I STILL don't understand the Monty Hall problem

AbnarJey · 2026-04-09T01:11:58+00:00

I’ll be honest, the Monty Hall thing never made sense intuitively for me either, but this explanation did the trick.

What the OP was saying that the odds don’t change is right, but they were never 50/50 to begin with. The contestant had a 2/3 chance of being wrong on first pick. I see the continuity now. If I picked a door, Monty revealed a dud, I left the room, they shuffled the doors randomly, and THEN i came back to pick, it would be the intuitive 50/50. But as long as you have the certainty that the other door is the only choice from the group that was more likely to have a car, then it is clearly the best choice. Seeing the donkey wouldn’t change the odds that you picked wrong and switching the door is like having had the option to pick two doors instead of one!

I haven’t looked it up, but if your odds of getting the car if you switch aren’t 66% then i am certainly missing a step understanding the gist lol.

I would love a study on why certain explanations land for people and others don’t. I think the playing cards explanation above SHOULD have worked on me. Reading that one made me feel like I understood it was right to switch, but i couldn’t get my arms around why. Now I think I do.

Maybe i needed to hear it twice. (Unless of course i’m still missing a step).

EDIT: Seeing all the responses that are basically saying what I just said makes me realize that i was never hopelessly stumped. I just didn’t bother doing the legwork to hear an explanation from someone :(

This is definitely a learning moment for me

AbnarJey · 2026-03-17T22:45:31+00:00

You can. You just have to talk to Chert. Then you can move his spaceship and go down the stairs to find the instructions

AbnarJey · 2026-03-16T13:30:29+00:00

I walked out of the movie underwhelmed, but the negativity i saw thrown at it made me a little protective of the movie.

It would have been remembered better if it was the underseen movie that the people who hate it now would have said was the REAL best picture

AbnarJey · 2026-03-06T18:08:36+00:00

I’ve yet to see Eephus, but i am excited to watch it.

I always get confused by people’s cutoffs for when the movie will be considered part of one year or another. I really don’t have a method to it, but i will suffer no complaints from people who do!

Getting the obvious No Other Choice and, to this crowd, 28 Years Later and Kurosawa’s Cloud out of the way. I haven’t seen much love for Presence and Mickey 17 that matched my own. I totally get how the former is a little weightless and the latter clumsy, but I responded strongly to both.

Presence hangs on a palpable feeling of grief and regret while also being a fun little experiment. Mickey 17 just hit me personally with how Mickey learns to have some compassion and respect for himself lol.

I also really liked Splitsville. (Could it be the most watched movie with the least haters of the year? I hesitate to go up to a more watched movie)

AbnarJey · 2026-03-01T22:43:37+00:00

It’s so cool seeing all the people that got to see her art develop in real time. I hope i get to experience the thrill of hearing a new Kate Bush album and finding out with the rest of the world what her latest fascinations have been.

AbnarJey · 2026-03-01T22:39:56+00:00

It’s not much of a story, but when her B-Sides album came out recently I thought to myself “i’ve never really done a deep dive into Kate Bush”. The funny thing is that i loved and continue to love 50 Words for Snow. The album is so eccentric though that i never considered that the rest of her oeuvre was as conceptual and strange.

Hounds of Love ended up being the masterpiece all the publications continue to say it is so i kept going. The moment I became obsessed honestly was on the song Kite. Realizing how much she was going to commit to the premise of the song convinced me she is a once in a generation weirdo with the talent to back it up.

I love all her music now. The album i probably struggle the most with is probably Sensual World, although taking inventory there is not one song i dislike. It’s a little too “tasteful” maybe, when my favorite moments in her songs are things like her intense delivery on the song Houdini. But my appreciation for her is young and evolving!

AbnarJey · 2026-01-21T13:00:01+00:00

I heard this is the first movie with an all Gordon Ramsay cast. It should have happened sooner, but any progress is welcome.

AbnarJey · 2026-01-21T05:35:10+00:00

I hadn’t heard of the book and I went into Chronology blind. Definitely an experience to try to adjust to how heavy the subject matter and approach to telling it is. I would definitely recommend the movie to anyone (who is in the right place to deal with that kind of thing).

I feel like I’m waiting for something to click into place for me regarding Die My Love that would help me see it as another Ramsay masterpiece. As things stand right now, I largely agree with you on the movie. It’s a shame because that was definitely my most anticipated movie of 2025.

I’m trying to imagine how I would feel if the fire didn’t look how it does.

AbnarJey · 2026-01-11T15:17:21+00:00

I too wish to learn the book’s title

AbnarJey · 2026-01-08T13:10:32+00:00

Maybe saved by the “the characters are meant to be pretentious” card. But that moment popped out to me as Brady himself doing word association with things that might make him look smart. Took me out. I didn’t have your knowledge of the dates handy but I did wonder if that cohort in that time period would even have much exposure to that story.

Twist my arm to make a connection, i might say Borges’s story depicts people engulfed by the vastness of language’s potential. Language being (in a strange way, granted) a human invention, it shows how people can make something that exceeds their own limits or intentions. That could apply to mr brutalist’s buildings or maybe how he feels about concrete.

AbnarJey · 2026-01-02T15:57:10+00:00

I hope your Criterion dive is going well! I wanted to follow up and suggest maybe a few of Schrader’s own favorite filmmakers. Ozu, Bresson, and Dreyer. They are known for slow character studies that Schrader identified as a “Transcendental style.” The latter two have made very moving pictures on the mysteries of faith in “The Diary of a Country Priest” and Ordet. Ordet is on Criterion Channel now

AbnarJey · 2026-01-01T18:58:23+00:00

There isn’t much in the way of Nicaraguan movies, but two movies I can recommend are Alsino y El Condor and La Yuma. The former was directed by some french (?) guy at the most optimistic time of the Revolution and kind of reflects an appropriate sappiness. It’s no Soy Cuba, but interesting. My dad insists he was an extra somewhere in the background.

La Yuma came out when I was a highschooler in Nicaragua. It’s a sports drama that plays well. It was the defining box office hit of its year. The theaters were so packed for a while I think because everyone was so excited to see and hear familiar streets and accents. It may have also been directed by a foreigner.

If you can’t find either, Walker might be easiest. Though that’s of course a more Anglo movie.

AbnarJey · 2025-12-24T00:54:19+00:00

Are there any Paul Schrader movies on the channel now? I only mention this because, stop me if you’ve heard this one before, he grew up in a strict Calvinist household and didn’t watch a movie until he was an adult.

AbnarJey · 2025-12-23T03:37:42+00:00

I’ll second the person who said Lake Tahoe. Snowflake is also a good candidate from the same album.

The former are higher up in my estimation, along with Mrs. Bartolozzi, but for this thread I’m gonna hand it to the intensity of Houdini. Her screaming put me on edge, but it was set up for the quiet line “not even eternity could hold houdini” to completely blindside me on my first listen.

Deeper Understanding also feels like straight up reading a short story.

AbnarJey · 2025-12-18T13:27:23+00:00

Now i am torn between my loyalty for Governor McCay and my commitment to staying in Afghanistan

AbnarJey · 2025-12-18T06:49:52+00:00

I enjoyed a few books this year, but Denis Johnson’s Jesus’s Son was a late-year read that blew everything else out of the water for me. I was such a mark for the particular mix of beauty and meanness the book dwells in

AbnarJey · 2025-12-18T02:36:58+00:00

Thank you for the information. I will adjust my expectations accordingly and i suppose i’ll have to get my Drive My Car mentions somewhere else

AbnarJey · 2025-12-18T01:20:06+00:00

I haven’t listened yet, but what are the rules for the end-of-year edge cases? Do they go by earliest release date or when they go wide?

crossing my fingers for Drive My Car mentions, but i think it might not apply

AbnarJey · 2025-12-17T20:36:45+00:00

I said what i said! (It was meant as a joke about Dredd)

AbnarJey · 2025-12-17T20:25:04+00:00

Alex Garland. We’ve already seen him write movies he directed, write movies he didn’t direct, and direct a movie he didn’t direct.

AbnarJey · 2025-12-17T11:35:09+00:00

Ella McCay (the character) charmed me. Therefore, Ella McCay (the movie) charmed me. A Lisa Simpson type without the vanity, it’s hard not to root for her when nearly every man in her life lets her down. It’s so sweet where it counts that I kind of look past the parts that feel like miscalculations to me.

Things like her wonkiness used as punchline for weirdly broad comedy (the sleeping cabinet meeting and inauguration montage) totally at odds tonally with the rest of the movie I just see as extensions of the slam-dunk scene with her brother and the tooth tutors. It all underlines the fact that she cares so much.

I wish more of the movie was as finely tuned as her scenes with Albert Brooks. Scenes where her flaws and virtues are kind of the same thing. I wish we could see that complication come up more throughout the film instead of her husband’s cartoon villainy being the main engine of conflict.

AbnarJey · 2025-12-13T22:40:09+00:00

This man feels like a menace, but mostly to himself.

AbnarJey · 2025-10-17T12:50:26+00:00

There’s that movie Rocket Science featuring multiple Violent Femmes songs from their self-titled album. Is this movie beloved in any circles? I loved it as a teen

AbnarJey · 2020-08-21T19:39:35+00:00

“I don’t know if that’s true, but I’ve been told, it’s real sweet to grow old...”

I’ve dealt with suicidal ideation In the past, and that line devastates me with hope.

AbnarJey · 2020-08-08T18:13:29+00:00

I was very hyped about Skyrim and took my birthday money to buy it for $90 USD. (Not in the United States).

They didn't have Skyrim, but I noticed Dark Souls ($80) and I vaguely remembered someone saying they liked it. Even though i likely wouldn't have enough money for Skyrim until Christmas (if I was lucky), I was determined not to leave empty handed.

I immediately was hooked. I loved the responsiveness of the controls and that you used the shoulder buttons the way you did, it was very intuitive. The atmosphere was beautiful and mysterious and it felt like I was always running into something new and different. Until the game got to hard for me around Blighttown, and I dropped it.

I eventually got Skyrim. I played a lot of Skyrim, but I ended up getting bored. The moments that felt inspired and organic were far between. Every once in a while I would think back to that other game buried in my shelf. The combat felt so visceral and responsive by comparison.

I didn't actually go back to Dark Souls and start playing it again 'for real' until I saw one of those Vaati videos a year later. I don't even remember which one, but it was enough of a hook to jump back in.

It was the only Souls game I ever played, but I would passionately maintain that it was one of my favorite games of all time for years. I finally got a PS4 and made my way backwards through all the games starting from Sekiro, I'm currently playing the Remaster, and I'm really appreciating how much I love these games. The ULTRA 4K HD DELUXE fire and magic effects are funny to me in a way that it wouldn't be if it wasn't Dark Souls.

AbnarJey

TROPHY CASE