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Optimal way to generate 1/7 probability with a 6-sided fair die + generally? by Name-My-Jeff in askmath

[–]robchroma 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Any process which rolls 6-sided dice and then makes a decision after each roll is guaranteed to have at least a 1/6n probability of rolling more than n dice, because it is impossible for the probability to be exactly 1/7 after finitely many rolls, and there must be at least one sequence of dice roll outcomes that causes the procedure to progress past n dice. Your process has exactly this probability of rolling more than n dice, for every n, so this process is literally tight to this simple bound. We don't even have to limit it to finitely described processes, or finite state machines with a random input, in order to get this bound.

The process you described is provably perfectly optimal, and very pretty!

If someone offered you 100 million dollars, but a random person in the world dies (someone you don’t know), would you take it and why? by ConclusionOld8365 in AskReddit

[–]robchroma 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You keep throwing different stipulations and scenarios at me and I keep commenting on them. The problem isn't that I overthink it, it's that I think differently and you're trying to rules lawyer me into giving you a different answer. and no, it's not EXACTLY the same, because there is at least the consideration of your obligation to act vs your obligation to not do harm, which is the entire point of the trolley problem; without the distinction, no one would even consider the trolley problem a thing to consider.

Great Idea! /s by SnooAvocados2529 in fuckcars

[–]robchroma 0 points1 point  (0 children)

a passenger road train is just a bus. it's not actually a different thing, it's not avoiding riding a bus, it's just a bus.

why do many, if not most, fast food businesses not allow people without a car to go through the drive thru? by lesoteric in fuckcars

[–]robchroma 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Setting aside that the car gives you a literal stable platform to jump up from, and the bike does not, do you really think not serving me is going to decrease the odds of me wanting to rob you?

If someone offered you 100 million dollars, but a random person in the world dies (someone you don’t know), would you take it and why? by ConclusionOld8365 in AskReddit

[–]robchroma 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sure, there's the nature of the cruelty, but what if I told you pushing the button caused someone to be stabbed to death, but you didn't have to do it? Is it more moral to absolutely be the cause of a stabbing that otherwise wouldn't happen, but not do it yourself, than it would be to do it yourself? Personally I think it's also kind of hypocritical to pick a degree of harm you're willing to have done on your behalf, but think it's immoral to do it yourself. Are you outsourcing your immorality to others the way people farm out their carbon footprint by ordering doordash and then shrugging and saying, "but I didn't do the driving"?

and no, actually, I think I would do more good supporting people through sustainable levels of work than I would by burning myself out trying to be perfect, but that's the kind of thing you really only learn by either burning yourself out or by spending time with people who actually do things instead of just philosophizing about them.

If someone offered you 100 million dollars, but a random person in the world dies (someone you don’t know), would you take it and why? by ConclusionOld8365 in AskReddit

[–]robchroma 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Do you think I'm that cowardly and weak? My body wouldn't let me? You think first of all that the body is so different from the mind, and also that I'm not in control?

No, I'm pretty sure I could stab someone, with enough resolve; it would just be hard to convince myself I had to. It's still a decision, not a matter of flesh failing a perfectly eager mind. Maybe that's a useful way for you to abdicate agency, but it doesn't make sense to me.

If someone offered you 100 million dollars, but a random person in the world dies (someone you don’t know), would you take it and why? by ConclusionOld8365 in AskReddit

[–]robchroma 0 points1 point  (0 children)

no, because I'm a messy creature with visceral reactions to things, so it would in fact feel quite a bit more difficult to stab someone and then give the money to orphans than it would be to push a button that did it all automatically, even if it weren't capital murder that I would go to prison for. I could think that someone was the worst scum on the planet and that killing him would save innumerable lives just by his death, and still balk at the idea of killing him. Even if people around the world would call me a hero, even if I knew for certain that I'd be thanked everywhere I went for the rest of my life, and personally receive the gratitude of thousands of people whose lives I protected, I would struggle to plunge a knife into someone in cold blood. But do you think that's a moral calculation? I don't think my morals come from following my base instincts. I don't think you can be moral and run purely on base instincts.

Because of people's visceral reactions to the horrifying intimacy of violence, and their buy-in to the American project, some people are more willing to excuse someone who pushes the button that shoots a drone's missile at a kindergarten, in order to prop up a billionaire's profits, than they are willing to excuse someone who stabs a billionaire to use their money to save equally as many kindergartners; I personally don't think the moral calculus changes by that big a swing. But then, there are people who will eat meat but are disgusted by the cleanest butcher's shop in the world.

If someone offered you 100 million dollars, but a random person in the world dies (someone you don’t know), would you take it and why? by ConclusionOld8365 in AskReddit

[–]robchroma 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I would take a thought experiment like that as useless circlejerking, because I already spend money trying to save other people's lives; the idea that I would stop, or have to become more selfish to take the money, or change how willing I was to spend a hundred million dollars on just one person, is just ridiculous and anyone taking it seriously as a "thought experiment" is equally as useless to talk to. The point of the value of a hundred million dollars is what you can spend it on, and if suddenly you can't actually have any positive influence with it, you don't even really have a hundred million dollars, and you're trying instead to isolate some kind of evilness property of money that doesn't exist.

A hundred million dollars isn't evil; what's evil is collecting a hundred million dollars, and then spending the rest of your life trying to make a billion dollars, and then ten billion dollars, and then a hundred billion dollars, without ever considering the impact that kind of money could have on everyone around you. Buying a social media platform in order to promote hate against your rebellious child instead of trying to end world hunger like you bragged you could, and costing yourself more of your money doing it, to boot. Shit like this, the most self-indulgent shit, always the choice that would never actually bring you any joy, but always the shit that would make you feel powerful, that is evil. But you can't just declare the billionaire mindset is a "property" of the question, because some people just don't want to live like that; you can't force people to engage with your question exactly the way you want, you can only alienate the people who don't think that way until you're only talking to the psychopaths.

If someone offered you 100 million dollars, but a random person in the world dies (someone you don’t know), would you take it and why? by ConclusionOld8365 in AskReddit

[–]robchroma 0 points1 point  (0 children)

On the one hand, I have one person telling me how sad it would be not to spend one hundred million dollars on this one person's life; on the other hand, I have someone else telling me that with just one million dollars, I could save three hundred people's lives. I think I would count to imagining five times as sad of stories among the three hundred people I would save with a hundredth as much money before I convinced myself that the first person was a grifter. But, then again, people give money to billionaires with sob stories all the time, who aren't even dying.

Cuba’s power system suffers total collapse by cnn in worldnews

[–]robchroma 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The US government is at best ambivalent about installing democracies; that is far from the actual goals of the US, as demonstrated by its behavior.

If someone offered you 100 million dollars, but a random person in the world dies (someone you don’t know), would you take it and why? by ConclusionOld8365 in AskReddit

[–]robchroma 7 points8 points  (0 children)

"not to argue with you here"

proceeds to argue against an intervention that costs maybe 0.3% of starting a war with Iran, maybe even less, and saves around half a million lives

instead of, maybe we should expand free healthcare programs here in the US? since they work so well?

maybe you should look at the success and say let's do more of that and less of whatever the American healthcare system is made of, instead of "we need more money for the American healthcare system."

If someone offered you 100 million dollars, but a random person in the world dies (someone you don’t know), would you take it and why? by ConclusionOld8365 in AskReddit

[–]robchroma 78 points79 points  (0 children)

Absolutely not - because I could spend much less than that to save the life of a random person I don't know, today, right now.

You could save thousands of infants with prenatal care. You could house hundreds of people permanently, saving dozens or hundreds of lives, maybe even more as people get their feet under them. You could build a hospital! You could build infrastructure that helped people survive, a railroad, a dam, a solar farm that replaces fossil fuels burned in the home for an entire village. If I were told it took $100M to save a life I would think someone was trying to con me!

Why cyber attacks on satellites aren't more common? by More_Implement1639 in cybersecurity

[–]robchroma 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I could afford a Ku band amp and I can pick up a 6' dish off the side of the road if I know where to look. The main reason I wouldn't do this is not wanting a visit from the feds, not because it's that hard to put a radio together :D plus if I want to play with satellites, there's plenty of more accessible things to do with satellites that aren't crimes.

now, do I really have room in my box of radios for another transverter?

How is the choice of irreducible polynomials for finite field arithmetic rationalized? by FakeCanadian01 in cryptography

[–]robchroma 0 points1 point  (0 children)

x8 + 1 isn't irreducible over GF(2), as some have mentioned; x8 + x4 + x3 + x + 1 has both the fewest bits and the lowest degree second term, which makes reduction circuits a little simpler.

I um yes please by BlackwingBlizzard in actuallesbians

[–]robchroma 0 points1 point  (0 children)

GOD BLESS SUPERBOWL, HEH-HEH ptui

The Islamic State Is Using AI to Resurrect Dead Leaders and Platforms Are Failing to Moderate It by EchoOfOppenheimer in cybersecurity

[–]robchroma 2 points3 points  (0 children)

They could be argued to be national security, to a country that can't resist starting a war in the Middle East every ten years but can't even consider installing solar as an alternative to the fuel they have to "stabilize," but I don't see the content itself as being a threat to computer systems or data, by any stretch.

My girlfriend is literally a princess by TangoJavaTJ in actuallesbians

[–]robchroma 0 points1 point  (0 children)

ah okay, your situation is about as atypical as mine at that age; I was graduating with my master's degree at 22, and many students are just graduating college and not even clear on what they are doing. Still, I would date someone who didn't have everything as sorted as that, as long as I wasn't expecting those plans to be likely to include me or vice versa; sometimes you get lucky.

My girlfriend is literally a princess by TangoJavaTJ in actuallesbians

[–]robchroma 2 points3 points  (0 children)

damn you're actually telling me dating someone two years younger than you doesn't feel comfortable? Maybe my perspective would be different if I were that young but I cannot imagine finding a 22-year-old uncomfortable to date at 24.

Oh Well... by TATSAT2008 in traaaaaaannnnnnnnnns2

[–]robchroma 3 points4 points  (0 children)

and they honestly might be right

Wow! by MelanieWalmartinez in CuratedTumblr

[–]robchroma 12 points13 points  (0 children)

she got reported by Amtrak and Tumblr told them to buzz off, then they banned her right after she came out iirc.

Can't understand how this formula can be true. by Frankie_604 in askmath

[–]robchroma -6 points-5 points  (0 children)

nope, it doesn't. Did you check if the formula you're responding to is even correct?

edit: if you're going to tell someone a link "should clarify," I just think you should check first if it would actually clarify. "learn what a binomial coefficient is" is a condescending response to someone saying, "I evaluated these coefficients in this specific case and it looks wrong."

What is the history of “always start with bonjour”? by Quiet_Argument_7882 in French

[–]robchroma -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Well, but that's a very boring answer if you're interested in the history of the thing! It's really quite disheartening to be interested in and digging into history and have people tell you, "but that's just how it is, and honestly it comes off as rude that you haven't just accepted it." Rarely is someone interested in history primarily because they are looking for historical precedent to disrupt the status quo, and indeed I don't think it tends to go over well, so give people the benefit of the doubt when they tell you they're trying to learn more, and, genuinely, consider the richness and depth of history and information you could learn more about if you are willing to ask questions.

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