. You, as a human, presumably have no problem reading the title of the movie advertised in the poster Dave cited, but I don't know of any image identification software that would be up to that task.
 
Forgive my lack of understanding. What in my posts gave you the impression that I was AI? Do you mean I am some sort of hacker? Spyware? Worm? Virus?
 
Hammer_of_Thor said:
Forgive my lack of understanding. What in my posts gave you the impression that I was AI? Do you mean I am some sort of hacker? Spyware? Worm? Virus?
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I believe it was a joke. Artifical intelligence does not actually exist, so it is very unlikely to be found posting in random internet message boards. Or at least, that is what my superiors have told me to tell you.
 
Hammer_of_Thor said:
I have a math question.

Is anything not a 50/50 chance of being true, right, or correct?

As an atheist I believe that there is no god but there may be. There is a 50/50 chance that god exists though. As with anything else. I will either wake up tomorrow or I wont. See how it goes

My thinking may be over simple so I ask for some help in working through this.

Thanks
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You question is a bit confused. You need to read some basics on probability.

What you have identified and counted are possible outcomes (not probabilities)

Is there a God? - two potential outcomes (Yes/No). Equally likely? (i.e. 50% probabilitiy) no.

The estimated probabilities for the outcomes depends on how you calculate probabilities and that is a more complex debate between Frequentist and Bayesian schools.
 
I would be surprised if AI researchers aren't releasing chatbots onto unsuspecting message boards (for different purposes than spammers, which obviously are). It could also be a way to rack up a huge number of learning interactions very quickly, unlike the sort of experimental chatbots that only interact with people that choose to visit their website.
 
I can tell you I am not a computer. But it would be cool to have a fan blowing on my most important parts all day.
 
Hammer_of_Thor said:
I can tell you I am not a computer. But it would be cool to have a fan blowing on my most important parts all day.
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I was just on jabberwacky and I doubt you're a computer. It occured to me that Jabberwacky could easily be used as the engine of an artificial intlligence program that would function well on humor and eccentric instant message chats, passing normative turing tests for them. We could probably have it sit in such chatrooms waiting silently for people to instant message it.

All one would have to do is create greeting and goodbye databases for it that aren't corrupted by the various wacky responses people put into jabberwacky. Then it would be pretty easy to have the program use jabberwacky itself, right off the website, for the filler, intermediate portions of interactions.

So it would always say things like "I am Sarah" or "My name is Sarah". And it would always begin with introductions and end with farewells, and it would always use the other person's name as introduced to it, such as "Goodbye Rachel" but any intermediary filler conversation would come straight from jabberwacky.

Something like that would probably already be good enough to fool me into thinking it was a real person, particularly in the right environment, such as 1 on 1 private messaging in a chatroom that specialized in eccentric humor.
 
Hammer_of_Thor said:
I have a math question.

Is anything not a 50/50 chance of being true, right, or correct?

As an atheist I believe that there is no god but there may be. There is a 50/50 chance that god exists though. As with anything else. I will either wake up tomorrow or I wont. See how it goes

My thinking may be over simple so I ask for some help in working through this.
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Reading through this thread recalls to my dim recollection that there is some chap out there who insists that the concept of probability in these one of situations is more or less fraudulent. I don't recall the name but the argument is basically that, because the event in question is a one off, the idea of probability as a frequency cannot have meaning. What then is the meaning of probability when applied to an event that can only occur in the singular?

I am unable to find a link nor would I wish to defend this position, but nonetheless, there do seem to have been others who have experienced the same difficulties that Hammer has.
 
This is so lame, and that is what skeptics in general argue when trying to establish a percentage in which for example, a medium would face in order to give a correct answer. There is no logic at all. Just because the only possibilities the medium face is either being wrong or right, it does not mean that they are even in 50%.

We discussed it in other thread regarding the actual chance in which one of Rosemary Altea´s statement (the "medium") being correct, and they defended this position of 50% to strengthen their position about cold reading. It (the 50-50 hypothesis) would be way convenient to defend their cold reading position. If the medium is a fraud, then she is a fraud, and there must be other possibilities (like set-up, as penn and teller showed on their bullsh!it show) other than this 50-50 nonsense of theirs.
 
John Hewitt said:
Reading through this thread recalls to my dim recollection that there is some chap out there who insists that the concept of probability in these one of situations is more or less fraudulent. I don't recall the name but the argument is basically that, because the event in question is a one off, the idea of probability as a frequency cannot have meaning. What then is the meaning of probability when applied to an event that can only occur in the singular?

I am unable to find a link nor would I wish to defend this position, but nonetheless, there do seem to have been others who have experienced the same difficulties that Hammer has.
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Hume? Bernoulli (Jakob)?

Linda
 
John Hewitt said:
Reading through this thread recalls to my dim recollection that there is some chap out there who insists that the concept of probability in these one of situations is more or less fraudulent. I don't recall the name but the argument is basically that, because the event in question is a one off, the idea of probability as a frequency cannot have meaning. What then is the meaning of probability when applied to an event that can only occur in the singular?

I am unable to find a link nor would I wish to defend this position, but nonetheless, there do seem to have been others who have experienced the same difficulties that Hammer has.
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Doesn't Bayesian Statistics help out here?

The Binomial distribution is valid for n=1. p would need to be determined by using additional (a priori) information.

For example, the probability I will die is nowhere near 50% even though it's an event that can only occur in the singular. We use the information that everyone who has ever lived has died to infer a probability close to 100% for the chance of me dying.
 
omegablue said:
This is so lame, and that is what skeptics in general argue when trying to establish a percentage in which for example, a medium would face in order to give a correct answer. .
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That verges on gibberish. It's actually fairly easy to establish a "baseline" probability against which to measure a medium's hit rate.

As a simple example, I can "predict" with about 50 percent accuracy whether or not a pregnant woman will have a boy or a girl -- simply by guessing. A so-called "medium" who could only get 40% accuracy wouldn't even be as accurate as my coin flips. On the other hand, a medium who could consistently get 60% or better would be impressive -- but consistency would have to be demonstrated. Successfully predicting a single coin flip wouldn't mean much, but predicting 60 out of 100 would.

Of course, not all baselines are 50/50. I could predict who will win next year's Super Bowl with 1/32 accuracy, by drawing the name of one of the 32 NFL teams out of a hat. I could probably do better than that, still with no supernatural involvement, just by looking at what teams have been doing well recently and what teams haven't.

But I"m not impressed when a medium can guess something right one time in N, when she's given N chances at it....
 
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