[extropy-chat] Re: monty hall paradox again: reds and green gorfs

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Spike" <spike66 at comcast.net>

>
> Rafal, please compel Karen to get online and comment on
> this whole sordid affair.  I am interested in seeing if there
> is a systematic male/female dichotemy in the way this
> problem is viewed.  I have seen an apparent dichotemy
> so far, but my sample size of women is too small to
> derive statistical significance.

### I'll ask her. BTW, the spelling is "dichotomy" :)

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> This whole situation is much more cheerful if one
> is one of the fortunates who actually own a bank
> account filled with happy money, which are
> cheerfully attracting other happy money, also
> known as interest.  You and I are not among
> this fortunate population of course, but I
> know those who are.

### But I am! (I own stock) And wholeheartedly agree with the exposition of
economical ethics above.
-----------------------------------

> OK I see your point.  Let us assume away the nonlinearity
> of money then.  Let us assume some quantity of something
> that *everyone* likes, and that more is *always* better,
> such as grins or orgasms or something.  Actually Im not at
> all sure that this will work right either, for we might get
> all tripped up in fractional orgasms.  Is a milli-orgasm
> a sneeze?  Is a kilo-orgasm a heart attack?  (Actually that
> kinda works on two different levels.  {8^D  It would be a
> *really* good way to go out, would it not?)

### Well, even then there is the problem that Hal alluded to - infinite
quantities, or quantities so large as to be indistinguishable from infinity,
from the perspective of our pedestrian desires.

Let's say, the specie in the envelope is exchangeable at the Transfinity
Bank for an infinite number of years of immensely satisfying life. However,
while one envelope contains funds sufficient to keep you conscious at every
nth unit time, the other lets you experience every 1/2nth unit. Presumably,
everybody likes to have more life, especially infinite life - but, wait, you
already have an infinity of what you desire by opening the first envelope!
Should you open the other one? You could gain an infinite amount of time by
opening it, and even if you lose, you would still have your 1/n th infinity
to enjoy.

May advice is to get on with the first day of your infinite life, rather
than delay and possibly get involved in an eternity of swapping envelopes.
Human volition is a computational device with its own quirks, quite
appropriate for monkeys pondering bananas, but clumsy and confused if
confronted with the frigid clarity of logic and mathematics (especially of
the transfinite persuasion).

Maybe you would have to use all of your allotted infinity to solve this
problem... Don't do it.

Rafal