Re: The cult of infinity

From: Tomaz Kristan (tomaz.kristan@gmail.com)
Date: Wed Aug 25 2004 - 01:53:03 MDT


On Tue, 24 Aug 2004 17:25:59 -0400, Eliezer Yudkowsky
<sentience@pobox.com> wrote:

>
> I don't see how you could formulate this paradox in strict math language.
> There is no concept of a "random shake" in set theory that I'm aware of,

A shake is a random swap of two integers at the Mth and the Nth place.

The probability distribution for the M place (and for the N place) is
the following:

p(M==1)=1/2, p(M==2)=1/4, p(M==3)=1/8, p(M==4)=1/16 ...

p(N==1)=1/2, p(N==2)=1/4, p(N==3)=1/8, p(N==4)=1/16 ...

It is probability 1/8 that we will swap the 1st and the 2nd number.
It's 2^-X*Y, that we will rotate the Xtx and the Yth number in one
shake.

The problem arises after infinitely many such shakes. What numbers do
we see at the low places? Hadn't those gone away quite early in the
game - no matter which they are?



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jul 17 2013 - 04:00:48 MDT