Snakes Alive

This is so bizarre to me. The amount of games doesn't matter, everyone keeps telling you this, but you're still convinced it is, and I can't figure ou...

While I think the problem has been adequately solved by the responses in this thread, it's fascinating to see how persistent these sorts of 'transcend...

A couple things: Statements about seeming are again statements that have truth conditions: one can be wrong about the way things seem (even, depending...

Here is the post: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/193041 It explains why averaging expected outcome over situations with respect to ...

I already provided a refutation for this, actually, in my first long post. Several people have repeated this or something similar, but it's fallacious...

You can literally just check this by performing it live. Empirically, the switching strategy doesn't help. The running of the program simply does the ...

This isn't relevant. It simply doesn't understand the crux of the puzzle.

This isn't relevant to the question anyway. The switching strategy you're discussing has nothing to do with the OP.

I would prefer not to get into this topic, because it's off-subject and the errors made here are strictly orthogonal to the errors driving the origina...

It works because you limited the selection of numbers to below 400, and so funneled the choice to switching only when lower numbers relative to that r...

There is some misunderstanding here. The number of trials is irrelevant to the effectiveness of the strategies. If multiple trials cause you to break ...

I'm trying to think of a new way to explain the fallacy being committed, but I think I've hit a roadblock (not in the matter itself – I understand it,...

That's not the game being played. There is no bet of an independent amount that returns half or double at equal rates. The amount seen first is itself...

The number of bets made is irrelevant.

In order to reason this way, we must hold X constant for each case. If we played 100 times, where X = 10 in each game, then switching 50 times will ne...

The payout is on average 1.5X. This is the same payout that not switching affords. When betting the odds, all variables are independent. That is not t...

I demonstrated that this is fallacious in my longer post above. It falsely assumes that the amount drawn is a variable independent of X. It is not.

No. We're talking about epistemic possibilities. There are two, equipossible: first, that you have drawn X, and second, that you have drawn 2X. While ...

The value that you get from the first envelope is irrelevant.

No. The value of X is fixed. The two possibilities you consider must treat X as the same. You don't know what X is; but you do know that whatever it i...

No. If there is a 2:1 payout on a coin toss, then the bet is always worth taking, regardless of the amount bet, and one will not break even on average...

The value of X is fixed prior to the decision. Your reasoning switches the value of X across the two scenarios.

This cannot be.

The post explains why this reasoning is fallacious. The fallacy is that there is some value, X, determined in each case. You are acting as if there is...

This reasoning is fallacious. Did you read the post?

What I am saying is that as a strategy, switching does not increase your chances of earning more money, regardless of how many times the game is playe...

No, your conclusion doesn't establish what you want it to (that switching is more profitable).

There is no step that's wrong – what's wrong is that in order to use this reasoning to provide an average based on a ratio of the amount drawn from th...

Check my previous post – I explained why this reasoning is fallacious.

This is a fun puzzle – I took a crack at it. Let X be the amount as in the statement of the puzzle. Let Y be the amount revealed in the first envelope...

It's not a matter of definition. We can just look at what philosophy actually does. In fact, the Socratic method literally originated in a series of l...

The dispute over the theories of time doesn't make sense to me, either, no, and I've never heard anyone talk about it without being introduced to it v...

Such questions often have no answer, because fictional worlds are ill-defined as well – but even that question is more intelligible than the question ...

This is better than the situation in philosophy; vague terms are meaningful, but meaningless ones are not.

I think that the question of consciousness is one that arises in people prior to metaphysics, and I doubt that metaphysics, or philosophers generally,...

What is the inconsistency? Is the idea that I'm not allowed to treat different purported questions differently? But this is exactly what I said right ...

That is not my experience. Talking to people about such questions generally leaves me with the impression that they do not know what they are talking ...

The difference is that with non-philosophical questions, one can come to understand by being versed in the relevant discipline. There is no such no su...

The point is that metaphysical arguments can't be valid, since their premises and conclusions typically don't have truth conditions.

I wouldn't say so in the sciences, soft or hard; we don't have 'intuitions' of things like populations, physical forces, and so on. What we come close...

I can agree to this, except I think that metaphysical statements or systems don't have any consistent emotional effects either, so it's difficult to e...

We can in principle, and there are real-life examples of this. One of them is ancient: a human is not a featherless biped. The words we use to predica...

No.

Also, properties "in addition" to particulars is a misleading way of putting things. A property P is just that thing you have when you're P. This exha...

If your question is about why, given that people perceive that something has a certain property, they conclude other things have it too, this is a psy...

There is no one answer to this question. For example, tigers have a bunch of properties in common because they sexually reproduce according to a biolo...

There is no "nominalism." These positions are all non-positions. ??? You can group things together however you want. It can be by a shared property, o...

I have no notion of a class except a group of individuals, or a criterion for sorting individuals into groups. Obviously, from the fact that multiple ...

So your argument is: (1) Classes aren't individuals (2) Therefore, there can't be classes, if there are individuals? Compare: (1) Teams aren't individ...

Why on Earth would the existence of individuals be in conflict with the existence of classes?