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

[Spike]

> [Karen] Smigrodzki
 
> Hi Spike,
...
> Men tend to take risks without thinking...

Oh Karen you are too kind to us.  The sad truth is that we 
guys often think and ponder and carefully cogitate at great length, 
THEN go off and do some goofy stunt that is so stunningly brainless
that even WE are at a loss to explain.

Its tough being a guy.  You just can't help doing 
stupid stunts.  Its a testosterone thing.

{8^D


> Women tend to be conservative without thinking...

Ja, that is one reason why we guys marry and cherish
ladies.  It isn't just because it's legal to do so, but 
rather because women are ideally suited to protecting 
our children.  Notice the Disney Movie Effect: the mom 
must always somehow be removed from the scene before the
big adventure starts.  Otherwise the mom would minimize
the dangers, people and animals would survive in perfect 
safety, movies would be boring, untold dollars would be 
tragically lost.  


> The reason my answer did not coincide with 
> those of the women in your poll is that I am vulcan -- like Rafal. ;)
> 
> Karen

Actually your answer *did* coincide with the women of
the poll.  I was more interested in the 10 zorg version
of the two-envelope problem, since the real dollar
version is subject to non-linearity-of-money issues.
Furthermore the paradox in the real money version
disappears with Eliezer's argument: one can make
a reasonable guess of the probability some yahoo
is willing to give you twice the amount you are holding.
It becomes a poker game, not paradoxical at all.

In the 10 zorg version, the three women were all stickers,
and the men were swappers.  (I don't know how to count
the one gay male sticker).  You said stick, right?  I
don't see why this should be one of those Mars/Venus
things.  I know of plenty of women who love to gamble.
go to any casino, you will likely see more women than
men there.

Be that as it may, this whole question tends toward
something I posted a couple years ago that may have
been misunderstood as a sexual thing: I would like to
somehow get a womans-eye view of the world.  If the
AI guys work out uploading, I want them to give me
a superset of human thought-space, a switch that I
can flip that would let me see the world the way a
woman sees the world.  If I could see it both ways,
then I could be super-human in a sense.

When I brought that up, well-meaning individuals
suggested I dress in women's clothing and go downtown,
etc, but that wouldn't accomplish what I was asking
at all. I would be seeing the world thru the eyes of
a hetero male who was feeling very stupid and getting
waaay squicked by the way other men were looking over
my direction (ewwww gross, put your eyes back in your
head bud.  {8-[  {8^D )  

What I want to understand is why women seem to have an 
uncanny intuition that sticking is at least equivalent 
to swapping, *even without actually doing a mathematical 
model*.  What puzzles me even more is the reasoning of
the gay mathematician, who had no problem with the idea 
that opening one envelope somehow causes the other
one to become "probably the smaller one."  How?  I
asked.  "It doesn't matter how," he calmly replied.
"Physicists worry about that sort of thing, the crass
impericists.  Mathematicians do not."

I must have been wearing a stunned or puzzled countenance.
"Well," he continued, "It must do it, right?  There
cannot be any inherent profit to swapping.  You can
write a quick sim to prove it.  The probability that
the other envelope is larger must go to 1/3, it doesn't
matter how it gets there."

Well, to me it does matter.

So Karen, please would you explain in detail your
reasoning for why you chose stick.  This may be the
closest I ever come to seeing the universe thru a
woman's eyes.

spike