🚀 go-pugleaf

"Sylvia Else" <sylvia@not.here.invalid> wrote ...
> On 28/09/2010 4:46 PM, |-|ercules wrote:
>> "Sylvia Else" <sylvia@not.here.invalid> wrote
>>> On 28/09/2010 12:48 AM, |-|ercules wrote:
>>>> As Sylvia is the only person to come up with genuine questions
>>>> to test my psychic dominance, I offer her this challenge.
>>>>
>>>> Shuffle your original 6 cosmology questions and post the MD5
>>>> of the file with a private keyword appended so I can't decrypt it.
>>>>
>>>> Read out the first question while filling out the first page at
>>>> www.HercsHome.com/AskPsychic.html
>>>>
>>>> Fill in the second page using any 2 other questions from the list.
>>>>
>>>> Repeat for questions 2 to 6.
>>>>
>>>> If I can tell you the order of your 6 questions Sylvia puts in her
>>>> sig line
>>>> "Herc broke 729:1 odds when I tested his mind reading powers".
>>>>
>>>> If I get one question wrong - I put in my sig any of Sylvia's quotes of
>>>> her choice, "I failed a psychic test of my own design" etc. etc.
>>>>
>>>> And the sigs stay on all posts and replies for 1 month. At least 1 post
>>>> in aus.tv
>>>> and sci.skeptic.
>>>>
>>>> Do you accept my psychic challenge Sylvia?
>>>
>>> Not as it stands, no. You would certainly renege on your obligation
>>> regarding a sig line based on some claimed failure on my part to
>>> comply with the rules. For example, you would claim that I hadn't
>>> actually read out the questions at the appropriate times. Also, I'm
>>> not going to take part in any test where my inputs are not in plain
>>> view, so as to prevent you from disputing them later, which means no
>>> web forms. It's Usenet or nothing. Thus all the steps I'm required to
>>> take must be capable of being evidenced by a posting, either at the
>>> time, or later by the revelation of a match for a previously posted
>>> MD5 hash. That obviously implies no requirement that I not do certain
>>> things.
>>>
>>> 6! is the number of possible orders, but each time I provide a list of
>>> three questions on the second page, I'm telling you that one of those
>>> three is the answer, and cannot appear as the answer in a subsequent
>>> test. So the odds you've stated are wrong and higher than in reality.
>>>
>>
>> Yeh I thought that too, weird stat to calculate.
> 
> You didn't mention it though. Hoping I wouldn't notice?
>>
>> What about a 1 (ONE) question trial, if I get that right we revise the
>> protocol down to a micron so you're not wasting your time asking
>> me 5 questions.
>>
>> Herc
> 
> And have you claim that I bailed out while you were winning, when we 
> fail to agree on the revised protocol? I don't think so.
> 
> Calculating the odds is being complicated by in each case having only 
> three possible questions out of the overall six.
> 
> If I shuffle the questions, and then create an MD5 for each question 
> (plus random key) in turn, I can post a single list of six MD5s in the 
> same order as the shuffled questions. I'd post an MD5 of the numbers of 
> the shuffled questions, e.g. 634215, plus a random key, to show later 
> that the posted individual MD5s are in the same order as the questions 
> they represent. Your odds of getting the correctly ordered list by 
> chance is then 1 in 6! as you observed earlier, because there is no 
> information leakage on the way.
> 
> The problem for me is that it still leaves you wriggle room to claim 
> that I created the MD5s of the questions first, and then shuffled the 
> list of MD5s and posted those. You could then claim that I construed the 
> order for the shuffled questions backwards from the MD5s.
> 
> Outcomes in the two cases are indistinguisable, but I think you'd claim 
> it mattered if you got the order wrong.
> 
> I cannot see any way around the general problem that you're willing to 
> claim that your power goes beyond extracting the secrets behind what I 
> posted, and is affected by what I did, or thought. The latter would be 
> problem even with volunteers being scrutinised by judges, because there 
> will never be any objective evidence about what the volunteers thought.
> 
> Sylvia.


I can't see how you decide what cereal to eat for breakfast.

If I get a hit - which is very likely - we can prove paranormal.

Right?

Herc