[extropy-chat] silent night

[Hal Finney]

Robin wrote:
: I predict the sun will come up tomorrow.  I will keep making this 
: prediction everyday for the next year.  Go ahead, collect stats on 
: how well I do.  Betcha I'm right more often than not.

Eliezer wrote:
> What exact probability do you assign?  Now you've got me curious.

Robin wrote:
: Well for the purposes of the above discussion all I needed was p/(1-p) >> 1
: But if I have to pick a number I'd say p/(1-p) ~ 10^4 to 10^5

Eliezer wrote:
> Interesting.  That was just about exactly my own answer - 99.98% to 
> 99.999%.  Though as we may only make a single bet to sum up our 
> uncertainty, I would say 99.99%.

Okay, so let me offer this bet to Eliezer: my $10,000 to your $1,
that the sun will rise tomorrow.  Here is how I propose to do it.
I will send you a check for $10,000.  I will trust you not to cash it
unless the sun doesn't rise tomorrow.  If the sun does rise as usual,
you will send me back the uncashed check along with a one dollar bill.

Or, if you want, you can decide to continue the bet each day and then,
once a week, you can send me $7 if the sun has continued to rise on
schedule.  The series of bets can be terminated by either party.

For me, this works out pretty good.  I can treat my wife to a free weekly
Starbucks decaf latte (and continue to draw interest on the $10,000 in the
bank, for they don't know that I have an uncashed check out).  The main
downside is the slight risk that you may succumb to temptation and cash
the check, but I think your goals would discourage cheating like that.

What do you think?

Hal