[extropy-chat] monty hall paradox again

[Alejandro Dubrovsky]

On Wed, 2004-05-19 at 11:18 -0600, Alan Eliasen wrote:


> Alejandro Dubrovsky wrote:
> > If the answers are no to the first and yes to the second question, what
> > is the significant difference in scenarios? 
> 
>    The first problem was equivalent to predicting a coin-flip; you're either
> going to pick the bigger envelope, or you aren't.  No matter how much you
> think about it, you're not going to improve your odds of guessing it right.
> The payoff matrix was perfectly symmetrical, giving you no reason to favor one
> strategy over the other.
> 

Thanks for the explanation. It doesn't satisfy me, though.  This does
not mean i don't think its correct.  i think it is correct, but there's
this bit of my brain shouting "but why!!?".  More explicitly:  the state
of the universe after you've picked the first envelope is the following:
you got x
you know there's another envelope that either has 2x or x/2 in it.
where is the information hidden in the system at that moment? did the
act of picking an envelope modify the probability of it being the bigger
one, like spike mentioned, to 2/3?  
thanks again,
alejandro