Nearing Completion of Evaluation of RS system (not)

Neither the struction [ff, mf, fm, mm], nor the information [one child is a girl] changes the chance that the other child is a girl, which was given at 50/50.

Posit Germany's land forces are roughly 4 times as powerful as Poland's entire military.
Posit the nation of Poland has not initiatied the use of military force against Germany for the past 100 years.
Posit German nationals in German military uniforms are found dead near the Polish border, and a nearby building and radio tower were damaged by military methods.

1. What is the chance the nation of Poland is responsible?
1a. Does your answer change if I have a PhD.?

Neither elaborate thoughts, nor perceptions, change reality. Although they definitely change each other.

As n ---> (inf), the chance that the last animal left in the corral is female is 50/50, no matter how we release them, nor the sex of the second to last.

Posit 4 women, each with two children.
Posit the chance that any child is female is 50%.
Posit we select one of the four and she does NOT have two male children.

1. What is our best estimate of the chance she has two female children?

NOW, NOW, NOW our answer is 1/3.

Listen, you aren't wrong about perceptions not changing reality. As you probably know this is one of my championed causes. We aren't suggesting that perception changes the reality. The alteration is only to the question being asked. Different questions have different answers. I'm not sure why you are having trouble with this? You might want to pick up a copy of The Drunkards Walk and read the full explanation in there. You'll find the problem explained in detail on pages 112-114.

It is also to be found on-line if you search for "A Girl Named Florida". I just read a few, but liked the one in the book better. As far as I could see the answer is uncontested, except for here on the LVA forum.

If you can prove Leonard Mlodinow was wrong I would find this to be very interesting. Keep me posted.

Oh also know that the probability is effected by search pattern and whether or not the name Florida is a constant or a random variable. Only if you search first for families with a girl named Florida, will the probability render as 50%. If let's say you were to search for families with at least 1 girl and then report the name, the probability would remain at 33%. The variation in answer is an artifice of the means one uses to answer it, and that is directed by how the question is phrased. Yes I know it's confusing. One must abandon common sense and use pure probability math to solve it.

You are absolutely correct that perception does not change reality. That's not even in question (or in the question) Reality & Perception simply aren't the issue here.

1. What is the chance the nation of Poland is responsible?

This is not a question that can be assigned an exact percentage chance of occurrence.

1a. Does your answer change if I have a PhD.?

No, but yours might. And if you then gave the correct answer less people would doubt you. Things like PhD's do alter people's perception of veracity. Nothing is absolute. PhD's can still be wrong, they are simply less likely to be wrong in their own field than people with no experience in that field. I don't think it's in question that decisions are better made with more information. A PhD is a measure of study and knowledge, not reasoning. But reasoning is effected by the amount of information one has available. The correlation is less than 1, but statistically significant.

As far as your cow question, think of it like counting cards in Blackjack, the probability of getting 21 does change when Aces are out of the deck. As soon you know one of the cows in a pen is female the deck is no longer fair. Again as you phrased it, your question cannot be answered precisely. And yes, if you were Leonard Mlodinow, I probably wouldn't have said anything, because I would have assumed I was wrong. I have no illusion that my reasoning is superior to his, or that I could catch him in a huge mistake.

~FK

Not to get back on topic of the original reason for this thread, seems to me that meeting with RS to discuss your findings is going to render the results of your evaluation as biased by most here.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled "Let's See How Smart You Are Or At Least How Well You Can Use Reason For The Enjoyment Of Others" programming.

Unbiased is a nearly unattainable perfection to which we can only aspire. Michael Shermer says the best we can achieve is "belief dependent realism". I started out at polar opposites to RS, but approached my analysis from the POV of trying to prove his claims. It is my failures that will speak more than my successes. This and the fact that I would have liked to have proven him right.

Our meeting is on the 10th of Nov. Not sure what he wants to talk about, but it's only right that I give him every opportunity he wants to explain things to his satisfaction. This is his reputation on the line after all. To do otherwise would violate my ethics. On that subject, please understand that I will not be able to impart anything he has told me in confidence that I consider to be a personal matter.

I'm not talking about Rob here, I'm making a general comment. If I were to find out something about anyone that could embarrass them in public, I would not share this with the world. I'm sorry if that disappoints the gossip hounds around here but that is my policy. I leave Dirty Laundry in the hamper for its owner to clean. Who wants to touch someone else's underwear anyway? (I suppose panty sniffers do) (OK bad analogy)

Saying no male children is the same thing as saying at least one female. You've confirmed my answer.

Billybuckeye please explain how Frank meeting with Singer would bias Frank's evaluation? It seems to me that any investigator would want to be able to do a thorough inquiry and it has been noted that some of Singer's system has never been made public. Let Frank may his fair and complete analysis and report. If he didn't give Singer a chance then the report would be biased.

Frank might indeed find in his analysis exactly what you want to hear. But if there are any doubts about his investigation the issues will never be resolved

Frank is doing his job well and I commend him for how he has rejected some of Singer's critics for their unfair bias.

Let him do his job. Then let him report. Then comment. It's only fair. And what is unfair is that RS will not be able to respond directly here. Fortunately for ALL sides there are other venues where Rob is not censored.

I hope you're not talking about your web site as the place where he is NOT censored.

If I recall, a few months back, you were crying about all the time it was taking for you to read every thread and response by RS because you had to remove all the name calling, cursing, and shit talking that that creep was doing to anyone who merely had questions for him.

You censored the shit out of him. There were whole paragraphs of his stuff removed from his posts, that you had to censor! LOL

Here on this web site, he starts that crap, and he gets BANNED!!

--Rizzo

If Rob is unable to post here I will attempt to pass on any rebuttal he might have. Since I will be showing my report to him before I post it, I can include the rebuttal in the original and obviate the need for a long drawn out exchange. It is unfortunate how things with this topic have gotten so out of hand in the past on both sides. I do not wish to add to that conflict.