🚀 go-pugleaf

On 28/09/2010 7:03 PM, |-|ercules wrote:
> "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.

's easy. I don't eat cereal.

>
> If I get a hit - which is very likely - we can prove paranormal.
>
> Right?
>
> Herc

And if you don't, which I believe to be the much more probable outcome, 
what do I get out of it?

Nothing, as far as I can see. Not even your defeat-admitting sig.

Sylvia.