On 21 August 2017 at 11:08, John Clark <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sun, Aug 20, 2017 , Stathis Papaioannou <[email protected]> wrote: > > >> > >> While the outcome is certain for you, it is not certain for me. >> > > That's because the meaning of the personal pronoun "me" will always be > uncertain in a world that contains "me" duplicating machines. > >
And this uncertainty constitutes the irreducible indeterminacy. > >> One copy of me will win $1 and the other copy will lose $1. >> > > Then > Stathis Papaioannou > will have the same amount of money after the duplication as before. > After the duplication there will be two copies, one with $2 and the other with nothing. Neither of them has the same amount of money as before. > >> Anticipating the future prior to duplication, I have a 1/2 chance of >> doubling my money or losing it. If I don't bet, I will certainly have $1 >> before and after duplication. >> > > As so often happens in this thread nobody can say if the above is true > or not because nobody knows who Mr. I is. > > Mr I is the person who remembers going into the duplicator, and there are two of them. Mr I has gone through this many times and knows that half the time he ends up in Washington with $2 and half the time in Moscow with no money, hence next time he enters the duplicator he believes he has s 1/2 chance of doubling his money or losing it. You tell him he is not even wrong, he is considering a meaningless question, but he just laughs at you. A "fair game" when gambling is one where neither side has an advantage. >> > > A game involves skill and gambling involves probability and this > pointless procedure involves neither. > > Games can be games of chance rather than skill. A fair game is one in which the expected gain for the player in the long run is zero. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambling_mathematics > -- Stathis Papaioannou -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
