Smart Disagreement
May 23rd, 2007The Solution (it was about time)
Consider the following experiment: 2^1000 men are each throwing a coin 1000 times. Consider a person that gets all 1′s (assuming he exists). This person, although he knows 2^1000 other people have tossed coins too, experienced an event of probability 1:2^1000 – namely that he is the person to that got all ones. He is right to suspect one of the laws of physics he knows is wrong (or that the coin is biased, or that god exists, or that the organisers of the experiment lied to him, etc.). To someone random from the experiment the fact that someonegot all ones is not very surprising and he shall not come to the same conclusion. Note that the range of conclusions is continuous – a good friend of the person that got all ones might also be right to suspect that something fishy is going on (after all he experienced an event of probability 2^1000/num_of_friends or something of the sort). Also, the same goes for the person that got all 0′s, the person that got his name and address in ASCII, etc (in each case the amount of belief in the statement “there is something wrong with my set of axioms” is varied).
This phenomenon does exist of course in everyday life (with much smaller groups of people) but then the different conclusions reached are less divergent.
A real life example: someone winning the lottery is right in believing that god exists in a firmer way than he did before he won (maybe that will still not be a lot, but if he is smart he is supposed to augment that probability).
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May 24th, 2007 at 7:30 pm
As one of the ppl who heard this riddle and thought it’s a silly one, I must say that the answer is amazingly interesting, because it’s really something that you understand about the foundations of science (at least that the way I see it…)
I’m sure that after the solution will be submitted there will be a long discussion about it
May 28th, 2007 at 6:07 pm
do those smart men all know that the others do not lie?? is any of them female?
May 29th, 2007 at 12:49 am
Let me clarify these two important points:
– All the men know of all the rules (specifically, they know others are not lying).
– Obviously none of the men are females (as I specifically said that they are “very smart”). Just kidding!
May 29th, 2007 at 1:37 am
I think its time I gave some hints for the solution (I am refering to my solution as “the solution” although there may be others. Please feel encouraged to post your thoughts!).
Well, first of all, consider a very big group of people – for example 100,000,000,000 men. Of course, the phenomenon demonstrated here occures in every-day life (for much smaller groups of men) but considering the huge group emphasizes the result.
Now a second hint is, try to consider an experiment involving something random.
Good luck!