you have averaged the point of the center of each number for every guess. you should have averaged the angles from the number to the position of the ball when you paused the film, however this would have also required you to have asked for a number of estimated revolutions. i am confident and if anyone would redo this test i would be willing to further explain my reasoning and conduct the experiment. you can reply if you would like any further explanation as well.
@TheKrazykool809 "however this would have also required you to have asked for a number of estimated revolutions."
I've said many times that was my biggest blunder with this experiment.
I don't have anywhere near the time to do this again (it took me MONTHS before), but if anyone else is willing to do it I'd be glad to video another spin of the wheel.
@shanedk I have no idea where to get a roulette wheel. If i knew where i could get one I would definitely try this experiment. I would also need a lot of viewers as I am not a very popular youtubeer and i would appreciate it if you would direct people to my video if i make one. I live in Greenfield, WI if anyone knows where I could get a roulette wheel in the area or off the internet.
@TheKrazykool809 As I said, I'd be willing to video another spin of the wheel and post it here, and have people send their answer to you however you'd like.
That'd even be better than this one, because then you, as the one compiling the data, wouldn't know either what the real result was until after you'd published your prediction.
@shanedk I would definitely be up trying that if you made a video. you could also simply take a video of you spinning the wheel and send it to me and i could do all the rest including making a video for youtube. All I would need is a short video of a spin or two for the video. If I made a video I would like some spins beforehand as well to show the audience how the wheel works.
@TheKrazykool809 Let's do this: go ahead and get your system set up for people submitting their votes. When you do, I'll make the video spinning the wheel and in the video info send them to your system. Does that work?
@shanedk You could make another video just like your first one and I could simply look through all the comments and do the rest or you could take a few (I would like 3) short videos of you spinning the wheel and I could make the video for youtube and all the rest. I would prefer to use the second method.
Not sure if someone said this already, but the obvious reason the distribution was clustered there is because you stopped the video right before the ball was about to hit the numbers. If you had the revolution data, people most certainly would've guess that it would've made 0 more revolutions before stopping.
For a more averaged result, you should've stopped the video shortly after the throw, maybe after 1 revolution. Or you could've given the wheel a little spin.
haha thats funny, I just watched the original video and just guessed for fun and I actually guessed 11. Guess I should have seen the original sooner so I could have won your book :)
I'm pretty sure that the WoC concept is only valid for systems where individuals can predict the result at a rate greater than chance, i.e. estimation of the result can't be entirely beyond human abilities. As you said, this system may simply be too chaotic.
I wonder if you'd get different results if you only tested experienced people. That is, people who have spent a couple of hours watching roulette wheels and trying to make predictions.
@sdrawkcabgnipytmi The interesting thing about the WoC is that it often tends to work better without experts. That's what Galton found in his initial analysis. Experts tend to have centralized information or opinion which throws it off. Still, it'd be an interesting experiment to do.
Your little "wisdom of crowds" has failed you Shane. This just proves that the free market doesn't work, evolution is a lie, the Earth is flat, and the moon landing was hoax.
Looks like denytheholyspirit closed his account. As for wisdom of the crowd, it has its limitations. I would not think of it as the holy grail. In fact it has its inverse - 'the stupidity of the crowds' aka gossip and rumors.
@shanedk Inhibit the WoC by reducing the diversity? I think not. When people converge on one opinion there is reduction in diversity of opinions. I mean that is a no brainer. The a genius comes along and if he agrees with the commonly held view for his own reasons, he calls it Woc. If not he calls it gossip or rumor and then present his opinion. But where there is convergence ideas become more homogenized rather than diversified regardless of the truth or falsity of the claims.
Interesting experiment and I agree with another commentator that there's much Kudos in publishing the result.
I was wondering if the wisdom of crowds might be applied to predicting weather. Given the ability of someone like Piers Corbyn to make long range weather forecasts based upon Sun activity and lunar cycles. I wonder, if given the same information, people might make quite accurate predictions of jet streams and thus the weather. What d'you think?
@shanedk Perhaps, I know very little about Corbyn but I really meant that perhaps given infomration such as sun activity, lunar cycles, current weather patterns, pressure, temperature data and such like, people might converge on quite accurate weather predictions.
So Corbyn aside, do you think this could be applied to weather prediction? I did a quick google search and was surprised to see few relevant results for "Wisdom of Crowds Weather".
Crowd intelligence = average IQ of population / number of people in population. The bottom line is - the larger the crowd, the dumber the crowd. Observe this each day, even at the micro level.
Looks like I must review your previous video on the subject, as I don't understand how "the wisdom of crowds" could be considered a means of determining the outcome of a very chaotic system (Roulette). I would expect 1/38 for each number (American Roulette).
I propose a different test with Keno numbers, but all pseudorandom number generators are biased.
Can we do another one pleeeeease shanedk? Like guessing a financial instrument time series. I have always wondered about the wisdom of crowds in that regard.
why should you have expected the wisdom of crowds to work on a practically random process? If it had worked, that really would have surprised me. Random results are not computable by definition. For a prediction, crowds would have to be able to predict values of uncomputable functions - That would be akin to disproving the Church–Turing thesis.
Anyway, I do not think that free markets usually lead near the most of efficiency, so a positive result really really would have surprised me.
To be honest, I didn't think it would work when I saw the original video. The wisdom of crowds may work when the crowd has a method of evaluation (eg, using corporate performance to judge the value of a stock, spatial perception for beans in a jar), but I doubt the crowd would ever be able to predict truly random numbers.
I am not sure, but I think you could check for bias with a statistical test based on the poisson distribution. You could also do a chi square for each number on the wheel with the expected frequency of 1/38. The idea of asking how far people thought the wheel would spin would be far more complicated. Again, I am not sure but I expect a regression model would be needed to look at covariance of data. It would be more conclusive to repeat the test and not show the starting point of the spin.
my friend always bets on the last number that comes up aswell as others , one particular time we were at the casino 29 came up 5 times in a row ! no lies it was incredible.The only explanation is that the croupier had a robotic turn of hand who knows.
Remembering your first video, I used the wisdom of crowds recently on an online contest and came within 1 of the true number. My original guess probably would have been like 10 off. Smaller sample sizes but still cool. Oh, and no big deal, but typo at 9:27. Should be BABABABA5555 at #3.
I wonder if the experiment showed anything at all? Perhaps if there were more guesses the curve would be flatter, perhaps there is a sampling influence here?
I was wondering about repeatability too.....if it was possible to run the experiment over and over again, what would you find?
I also think that to remove even more bias, the person looking at the results cannot know where the ball lands. You should be able to determine that from the data if the hypothesis is true.
I wonder if the experiment could be improved by removing the mixed up numbers on the roulette wheel. Say use a clock face instead. Release the marble and 12 o'clock and ask people what time they think it will land on (or something to that effect). It might be easier for people to think about the physics rather than their favourite number.
@PayasYouListen Remember he didn't spin the roulette so it's infinitely less random than the real thing and it's easier to guess. What people were asked was to estimate the approximate position of where the ball would land given its last known speed and position and then read out the nearest pocket number. Unless someone knows the layout sequence by heart or something there can be no bias.
@heloizyjhenifer That's my point. By having the numbers mixed up, it gives more of an appearance of randomness. By having the numbers in order, they would correspond to their position on the wheel and it makes the guess more intuitive.
Anyway, it was just a thought. If there's a big flaw in it I'll let it go.
@PayasYouListen The point is for this test people were encouraged to estimate the outcome geometrically and THEN look up the pocket number. If you have them ordered there could be a bias towards picking a number because said numbers would be in *predictable* positions.
@ralfjacobs He wanted to specifically test whether the wisdom of crowds applied to chaotic systems. Testing of the wisdom of crowds in nonchaotic systems has been done and has been demonstrated, but not on chaotic systems.
It could be that roulette wheels cannot be estimated by the wisdom of crowds. Maybe it's worthwhile to see what kind of estimations WoC can't handle and, by extension, how it applies to the economy and its failings.
I'm not quite sure what you are trying to glean from this. I think I need to watch the original over again. I'm not sure exactly what having a guess that's 180 degrees wrong proves, or how guessing the number of rotations changes anything.
@StubbornProgrammer I think there should be a Journal of Negative Results, where every scientist can publish experiments etc that didn't work! Publication should be compulsory for all clinical trials which yielded negative results!
Adding new post-hoc hypothesis is the last step in a scientific experiment. Having reviewed your data and determining if it fits your original hypothesis, you make a new hypothesis to set yourself up for the next experiment.
Very cool. Thanks for your effort. I suspect that most people didn't think before entering their number and just guessed. If someone repeats the experiment they should ask people to only enter a guess if they imagine / estimate how far the ball will go after the video stops.
Jesus christ... Ok, I tried, i really tried to watch this, but good god this is dry. This is like an entire box of salted top soda crackers lightly toasted in the oven and served with a #1 white wine in an open tent in the middle of the Sahara during a sandstorm. I just couldnt get through to the end, even just listening to it in the background while I played WoW, as I often do.
Debunking creation is entertaining, at least, but statistical analysis for its own sake is just beyond me.
maybe its that the wisdom of crowds only works when the question being asked can receive an infinite amount of answers rather than just 50 possible answers. that way you can find the average of all the answers more precise. when there is an infinite number of possible answers, there is an infinite amount of answers that are not being submitted. in this experiment, every possible answer is being submitted at least 4 times.
I've waited so long for this video! I really thought you had just given up on it. Too bad it didn't work as you'd hoped. But it sounds like there are definitely some variables that could be accounted for/altered in another experiment.
Even though you seem a bit biassed to wanting the wisdom of crowds to work, you aren't biased (i.m.o.) in the outcome, as you ask for assistance on improving the methods and extracting data (in stead of saying "these results must be accurate and true in favour of wisdom of crowds").
If I had the time I'd repeat the experiment but like you, I simply lack in this resource.
@shanedk Maybe you can make this a team effort by getting people to do this experiment with people they know or in their own subscribers list. Let them denote the number the ball landed on and then shift all the results so they match up. Maybe get someone who's social and proactive with lots of similar-minded subscribers to get the counter going up?
It is a shame to see that in this instance the Wisdom of the Crowds did not work properly.
However, I was almost suprised how well you took the fact that you had made an error when making this test. A lot of people as we know would simply try to hide or minimize the error that they have might done in the egoistic world of youtube. It has brighten my day a little that there are responsible people in the internet these days. Thanks :).
Put otherwise, Logic rules even over quanta. It is Logic which provides the constraint determining the seemingly sporadic behavior of quantum mechanics. It is only when you take these quanta out of their context that they don't know what to do. Logic permeates in and between things, and if you try to separate things they behave differently. Like an electron which becomes static when there is no medium for to guide it to a destination. Logic is the medium guiding quanta to their destination.
@shanedk I don't need a citation. Here is another error in your method for discovering reality. It amounts to an appeal to authority. You can't depend on anyone else for truth, because it is conceivable that everyone else is wrong or looking through a tiny lens within which they can only see part of reality and not the whole thing. You think that by pulling things apart, you've arrived at the truth of the things themselves, but haven't realized that all things are arbitrary and relative.
@shanedk My claims have nothing to do with evidence. It has to do with that faculty inside your head that determines whether or not something makes sense or not. And you can make sense of the faculty of perception and realize that things could not exist in and of themselves and be perceivable by discrimating consciousness, because it requires contrast to do any such discriminating. And you can continue on deducing these facts from there, but first of all you have to direct your inquiry properly
@shanedk Only to a hardened empiricist. Not everyone is as dogmatic as you are. And I submit it will be your stagnation in progressing toward genuine understanding. Usually, to make progress, we have to step over ourselves, overcome ourselves, and this may be one of those hurdles for you. Empiricism strictly speaking, is a wrong method, that produces wrong results.
@shanedk I mean epistemologically, empiricism is a failed project, haven't you read Kant's synthesis? Geeze man, I hate to say this, but you need to sharpen up your reasoning skills and your knowledge of philosophy.
I understand computers quite well, thank you. I've taken courses on them and my career is in computers. And no, you are wrong, its 100% a synthesis of logical thinking and observation. Observation alone doesn't mean anything if you fail to interpret the data properly.
@Rybot9000 "I mean epistemologically, empiricism is a failed project, haven't you read Kant's synthesis?"
No, but I've used computers, driven cars, flown in airplanes, had orthopedic surgery, and taken advantage of all sorts of direct, tangible benefits that empiricism has resulted in. So how is that trumped by the words of a dead guy?
"And no, you are wrong, its 100% a synthesis of logical thinking and observation."
That's what empiricism IS, idiot. And that's what you have NOT been doing.
@shanedk Question your answers, truth has no anger. - Blame, Collective Soul
You can call me an idiot as much as you like and it won't change my perception. Maybe you don't realize it, but that is egotism and is acting on you right now to distort your perception of these events and frustrate you. I really don't need to convince you of anything, discovery of truth is a personal endeavor. I know you are wrong, but I can see that you don't, we can only see what we are attuned to see, read Kant.
@shanedk Nope, empiricism is empiricism as opposed to rationalism. That's where reading Kant would help probably. Seeing as he drafted the synthesis 'tween empirical and rationalist schools of thought. Science seeks to employ a synthesis of empiricism and rationalism, but with a hard leaning toward empiricism. There is no formal system that can ensure the right balance, its all up to the individual. I read a lot of science papers, especially in psychology and all are subject to rationale.
@Rybot9000 Take for example a famous experiment; the Stanley Milgram experiment, in which he had 50% or more subjects giving fatal electrical shocks. Well, one thing many overlook in all that data, those who are likely to submit themselves voluntarily to a scientific experiment, are also the ones likely to submit themselves voluntarily to the instruction of the scientist. Thus, the sample is improper, it is not random but selects for specific traits that produce those results.
@Rybot9000 In this example, all the evidence is there, but thinking about the evidence can be wrong. Looking at the evidence is empiricism, reasoning about the evidence is rationalism. Of course, you cannot completely separate the two, but you can place undue importance on one, as you do with empiricism.
@Rybot9000 That WASN'T the conclusion of the experiment. When the person in the room was presented AS AN AUTHORITY, they turned up the juice. When it wasn't, they were MUCH less likely to do so.
You read a bunch of stuff and regurgitate it to sound smart, but you haven't understood ANY of it.
@shanedk I detect some angst in your recent posts Shane. You aren't getting upset are you? After-all why should you be upset? There isn't any good reason for it. We are apt to disagree, its the nature of being human. No reason to get upset about it.
Even still, those who volunteer for an experiment are those who are more likely to respond to authority. I maintain that Milgram's experiment was adequate, but that doesn't blind me to the potential failures of it.
I love it when people like Rybot9000 and FlowCell go on about how "Logic is doesn't tell us truth and neither does empiricism" "It's flawed" yada yada yada.
I believe this video by Stefan Molyneux really put that bogosity in it's place: /watch?v=2j29iSb9rHs ("Despair")
Than there is the verification THROUGH falsification deal you showed me that fixes the problems, last time I checked, verification through falsification is not invalid by its own standard.
@shanedk Take for example Nature Vs Nurture, and psychologists went through the process of thinking it was all nature, and then nurture, and nature vs nurture in competition with each other, and finally using the exact same evidence, they realized that it is a false dichotomy, it is nature AND nurture in symbiotic harmony. Same facts, same observations, different eyes, different ways of thinking about it. The truth could have been deduced using a negative dialectic independent of any observation
@Rybot9000 The negative dialectic goes: Thesis + Antithesis = Synthesis, and you can take your Synthesis as your new Thesis, derive a new Antithesis and come up with a new Synthesis, and keep going until you can't anymore, and you will reveal the truth about nature-vs-nurture, tabula-rasa-vs-original-sin and a whole bunch of other things people seek out more evidence for.
@shanedk I don't have that problem as a matter of fact. But it is similar to your problem of recognizing that quanta are part of the universe. You take a car, and you wonder how it works, so you pull a gear off it, and you put that gear on a table by itself, and think "Why isn't it doing anything?". Of course, your quanta is doing something, but what it does is meaningless by itself, just as meaningless as the gear laying inert on the table.
@shanedk Funny how me and everyone else had that problem but Shanedk apparently didn't have that problem. You know, this know-it-all attitude, with the name-calling, and all the frustration evidently lying behind it ought to be some indication to you that you aren't as confident as you pretend to be. The wisest person would admit to make the error, the wisest person admits to error, because if he cannot, he won't overcome it. So, if I am wrong, and I see that I am wrong, awesome! I'll love it!
@Rybot9000 But so far you have been talking about perceptions which I know to be inadequate or false. They are all perceptions I am familiar with and some which I have worn myself, but now I have a better idea, and can see that you don't. I am in this position to be able to see both the accuracy of your point of view and the flaws in it, and have yet another viewpoint which you haven't as of yet wrapped your head around. I suggest you try to understand my perception, instead of fighting it.
@Rybot9000 But this goes back to my initial point, where egotism is involved, truth isn't. Egotism bungles everything up, and it is bungling up our discussion. My perspective is that you and I are equally respectable human beings, it is our birthright, and we are both struggling through delusion to find the truth. It is a process, that takes time and effort, and there is a critical point when we realize that our own emotions are clouding the issue, making wars out of what should be discussion.
@Rybot9000 We should be shoulder-to-shoulder, trying to discern the truth in earnest. But here you are calling me an "idiot" and making many other ad hominem statements, as if there were a battle between us and something to be won. All you can hope for is that you are deemed right by onlookers, perhaps then you can feel proud. But it has no bearing on what is actually true. Truth has no anger. one can only arrive at truth humbly and in meekness. otherwise you cling to your perception and war.
@Rybot9000 I have no problem with Muslims, Christians, Atheists, Agnostics, or fundamentalists of any sort. All of these are mere categories of thought, and all of these are mere humans born in darkness struggling to see the light of Truth. But they are encumbered by egotism, which predisposes them to attach themselves to dogma and to derive self-worth from their status in a group. All of this clouds their ability to actually leave the dark of their cave (Plato's cave allegory).
@Rybot9000 I know the mind and its subconscious through direct experience (revelation). As we are discussing you are categorizing me, probably thinking I'm some sort of religious zealot. And there is in the background, this welling up of frustration toward me, and this is originating from your attachment to your own perspective, which you are attempting to defend in this exchange. Because you have attachment to perception, you are at war with me, as if you are your perception.
@Rybot9000 As long as the mind clings to perception in such a way, it is not based on merit, not based on truth, but based on identity. "I know the truth", "I have clear perception", "Those fools are stupid", "Those idiots have it all wrong". These are not statements of truth, they are statements, or thoughts, reflecting ones attachment to the idea of being in possession of truth. All of this serves as a block between people and between people and actual truth.
@Rybot9000 And it all reaches back to its root which i called "egotism" but which is far more fundamental than the colloquial usage of the term. By egotism i refer to ones sense of self-in-relation-to-the-world. If I am here to make a name for myself, or to defend my chosen category of thought, or to cram something down your throat, to force you to see the truth. Then all of that is just coming from my ego. Factually, I'm here to glorify truth, and many have named me an idiot and hated me for it
@shanedk are you familiar with Aristotle's Law of Non-Contradiction or the Law of Identity which plainly states; a thing is what it is and not what it isn't. That a thing is itself, is logical consistency, and the fact that it is not what it isn't is logical. But it would be wrong to say that merely a thing is what it is, because it is also not what it isn't. Implied in the thing itself is this "not what it isn't". Now, as for neuroscientific theories of consciousness, look to Edelman and Tononi
@shanedk Who formulated in a paper titled "Integrated Information Theory" that in order to handle the representation of any particle thing within the "Dynamic Core" of the cortico-thalamic complex, the brain must represent a thing, not only in relation to itself, but also in relation to what it is not, the All. This same conclusions was arrived at by Immanual Kant in The Critique of Pure Reason, in which he says that all things fall on the backdrop of omnitudo realitatis (all that exists).
@Rybot9000 FYI, I am quite well versed in Neuroscience and particularly that of Consciousness. The book "A Universe of Consciousness: How Matter Becomes Imagination" by Gerald Edelman is by far, the best physicalist account of the neural structure and the best mathematical theory. But Thomas Metzinger approaches the question as a functionalist, deducing the same results from purely rational beginnings. As has been done since before recorded history and has been recorded in fables and parables.
@Rybot9000 Fables and Parables are used, because although the representative things, the creatures or characters may evoke different emotional responses, the logical relations binding them in the stories are the meat which reflects the philosophical truths. As empiricists, many people get caught up on the characters, the thingness, the quanta, and overlook the meat which is staring them in the face the whole time, but which is not represented by any particular thing.
@shanedk If this were not true, the world would fall apart, consciousness would be incapable of ascertaining anything and existence would snuff itself out. You don't need QM or any objective physicalist explanation, because the critical facts needed lie right infront of you, in the very fact of your self-consciousness. Hence the ancients said; Nosce te ipsum (Know thyself). QM merely represents this fact through the physical representation of objectivity, which is perpetually in consciousness.
@shanedk Everything in existence is intimitely related to everything else in existence. That is what QM tells us. You can't pull existence apart and expect it to continue to exist. That is absurd, but that is what is implied by taking one thing away from everything else and seeing how it behaves. Of course it behaves oddly, it would probably snap out of existence all-together if not held to existence by the methods of experimentation, within which it behaves oddly being suspended in a nonsense.
@shanedk That's a false assumption on your part. I deal with existence as a whole concept, and not merely a part of a universe. If anything, the universe is merely part of existence, it is the "objective" part of existence. But objective "existence" in and of itself is not existence, it is non-existent. This is a critical point, Time is relative to the observer, if you remove all observers, Time is meaningless. Without an observer, existence equates to non-existence.
@Rybot9000 "That's a false assumption on your part."
No, it's a DIRECT OBSERVATION. Our universe is just under 4% the matter and energy that we can see and work with; it's about 1% neutrinos, 20% dark matter, and the other 75% dark energy.
"Time is relative to the observer"
If you understood QM, you'd know that the environment observes itself.
@shanedk Take the relativity of Time further to hash this point. What is the procession of Time like when you are sleeping unconsciously? Its as if it wasn't, its as if the moment you shut your eyes, they opened again and Time had progressed instantaneously. However, others have perceived the time elapse, and there are physical indications time has elapsed. But if you never woke up, and no one else saw Time. There would be no Time or Space, no existence. Which is why empiricism is wrong method.
@Rybot9000 All "objects" including the "Universe" are relative to a "subject". But, as the monists assert, the subject and object are bound together through logic, and are not of fundamentally different substance. Object and Subject dualism arises from the feeding back of logical processes on themselves. The universe, if you like, becoming aware of itself, produces the duality of subject and object, when in-fact there is ONE seamless reality bound together by Logic. You need those three to exist
@Rybot9000 if you remove the abstract notion of observer, and thereby remove all actual observers, you wind up with a universe that appears to progress so rapidly as to be instantaneous, and an infinite number of possible universes would flash by in imperceptible time until an observer capable of perceiving time was included, then the abstract existence would become actual including Space and Time relative to the Observer, and all things relative to each other and the Observer(s).
@Rybot9000 By the way, the word "Exist" from which we make "Existence" has its etymological roots in the Latin word "Existere" which means; to present an appearance. That is, something which exists, presents an appearance of itself, and this appearance can only appear relative to a subject. We should have retained the original meaning to avoid this confusion. Something only exists in space-time, when there is an observer. Otherwise, it doesn't exist.
I don't think it matters whether or not you know the number of times people thought the ball went around. My graphs are much more noisy than yours, suggesting that you smoothed them. I suggest avoiding that. I also suggest that you plot your last graph on polar coordinates. I did that using your data. It looks more interesting that way - two lobes. Maybe people are not good at predicting the final place the ball will drop and so there is a phase shift. Final suggestion: repeat the experiment.
@shanedk Polar coordinates are just coordinates in pairs of radius and angle. Given a radius and an angle computing the x and y coordinates is pretty easy. Um, lesee, x/r = cos theta so x = r sin theta and likewise
y = r sin theta. But I plotted it using PostScript and so could just rotate the coordinate system for each point
And it is absurd to think that actual things could be random and in discord with other actual things producing a reality out of harmony, therefore out of unity, and therefore completely unpredictable and incapable of sustaining self-consciousness.
@Rybot9000 Rather, Logic has been mistaken... Logic does not operate front to back, or past to future, but it operates everywhere and now to bring everything into consistency with itself and self-consciousness. Individual particles or quanta, separated from the whole, behave wildly, but put back into their rightful place a jaguar remains a jaguar and does not snap in and out of existence or turn randomly into a chicken.
@shanedk No, it doesn't. Fractals are completely logically consistent with themselves. You seem to be missing the root of logic. Logic permeates through everything you say, without logical consistency in the grammatical structure of language and logical consistency in the stringing together of representations, everything you say is utterly meaningless. Logic permeates maths, even of fractal geometry. In fact, fractal geometry is one of the purest mathematical expressions of how Logic works.
But you see, egotism is a major part of politics, not so much a major part of guessing how many jelly beans are in a jar. When you add egotism to the mix of determining factors, all method goes out the window and you wind up with 0 convergence. Egotism is opposed to convergence.
@Rybot9000 Egotism's only part of the problem. Fundamentally, democracy only allows one solution to be applied. The WoC works by people employing all sorts of different approaches to solving the problem, none of which require them to have full information themselves.
@shanedk Thats ridiculous. And I see the results of that in democracy. The crowd tells me, using a singular method (hearsay) that we only use 10% of our brain. I have yet to personally meet anyone who actually knows this is false. The crowd uses only one method in this case; blindly accepting the information from an unreliable source. Show me a fox viewer who doesn't do that. My method is to do the work necessary to confirm the claim, or not. There are very few people like me hanging in crowds.
@shanedk I'm pretty sure only one solution will ever be applied in actuality to any problem. You can't dice and mash a potato at the same time. It'll wind up mashed every time.
@dookiecheez That would make it impossible for people to guess, since motion blur would obscure the numbers. Besides, it might introduce too much chaos.
It seems to me that it is obvious that the wisdom of crowds is useless in a purely random system. Otherwise the roulette wheel would not exist. What casino would have a device whose randomness could be overridden by a convergence of a crowd? People would group together and calculate an average guess that would be above pure chance and roulette would be a losing game for the house. If it were true you would bet against other players and the house would take a vig, like games of skill.
It means that the wisdom of crowds is just as chaotic as the roulette wheel. There is no wisdom of crowds. the number of revolutions shouldn't matter, it is just one factor in a million that would need to be included in working out the path of the marble. If we were using math and newtonian mechanics to predict the marble, we wouldn't be testing for the wisdom of crowds, except a crowd of mathematicians.
I think there are some misconceptions here. The wisdom of crowds doesn't mean just guess and the right answer will appear. It means a group of people using the best methods they have available should make their best guess. The combination of all the guess, being the result of all the methods, should be closer to the correct answer then any individual answer.
Shane asked people NOT to use methods in order to figure out where the ball would land and I think that hurt the experiment.
@amcnea There is one correct answer, and one purely logical method of deducing it, in this case one would have to know all the newtonian facts and maths that would deduce the correct answer. If the question is; What are the three primary elements that make up existence? The crowd is going to converge on something like; Hydrogen, Oxygen and Helium. Which would be wrong but that is because the crowd isn't using the right method the right method produces right results
Their maybe 1 purely logical method (not sure I agree), but doesn't mean there isn't more then 1 method. There is generally more then 1 right way to get to an answer. There are a few mathematical approaches I can think of, but that doesn't mean there arn't different methods which will work to different degrees of success.
@amcnea The crowd is using fuzzy logic to take account of some of these variables. All are using pretty much the same methods; intuition, fuzzy logic. And all arrive at chaotic answers as a result. If they had concrete knowledge of the facts; 2+2= and adequate knowledge of right method, they would all arrive at the correct answer; 4. If asked for the area of a triangle, they would have to use pythagoras' theorum to deduce the answer. It comes back to the wisdom of individuals, in a crowd.
"All are using pretty much the same methods; intuition, fuzzy logic"
Exactly, because shane forbade using other methods. Hence harming the wisdom of the crowd.
"If asked for the area of a triangle, they would have to use pythagoras' theorum to deduce the answer"
Wrong, that's to find the hypoteneus of a right triangle. It's 1/2 * base * height to find the area. Or you can keep duplicating the triangles until they make a square or rhombus and divide by two.
@amcnea Yea, I know, I made a mistake. Regardless, if you put 15 mathematicians in a room and ask them to work out the area of a triangle, they should all get the right answer. Then if you toss in 50 people with no knowledge of math, your average answer is going to be wrong. It really depends on the individuals in the crowd and what methods they are using. Whether you have 50 mathematicians or 50 people who don't know maths or some combination of them.
The wisdom of crowds has to do with using a pluralism of methods to reach an answer.
For instance look at the prediction markets. These have a very good track record for predicting the future. It is because people are using various methods to collect information and give their best answer. But also, the answer must be backed up by money which prevents frivolous answers with little thought and research put into them from being submitted.
@amcnea You can't derive the correct answer from a crowd alone. But it has to be the right crowd. This has been known of democracy since the time immemorial. Plato wrote on it, MLK Jr wrote on it, everyone who has ever concerned themselves with politics knows that unless the crowd is sufficiently wise and capable of thinking for themselves, a democracy can descend into tyranny.
A nation that continues to produce weak minded men purchases its enslavement on the installment plan - MLK Jr
"You can't derive the correct answer from a crowd alone"
I didn't mean to imply that you could. It needs to be a diverse crowd using a variety of methods to deduce the answers. What I was trying to say is that Shane's instruction helped to prohibit such diversity in his experiment.
@amcnea Well, that might work to predict the whether to whatever accuracy meterologists can actually predict the weather. But on questions of ultimate reality, absolute truth, and what is good, the crowd sucks balls. I'm sorry to say it, but their methods are all wrong. There are plenty of them, but they are all wrong. It comes down to 1 out of 1,000+ finding and using the right method, which in a democracy means a delusional one.
you have averaged the point of the center of each number for every guess. you should have averaged the angles from the number to the position of the ball when you paused the film, however this would have also required you to have asked for a number of estimated revolutions. i am confident and if anyone would redo this test i would be willing to further explain my reasoning and conduct the experiment. you can reply if you would like any further explanation as well.
TheKrazykool809 8 months ago
@TheKrazykool809 "however this would have also required you to have asked for a number of estimated revolutions."
I've said many times that was my biggest blunder with this experiment.
I don't have anywhere near the time to do this again (it took me MONTHS before), but if anyone else is willing to do it I'd be glad to video another spin of the wheel.
shanedk 8 months ago
@shanedk I have no idea where to get a roulette wheel. If i knew where i could get one I would definitely try this experiment. I would also need a lot of viewers as I am not a very popular youtubeer and i would appreciate it if you would direct people to my video if i make one. I live in Greenfield, WI if anyone knows where I could get a roulette wheel in the area or off the internet.
TheKrazykool809 8 months ago
@TheKrazykool809 As I said, I'd be willing to video another spin of the wheel and post it here, and have people send their answer to you however you'd like.
That'd even be better than this one, because then you, as the one compiling the data, wouldn't know either what the real result was until after you'd published your prediction.
shanedk 8 months ago
@shanedk I would definitely be up trying that if you made a video. you could also simply take a video of you spinning the wheel and send it to me and i could do all the rest including making a video for youtube. All I would need is a short video of a spin or two for the video. If I made a video I would like some spins beforehand as well to show the audience how the wheel works.
TheKrazykool809 8 months ago
@TheKrazykool809 Let's do this: go ahead and get your system set up for people submitting their votes. When you do, I'll make the video spinning the wheel and in the video info send them to your system. Does that work?
shanedk 8 months ago
@shanedk You could make another video just like your first one and I could simply look through all the comments and do the rest or you could take a few (I would like 3) short videos of you spinning the wheel and I could make the video for youtube and all the rest. I would prefer to use the second method.
TheKrazykool809 8 months ago
@TheKrazykool809 Okay, but I'm warning you: having them put the results in the comments is NOT EASY!
shanedk 8 months ago
@shanedk I actualy have an idea for that
TheKrazykool809 8 months ago
@TheKrazykool809 Cool.
Don't break your neck working on it; it'll be awhile before I can make the videos.
shanedk 8 months ago
@shanedk All i need are 3 videos of spins. nothing els. Just message me when you have the videos.
TheKrazykool809 8 months ago
@TheKrazykool809 OK.
shanedk 8 months ago
Watch the two videos back to back and you'll see clear as day what happened.
He spins the wheel for an "example" and told viewers to "rewind and watch the example again to get a sense of how this wheel behaves."
In the example, the ball spun down, hit the wheel, and bounced to a dead stop three or four slots ahead of where it hit.
It doesn't surprise me one bit that 4 got the highest number of guesses. Watch the first video and you'll know *exactly* why.
He poisoned the sample population.
zEropoint68 10 months ago
Not sure if someone said this already, but the obvious reason the distribution was clustered there is because you stopped the video right before the ball was about to hit the numbers. If you had the revolution data, people most certainly would've guess that it would've made 0 more revolutions before stopping.
For a more averaged result, you should've stopped the video shortly after the throw, maybe after 1 revolution. Or you could've given the wheel a little spin.
paulmarko 1 year ago
haha thats funny, I just watched the original video and just guessed for fun and I actually guessed 11. Guess I should have seen the original sooner so I could have won your book :)
KnownNoMore 1 year ago
I'm pretty sure that the WoC concept is only valid for systems where individuals can predict the result at a rate greater than chance, i.e. estimation of the result can't be entirely beyond human abilities. As you said, this system may simply be too chaotic.
I wonder if you'd get different results if you only tested experienced people. That is, people who have spent a couple of hours watching roulette wheels and trying to make predictions.
sdrawkcabgnipytmi 1 year ago
@sdrawkcabgnipytmi The interesting thing about the WoC is that it often tends to work better without experts. That's what Galton found in his initial analysis. Experts tend to have centralized information or opinion which throws it off. Still, it'd be an interesting experiment to do.
shanedk 1 year ago
HA!
Your little "wisdom of crowds" has failed you Shane. This just proves that the free market doesn't work, evolution is a lie, the Earth is flat, and the moon landing was hoax.
TheSupremeSkeptic 1 year ago
Looks like denytheholyspirit closed his account. As for wisdom of the crowd, it has its limitations. I would not think of it as the holy grail. In fact it has its inverse - 'the stupidity of the crowds' aka gossip and rumors.
82abhilash 1 year ago
@82abhilash Yeah, I'm going to redo the random number among the rest when I get the time.
Gossip and rumors inhibit the WoC by reducing the diversity of knowledge and opinion.
shanedk 1 year ago
@shanedk Inhibit the WoC by reducing the diversity? I think not. When people converge on one opinion there is reduction in diversity of opinions. I mean that is a no brainer. The a genius comes along and if he agrees with the commonly held view for his own reasons, he calls it Woc. If not he calls it gossip or rumor and then present his opinion. But where there is convergence ideas become more homogenized rather than diversified regardless of the truth or falsity of the claims.
82abhilash 1 year ago
@shanedk
Methinks 82abhilash needs to watch your original video on WoC: the one in your five part series on basic economics.
vspqbd 1 year ago
Interesting experiment and I agree with another commentator that there's much Kudos in publishing the result.
I was wondering if the wisdom of crowds might be applied to predicting weather. Given the ability of someone like Piers Corbyn to make long range weather forecasts based upon Sun activity and lunar cycles. I wonder, if given the same information, people might make quite accurate predictions of jet streams and thus the weather. What d'you think?
mangoswiss 1 year ago
@mangoswiss Except that from what I've seen, Corbyn really isn't that accurate and just cherry-picks his predictions after the fact.
shanedk 1 year ago
@shanedk Perhaps, I know very little about Corbyn but I really meant that perhaps given infomration such as sun activity, lunar cycles, current weather patterns, pressure, temperature data and such like, people might converge on quite accurate weather predictions.
So Corbyn aside, do you think this could be applied to weather prediction? I did a quick google search and was surprised to see few relevant results for "Wisdom of Crowds Weather".
mangoswiss 1 year ago
@mangoswiss It'd be interesting to see someone do such an experiment, but I don't have the first idea of how to go about it.
shanedk 1 year ago
Oh, it failed! Who would have guessed that?
MasterGhostKnight 1 year ago
I prefer the "Price Is Right" method.
Plinko! :)
N21X 1 year ago
@N21X Probably TOO random.
shanedk 1 year ago
Crowd intelligence = average IQ of population / number of people in population. The bottom line is - the larger the crowd, the dumber the crowd. Observe this each day, even at the micro level.
OccamsView 1 year ago
@OccamsView Um, no. See my video describing what the WoC is.
shanedk 1 year ago 2
Looks like I must review your previous video on the subject, as I don't understand how "the wisdom of crowds" could be considered a means of determining the outcome of a very chaotic system (Roulette). I would expect 1/38 for each number (American Roulette).
I propose a different test with Keno numbers, but all pseudorandom number generators are biased.
Desertphile 1 year ago
Can we do another one pleeeeease shanedk? Like guessing a financial instrument time series. I have always wondered about the wisdom of crowds in that regard.
CognosSquare 1 year ago
Well,
why should you have expected the wisdom of crowds to work on a practically random process? If it had worked, that really would have surprised me. Random results are not computable by definition. For a prediction, crowds would have to be able to predict values of uncomputable functions - That would be akin to disproving the Church–Turing thesis.
Anyway, I do not think that free markets usually lead near the most of efficiency, so a positive result really really would have surprised me.
AppliedMathematician 1 year ago
To be honest, I didn't think it would work when I saw the original video. The wisdom of crowds may work when the crowd has a method of evaluation (eg, using corporate performance to judge the value of a stock, spatial perception for beans in a jar), but I doubt the crowd would ever be able to predict truly random numbers.
snownet 1 year ago
I don't play roulette, but I'll be damned , I won this time!
Andrewticus04 1 year ago
I am not sure, but I think you could check for bias with a statistical test based on the poisson distribution. You could also do a chi square for each number on the wheel with the expected frequency of 1/38. The idea of asking how far people thought the wheel would spin would be far more complicated. Again, I am not sure but I expect a regression model would be needed to look at covariance of data. It would be more conclusive to repeat the test and not show the starting point of the spin.
ad3543 1 year ago
my friend always bets on the last number that comes up aswell as others , one particular time we were at the casino 29 came up 5 times in a row ! no lies it was incredible.The only explanation is that the croupier had a robotic turn of hand who knows.
binky4647 1 year ago
Comment removed
binky4647 1 year ago
Remembering your first video, I used the wisdom of crowds recently on an online contest and came within 1 of the true number. My original guess probably would have been like 10 off. Smaller sample sizes but still cool. Oh, and no big deal, but typo at 9:27. Should be BABABABA5555 at #3.
teedesigns 1 year ago
Great stuff as always, Shane. Here's to more videos from you, in the coming year.
lordwindowlicker 1 year ago
Great stuff as always, Shane. Here's to more videos from you, in the coming year. :D
lordwindowlicker 1 year ago
Just for the sake of it I double checked your results.
I land at ~0.619 between the '8' and the '19' with a radius of ~0.173962.
Slightly different from yours but close enough. My results are the correct ones though, no doubt :D.
I think the radius is quite small for the result to be of real significance by the way.
I didn't plot the histogram yet. If it's really the shape you showed it is interesting. Probably unrelated to any wisdom but interesting.
heloizyjhenifer 1 year ago
@heloizyjhenifer "I think the radius is quite small for the result to be of real significance by the way."
That's my thinking as well.
One note: my graph isn't a histogram, it's a moving average.
shanedk 1 year ago
I believe that a guess of the number of marbles or beans in a glass jar would be a better experiment to make a positive outcome of wisdom of crowds.
DesigningDan 1 year ago
@DesigningDan But we KNOW that works.
shanedk 1 year ago
@shanedk Ok, I didn't know that, thanks.
DesigningDan 1 year ago
I wonder if the experiment showed anything at all? Perhaps if there were more guesses the curve would be flatter, perhaps there is a sampling influence here?
I was wondering about repeatability too.....if it was possible to run the experiment over and over again, what would you find?
I also think that to remove even more bias, the person looking at the results cannot know where the ball lands. You should be able to determine that from the data if the hypothesis is true.
kshackleton 1 year ago
I wonder if the experiment could be improved by removing the mixed up numbers on the roulette wheel. Say use a clock face instead. Release the marble and 12 o'clock and ask people what time they think it will land on (or something to that effect). It might be easier for people to think about the physics rather than their favourite number.
PayasYouListen 1 year ago 9
@PayasYouListen Not a bad idea.
shanedk 1 year ago
@PayasYouListen Remember he didn't spin the roulette so it's infinitely less random than the real thing and it's easier to guess. What people were asked was to estimate the approximate position of where the ball would land given its last known speed and position and then read out the nearest pocket number. Unless someone knows the layout sequence by heart or something there can be no bias.
heloizyjhenifer 1 year ago
@heloizyjhenifer That's my point. By having the numbers mixed up, it gives more of an appearance of randomness. By having the numbers in order, they would correspond to their position on the wheel and it makes the guess more intuitive.
Anyway, it was just a thought. If there's a big flaw in it I'll let it go.
PayasYouListen 1 year ago
@PayasYouListen The point is for this test people were encouraged to estimate the outcome geometrically and THEN look up the pocket number. If you have them ordered there could be a bias towards picking a number because said numbers would be in *predictable* positions.
heloizyjhenifer 1 year ago
@PayasYouListen
My thoughts exactly, but I was thinking that the roulette numbers should have been in order. The clock face sounds much better.
1983Bantam 1 year ago
ok why would you test the wisdom of crowds on a roulette wheel?
if you look at this test logically than you know that this is the wrong aproach for testing the wosdom of crowds.
just ask a question any question to a bunch of people and tell them to only answer if they think they know the answer.
i say you get the right answer for a ton of questions.
try that for a future testing i would be interested in the results
ralfjacobs 1 year ago
@ralfjacobs He wanted to specifically test whether the wisdom of crowds applied to chaotic systems. Testing of the wisdom of crowds in nonchaotic systems has been done and has been demonstrated, but not on chaotic systems.
ScientificSkeptic 1 year ago
@ralfjacobs Did you object to this test when he put it up?
heloizyjhenifer 1 year ago
obviously it should be fairly random. No one is psychic.
NYjon888 1 year ago
It could be that roulette wheels cannot be estimated by the wisdom of crowds. Maybe it's worthwhile to see what kind of estimations WoC can't handle and, by extension, how it applies to the economy and its failings.
SlyEcho 1 year ago
I'm not quite sure what you are trying to glean from this. I think I need to watch the original over again. I'm not sure exactly what having a guess that's 180 degrees wrong proves, or how guessing the number of rotations changes anything.
IdleGod 1 year ago
Massive, massive props for doing the following:
*** 1) Publishing a negative result ***
2) Publishing criticism of and possible improvements to your study design
A lot of people (scientists, even) sit on negative results. Which is a shame, because a lot can be learned from them.
StubbornProgrammer 1 year ago 32
@StubbornProgrammer I think there should be a Journal of Negative Results, where every scientist can publish experiments etc that didn't work! Publication should be compulsory for all clinical trials which yielded negative results!
mandolinic 1 year ago
I don't even remember what my guess was
darkdragonsoul99 1 year ago
@darkdragonsoul99 Look at the CVS file. You should be able to use your browser's search function to look for your user name to find it.
NixuzE 1 year ago
You really sound like someone that is data-mining. Adding new post-hoc hypotheses is not the way to go either.
Nerusai 1 year ago
@Nerusai
Adding new post-hoc hypothesis is the last step in a scientific experiment. Having reviewed your data and determining if it fits your original hypothesis, you make a new hypothesis to set yourself up for the next experiment.
rkyeun 1 year ago
@rkyeun
Keyword being: next experiment :)
Nerusai 1 year ago
@Nerusai Which, AGAIN, is why I said the experiment should be repeated.
shanedk 1 year ago
Very cool. Thanks for your effort. I suspect that most people didn't think before entering their number and just guessed. If someone repeats the experiment they should ask people to only enter a guess if they imagine / estimate how far the ball will go after the video stops.
WarmWeatherGuy 1 year ago
Jesus christ... Ok, I tried, i really tried to watch this, but good god this is dry. This is like an entire box of salted top soda crackers lightly toasted in the oven and served with a #1 white wine in an open tent in the middle of the Sahara during a sandstorm. I just couldnt get through to the end, even just listening to it in the background while I played WoW, as I often do.
Debunking creation is entertaining, at least, but statistical analysis for its own sake is just beyond me.
Etimos 1 year ago
maybe its that the wisdom of crowds only works when the question being asked can receive an infinite amount of answers rather than just 50 possible answers. that way you can find the average of all the answers more precise. when there is an infinite number of possible answers, there is an infinite amount of answers that are not being submitted. in this experiment, every possible answer is being submitted at least 4 times.
WashyBanjo 1 year ago
I've waited so long for this video! I really thought you had just given up on it. Too bad it didn't work as you'd hoped. But it sounds like there are definitely some variables that could be accounted for/altered in another experiment.
DogmaFight 1 year ago
Even though you seem a bit biassed to wanting the wisdom of crowds to work, you aren't biased (i.m.o.) in the outcome, as you ask for assistance on improving the methods and extracting data (in stead of saying "these results must be accurate and true in favour of wisdom of crowds").
If I had the time I'd repeat the experiment but like you, I simply lack in this resource.
FHomeBrew 1 year ago
@FHomeBrew I was hopeful, yes, and as I said in the video I expected a much clearer convergence than what I got. But the results are the results.
Thanks for the comments.
shanedk 1 year ago
@shanedk Maybe you can make this a team effort by getting people to do this experiment with people they know or in their own subscribers list. Let them denote the number the ball landed on and then shift all the results so they match up. Maybe get someone who's social and proactive with lots of similar-minded subscribers to get the counter going up?
FHomeBrew 1 year ago
It is a shame to see that in this instance the Wisdom of the Crowds did not work properly.
However, I was almost suprised how well you took the fact that you had made an error when making this test. A lot of people as we know would simply try to hide or minimize the error that they have might done in the egoistic world of youtube. It has brighten my day a little that there are responsible people in the internet these days. Thanks :).
Finlandcitizen 1 year ago
@Finlandcitizen You're welcome, and thanks for the comment.
shanedk 1 year ago
Dang, I didn't guess right. Well, glad to be a help anyway. Congrats to the winners.
GuineaPigDan 1 year ago
Put otherwise, Logic rules even over quanta. It is Logic which provides the constraint determining the seemingly sporadic behavior of quantum mechanics. It is only when you take these quanta out of their context that they don't know what to do. Logic permeates in and between things, and if you try to separate things they behave differently. Like an electron which becomes static when there is no medium for to guide it to a destination. Logic is the medium guiding quanta to their destination.
Rybot9000 1 year ago
@Rybot9000 Only in macro structures. Get down small enough, and logic goes out the window.
"Logic is the medium guiding quanta to their destination." [citation DEFINITELY needed]
shanedk 1 year ago
@shanedk I don't need a citation. Here is another error in your method for discovering reality. It amounts to an appeal to authority. You can't depend on anyone else for truth, because it is conceivable that everyone else is wrong or looking through a tiny lens within which they can only see part of reality and not the whole thing. You think that by pulling things apart, you've arrived at the truth of the things themselves, but haven't realized that all things are arbitrary and relative.
Rybot9000 1 year ago
@Rybot9000 "I don't need a citation."
You don't need to provide evidence for your idiotic claims???
shanedk 1 year ago 2
@shanedk My claims have nothing to do with evidence. It has to do with that faculty inside your head that determines whether or not something makes sense or not. And you can make sense of the faculty of perception and realize that things could not exist in and of themselves and be perceivable by discrimating consciousness, because it requires contrast to do any such discriminating. And you can continue on deducing these facts from there, but first of all you have to direct your inquiry properly
Rybot9000 1 year ago
@Rybot9000 "My claims have nothing to do with evidence."
Then they're worthless.
shanedk 1 year ago
@shanedk Only to a hardened empiricist. Not everyone is as dogmatic as you are. And I submit it will be your stagnation in progressing toward genuine understanding. Usually, to make progress, we have to step over ourselves, overcome ourselves, and this may be one of those hurdles for you. Empiricism strictly speaking, is a wrong method, that produces wrong results.
Rybot9000 1 year ago
@Rybot9000 "Only to a hardened empiricist."
No, only to someone who cares if his views actually match reality.
"Not everyone is as dogmatic as you are."
Right: you have creationists, moon hoaxers, homeopaths...
"Empiricism strictly speaking, is a wrong method, that produces wrong results." Do I need to say it? [citation needed]
You do realize that it's 100% thanks to empiricism that you even have a computer to type this on?
shanedk 1 year ago
@shanedk I mean epistemologically, empiricism is a failed project, haven't you read Kant's synthesis? Geeze man, I hate to say this, but you need to sharpen up your reasoning skills and your knowledge of philosophy.
I understand computers quite well, thank you. I've taken courses on them and my career is in computers. And no, you are wrong, its 100% a synthesis of logical thinking and observation. Observation alone doesn't mean anything if you fail to interpret the data properly.
Rybot9000 1 year ago
@Rybot9000 "I mean epistemologically, empiricism is a failed project, haven't you read Kant's synthesis?"
No, but I've used computers, driven cars, flown in airplanes, had orthopedic surgery, and taken advantage of all sorts of direct, tangible benefits that empiricism has resulted in. So how is that trumped by the words of a dead guy?
"And no, you are wrong, its 100% a synthesis of logical thinking and observation."
That's what empiricism IS, idiot. And that's what you have NOT been doing.
shanedk 1 year ago
@shanedk Question your answers, truth has no anger. - Blame, Collective Soul
You can call me an idiot as much as you like and it won't change my perception. Maybe you don't realize it, but that is egotism and is acting on you right now to distort your perception of these events and frustrate you. I really don't need to convince you of anything, discovery of truth is a personal endeavor. I know you are wrong, but I can see that you don't, we can only see what we are attuned to see, read Kant.
Rybot9000 1 year ago
@Rybot9000 I HAVE read Kant. And you don't understand him any better than you understand anything else you've been bleating on about.
shanedk 1 year ago
@shanedk Nope, empiricism is empiricism as opposed to rationalism. That's where reading Kant would help probably. Seeing as he drafted the synthesis 'tween empirical and rationalist schools of thought. Science seeks to employ a synthesis of empiricism and rationalism, but with a hard leaning toward empiricism. There is no formal system that can ensure the right balance, its all up to the individual. I read a lot of science papers, especially in psychology and all are subject to rationale.
Rybot9000 1 year ago
@Rybot9000 Take for example a famous experiment; the Stanley Milgram experiment, in which he had 50% or more subjects giving fatal electrical shocks. Well, one thing many overlook in all that data, those who are likely to submit themselves voluntarily to a scientific experiment, are also the ones likely to submit themselves voluntarily to the instruction of the scientist. Thus, the sample is improper, it is not random but selects for specific traits that produce those results.
Rybot9000 1 year ago
@Rybot9000 In this example, all the evidence is there, but thinking about the evidence can be wrong. Looking at the evidence is empiricism, reasoning about the evidence is rationalism. Of course, you cannot completely separate the two, but you can place undue importance on one, as you do with empiricism.
Rybot9000 1 year ago
@Rybot9000 That WASN'T the conclusion of the experiment. When the person in the room was presented AS AN AUTHORITY, they turned up the juice. When it wasn't, they were MUCH less likely to do so.
You read a bunch of stuff and regurgitate it to sound smart, but you haven't understood ANY of it.
shanedk 1 year ago
@shanedk I detect some angst in your recent posts Shane. You aren't getting upset are you? After-all why should you be upset? There isn't any good reason for it. We are apt to disagree, its the nature of being human. No reason to get upset about it.
Even still, those who volunteer for an experiment are those who are more likely to respond to authority. I maintain that Milgram's experiment was adequate, but that doesn't blind me to the potential failures of it.
Rybot9000 1 year ago
@shanedk
I love it when people like Rybot9000 and FlowCell go on about how "Logic is doesn't tell us truth and neither does empiricism" "It's flawed" yada yada yada.
I believe this video by Stefan Molyneux really put that bogosity in it's place: /watch?v=2j29iSb9rHs ("Despair")
Than there is the verification THROUGH falsification deal you showed me that fixes the problems, last time I checked, verification through falsification is not invalid by its own standard.
So it's win.
vspqbd 1 year ago
@shanedk Take for example Nature Vs Nurture, and psychologists went through the process of thinking it was all nature, and then nurture, and nature vs nurture in competition with each other, and finally using the exact same evidence, they realized that it is a false dichotomy, it is nature AND nurture in symbiotic harmony. Same facts, same observations, different eyes, different ways of thinking about it. The truth could have been deduced using a negative dialectic independent of any observation
Rybot9000 1 year ago
@Rybot9000 The negative dialectic goes: Thesis + Antithesis = Synthesis, and you can take your Synthesis as your new Thesis, derive a new Antithesis and come up with a new Synthesis, and keep going until you can't anymore, and you will reveal the truth about nature-vs-nurture, tabula-rasa-vs-original-sin and a whole bunch of other things people seek out more evidence for.
Rybot9000 1 year ago
@Rybot9000 The problem you and everyone else had with that is that you failed to recognize that nurture is a part of nature.
shanedk 1 year ago
@shanedk I don't have that problem as a matter of fact. But it is similar to your problem of recognizing that quanta are part of the universe. You take a car, and you wonder how it works, so you pull a gear off it, and you put that gear on a table by itself, and think "Why isn't it doing anything?". Of course, your quanta is doing something, but what it does is meaningless by itself, just as meaningless as the gear laying inert on the table.
Rybot9000 1 year ago
@shanedk Funny how me and everyone else had that problem but Shanedk apparently didn't have that problem. You know, this know-it-all attitude, with the name-calling, and all the frustration evidently lying behind it ought to be some indication to you that you aren't as confident as you pretend to be. The wisest person would admit to make the error, the wisest person admits to error, because if he cannot, he won't overcome it. So, if I am wrong, and I see that I am wrong, awesome! I'll love it!
Rybot9000 1 year ago
@Rybot9000 But so far you have been talking about perceptions which I know to be inadequate or false. They are all perceptions I am familiar with and some which I have worn myself, but now I have a better idea, and can see that you don't. I am in this position to be able to see both the accuracy of your point of view and the flaws in it, and have yet another viewpoint which you haven't as of yet wrapped your head around. I suggest you try to understand my perception, instead of fighting it.
Rybot9000 1 year ago
@Rybot9000 But this goes back to my initial point, where egotism is involved, truth isn't. Egotism bungles everything up, and it is bungling up our discussion. My perspective is that you and I are equally respectable human beings, it is our birthright, and we are both struggling through delusion to find the truth. It is a process, that takes time and effort, and there is a critical point when we realize that our own emotions are clouding the issue, making wars out of what should be discussion.
Rybot9000 1 year ago
@Rybot9000 We should be shoulder-to-shoulder, trying to discern the truth in earnest. But here you are calling me an "idiot" and making many other ad hominem statements, as if there were a battle between us and something to be won. All you can hope for is that you are deemed right by onlookers, perhaps then you can feel proud. But it has no bearing on what is actually true. Truth has no anger. one can only arrive at truth humbly and in meekness. otherwise you cling to your perception and war.
Rybot9000 1 year ago
@Rybot9000 I have no problem with Muslims, Christians, Atheists, Agnostics, or fundamentalists of any sort. All of these are mere categories of thought, and all of these are mere humans born in darkness struggling to see the light of Truth. But they are encumbered by egotism, which predisposes them to attach themselves to dogma and to derive self-worth from their status in a group. All of this clouds their ability to actually leave the dark of their cave (Plato's cave allegory).
Rybot9000 1 year ago
@Rybot9000 I know the mind and its subconscious through direct experience (revelation). As we are discussing you are categorizing me, probably thinking I'm some sort of religious zealot. And there is in the background, this welling up of frustration toward me, and this is originating from your attachment to your own perspective, which you are attempting to defend in this exchange. Because you have attachment to perception, you are at war with me, as if you are your perception.
Rybot9000 1 year ago
@Rybot9000 As long as the mind clings to perception in such a way, it is not based on merit, not based on truth, but based on identity. "I know the truth", "I have clear perception", "Those fools are stupid", "Those idiots have it all wrong". These are not statements of truth, they are statements, or thoughts, reflecting ones attachment to the idea of being in possession of truth. All of this serves as a block between people and between people and actual truth.
Rybot9000 1 year ago
@Rybot9000 And it all reaches back to its root which i called "egotism" but which is far more fundamental than the colloquial usage of the term. By egotism i refer to ones sense of self-in-relation-to-the-world. If I am here to make a name for myself, or to defend my chosen category of thought, or to cram something down your throat, to force you to see the truth. Then all of that is just coming from my ego. Factually, I'm here to glorify truth, and many have named me an idiot and hated me for it
Rybot9000 1 year ago
@shanedk
I notice that after this post you stopped replying to Rybot9000's posts.
Can't say I blame you.
I didn't read them myself and what I say looked like more of his psuedo-intellectual masturbation.
vspqbd 1 year ago
@vspqbd
That last sentence should have, "what I saw". >_<
vspqbd 1 year ago
@shanedk are you familiar with Aristotle's Law of Non-Contradiction or the Law of Identity which plainly states; a thing is what it is and not what it isn't. That a thing is itself, is logical consistency, and the fact that it is not what it isn't is logical. But it would be wrong to say that merely a thing is what it is, because it is also not what it isn't. Implied in the thing itself is this "not what it isn't". Now, as for neuroscientific theories of consciousness, look to Edelman and Tononi
Rybot9000 1 year ago
@shanedk Who formulated in a paper titled "Integrated Information Theory" that in order to handle the representation of any particle thing within the "Dynamic Core" of the cortico-thalamic complex, the brain must represent a thing, not only in relation to itself, but also in relation to what it is not, the All. This same conclusions was arrived at by Immanual Kant in The Critique of Pure Reason, in which he says that all things fall on the backdrop of omnitudo realitatis (all that exists).
Rybot9000 1 year ago
@Rybot9000 FYI, I am quite well versed in Neuroscience and particularly that of Consciousness. The book "A Universe of Consciousness: How Matter Becomes Imagination" by Gerald Edelman is by far, the best physicalist account of the neural structure and the best mathematical theory. But Thomas Metzinger approaches the question as a functionalist, deducing the same results from purely rational beginnings. As has been done since before recorded history and has been recorded in fables and parables.
Rybot9000 1 year ago
@Rybot9000 Fables and Parables are used, because although the representative things, the creatures or characters may evoke different emotional responses, the logical relations binding them in the stories are the meat which reflects the philosophical truths. As empiricists, many people get caught up on the characters, the thingness, the quanta, and overlook the meat which is staring them in the face the whole time, but which is not represented by any particular thing.
Rybot9000 1 year ago
@shanedk If this were not true, the world would fall apart, consciousness would be incapable of ascertaining anything and existence would snuff itself out. You don't need QM or any objective physicalist explanation, because the critical facts needed lie right infront of you, in the very fact of your self-consciousness. Hence the ancients said; Nosce te ipsum (Know thyself). QM merely represents this fact through the physical representation of objectivity, which is perpetually in consciousness.
Rybot9000 1 year ago
@shanedk Everything in existence is intimitely related to everything else in existence. That is what QM tells us. You can't pull existence apart and expect it to continue to exist. That is absurd, but that is what is implied by taking one thing away from everything else and seeing how it behaves. Of course it behaves oddly, it would probably snap out of existence all-together if not held to existence by the methods of experimentation, within which it behaves oddly being suspended in a nonsense.
Rybot9000 1 year ago
@Rybot9000 How does that square with the fact that the "existence" to which you refer is less than 4% of the entire universe?
shanedk 1 year ago
@shanedk That's a false assumption on your part. I deal with existence as a whole concept, and not merely a part of a universe. If anything, the universe is merely part of existence, it is the "objective" part of existence. But objective "existence" in and of itself is not existence, it is non-existent. This is a critical point, Time is relative to the observer, if you remove all observers, Time is meaningless. Without an observer, existence equates to non-existence.
Rybot9000 1 year ago
@Rybot9000 "That's a false assumption on your part."
No, it's a DIRECT OBSERVATION. Our universe is just under 4% the matter and energy that we can see and work with; it's about 1% neutrinos, 20% dark matter, and the other 75% dark energy.
"Time is relative to the observer"
If you understood QM, you'd know that the environment observes itself.
shanedk 1 year ago
@shanedk Take the relativity of Time further to hash this point. What is the procession of Time like when you are sleeping unconsciously? Its as if it wasn't, its as if the moment you shut your eyes, they opened again and Time had progressed instantaneously. However, others have perceived the time elapse, and there are physical indications time has elapsed. But if you never woke up, and no one else saw Time. There would be no Time or Space, no existence. Which is why empiricism is wrong method.
Rybot9000 1 year ago
@Rybot9000 All "objects" including the "Universe" are relative to a "subject". But, as the monists assert, the subject and object are bound together through logic, and are not of fundamentally different substance. Object and Subject dualism arises from the feeding back of logical processes on themselves. The universe, if you like, becoming aware of itself, produces the duality of subject and object, when in-fact there is ONE seamless reality bound together by Logic. You need those three to exist
Rybot9000 1 year ago
@Rybot9000 if you remove the abstract notion of observer, and thereby remove all actual observers, you wind up with a universe that appears to progress so rapidly as to be instantaneous, and an infinite number of possible universes would flash by in imperceptible time until an observer capable of perceiving time was included, then the abstract existence would become actual including Space and Time relative to the Observer, and all things relative to each other and the Observer(s).
Rybot9000 1 year ago
@Rybot9000 By the way, the word "Exist" from which we make "Existence" has its etymological roots in the Latin word "Existere" which means; to present an appearance. That is, something which exists, presents an appearance of itself, and this appearance can only appear relative to a subject. We should have retained the original meaning to avoid this confusion. Something only exists in space-time, when there is an observer. Otherwise, it doesn't exist.
Rybot9000 1 year ago
@Rybot9000 And if argument from etymology weren't a fallacy, you might actually have a point of some kind.
shanedk 1 year ago
@Rybot9000 "if you remove the abstract notion of observer"
Observer is NOT an abstract notion. It's a very real phenomenon of the universe.
shanedk 1 year ago
So what inspired you to do this experiment anyways?
vspqbd 1 year ago
@vspqbd Curiosity. Do I need another reason?
shanedk 1 year ago
@shanedk
Nope. In fact, that was what got me to ask you. :P
vspqbd 1 year ago
I don't think it matters whether or not you know the number of times people thought the ball went around. My graphs are much more noisy than yours, suggesting that you smoothed them. I suggest avoiding that. I also suggest that you plot your last graph on polar coordinates. I did that using your data. It looks more interesting that way - two lobes. Maybe people are not good at predicting the final place the ball will drop and so there is a phase shift. Final suggestion: repeat the experiment.
farvision 1 year ago
@farvision I used a moving average on the von Mises graph, yes. I don't have any experience with polar coordinates.
shanedk 1 year ago
@shanedk Polar coordinates are just coordinates in pairs of radius and angle. Given a radius and an angle computing the x and y coordinates is pretty easy. Um, lesee, x/r = cos theta so x = r sin theta and likewise
y = r sin theta. But I plotted it using PostScript and so could just rotate the coordinate system for each point
and let PostScript do the work for me.
farvision 1 year ago
@farvision Could you make a jpeg of the plot and post it somewhere?
shanedk 1 year ago
@shanedk I don't have an anonymous way to post, I'm sending you the postscript
by pm. On a mac you can put this into a file named 'plot.eps'. Then open the file and it will be converted
for you.
farvision 1 year ago
And it is absurd to think that actual things could be random and in discord with other actual things producing a reality out of harmony, therefore out of unity, and therefore completely unpredictable and incapable of sustaining self-consciousness.
Rybot9000 1 year ago
@Rybot9000 Rather, Logic has been mistaken... Logic does not operate front to back, or past to future, but it operates everywhere and now to bring everything into consistency with itself and self-consciousness. Individual particles or quanta, separated from the whole, behave wildly, but put back into their rightful place a jaguar remains a jaguar and does not snap in and out of existence or turn randomly into a chicken.
Rybot9000 1 year ago
@Rybot9000 Fractal theory shows you to be completely wrong on that.
shanedk 1 year ago
@shanedk No, it doesn't. Fractals are completely logically consistent with themselves. You seem to be missing the root of logic. Logic permeates through everything you say, without logical consistency in the grammatical structure of language and logical consistency in the stringing together of representations, everything you say is utterly meaningless. Logic permeates maths, even of fractal geometry. In fact, fractal geometry is one of the purest mathematical expressions of how Logic works.
Rybot9000 1 year ago
@Rybot9000 So, you don't understand fractal theory either. Figures.
shanedk 1 year ago
But you see, egotism is a major part of politics, not so much a major part of guessing how many jelly beans are in a jar. When you add egotism to the mix of determining factors, all method goes out the window and you wind up with 0 convergence. Egotism is opposed to convergence.
Rybot9000 1 year ago
@Rybot9000 Egotism's only part of the problem. Fundamentally, democracy only allows one solution to be applied. The WoC works by people employing all sorts of different approaches to solving the problem, none of which require them to have full information themselves.
shanedk 1 year ago
@shanedk Thats ridiculous. And I see the results of that in democracy. The crowd tells me, using a singular method (hearsay) that we only use 10% of our brain. I have yet to personally meet anyone who actually knows this is false. The crowd uses only one method in this case; blindly accepting the information from an unreliable source. Show me a fox viewer who doesn't do that. My method is to do the work necessary to confirm the claim, or not. There are very few people like me hanging in crowds.
Rybot9000 1 year ago
@shanedk I'm pretty sure only one solution will ever be applied in actuality to any problem. You can't dice and mash a potato at the same time. It'll wind up mashed every time.
Rybot9000 1 year ago
Aren't you supposed to spin the wheel and drop the ball?
dookiecheez 1 year ago
@dookiecheez That would make it impossible for people to guess, since motion blur would obscure the numbers. Besides, it might introduce too much chaos.
shanedk 1 year ago
It seems to me that it is obvious that the wisdom of crowds is useless in a purely random system. Otherwise the roulette wheel would not exist. What casino would have a device whose randomness could be overridden by a convergence of a crowd? People would group together and calculate an average guess that would be above pure chance and roulette would be a losing game for the house. If it were true you would bet against other players and the house would take a vig, like games of skill.
fooltard 1 year ago
@fooltard Casinos a) spin the wheel in a counterrotating direction and b) don't let you place bets once the ball is in motion.
shanedk 1 year ago
@shanedk Haha, talk about overkill. The most logical thing to do then is use firearms to obtain the cash.
heloizyjhenifer 1 year ago
haha I got 13, better then av i supose...
GrimSoul66 1 year ago
or maybe the wisdom of crowd is just wrong
alucardthealchemist 1 year ago
@alucardthealchemist We KNOW the WoC isn't wrong, what I was testing was whether or not it could cut through a bit of chaos.
shanedk 1 year ago
damn, i forgot what my guess was!
GrimSoul66 1 year ago
It means that the wisdom of crowds is just as chaotic as the roulette wheel. There is no wisdom of crowds. the number of revolutions shouldn't matter, it is just one factor in a million that would need to be included in working out the path of the marble. If we were using math and newtonian mechanics to predict the marble, we wouldn't be testing for the wisdom of crowds, except a crowd of mathematicians.
Rybot9000 1 year ago
@Rybot9000
I think there are some misconceptions here. The wisdom of crowds doesn't mean just guess and the right answer will appear. It means a group of people using the best methods they have available should make their best guess. The combination of all the guess, being the result of all the methods, should be closer to the correct answer then any individual answer.
Shane asked people NOT to use methods in order to figure out where the ball would land and I think that hurt the experiment.
amcnea 1 year ago
@amcnea There is one correct answer, and one purely logical method of deducing it, in this case one would have to know all the newtonian facts and maths that would deduce the correct answer. If the question is; What are the three primary elements that make up existence? The crowd is going to converge on something like; Hydrogen, Oxygen and Helium. Which would be wrong but that is because the crowd isn't using the right method the right method produces right results
Rybot9000 1 year ago
@Rybot9000
Their maybe 1 purely logical method (not sure I agree), but doesn't mean there isn't more then 1 method. There is generally more then 1 right way to get to an answer. There are a few mathematical approaches I can think of, but that doesn't mean there arn't different methods which will work to different degrees of success.
amcnea 1 year ago
@amcnea The crowd is using fuzzy logic to take account of some of these variables. All are using pretty much the same methods; intuition, fuzzy logic. And all arrive at chaotic answers as a result. If they had concrete knowledge of the facts; 2+2= and adequate knowledge of right method, they would all arrive at the correct answer; 4. If asked for the area of a triangle, they would have to use pythagoras' theorum to deduce the answer. It comes back to the wisdom of individuals, in a crowd.
Rybot9000 1 year ago
@Rybot9000
"All are using pretty much the same methods; intuition, fuzzy logic"
Exactly, because shane forbade using other methods. Hence harming the wisdom of the crowd.
"If asked for the area of a triangle, they would have to use pythagoras' theorum to deduce the answer"
Wrong, that's to find the hypoteneus of a right triangle. It's 1/2 * base * height to find the area. Or you can keep duplicating the triangles until they make a square or rhombus and divide by two.
amcnea 1 year ago
@amcnea Yea, I know, I made a mistake. Regardless, if you put 15 mathematicians in a room and ask them to work out the area of a triangle, they should all get the right answer. Then if you toss in 50 people with no knowledge of math, your average answer is going to be wrong. It really depends on the individuals in the crowd and what methods they are using. Whether you have 50 mathematicians or 50 people who don't know maths or some combination of them.
Rybot9000 1 year ago
@Rybot9000
The wisdom of crowds has to do with using a pluralism of methods to reach an answer.
For instance look at the prediction markets. These have a very good track record for predicting the future. It is because people are using various methods to collect information and give their best answer. But also, the answer must be backed up by money which prevents frivolous answers with little thought and research put into them from being submitted.
amcnea 1 year ago
@amcnea You can't derive the correct answer from a crowd alone. But it has to be the right crowd. This has been known of democracy since the time immemorial. Plato wrote on it, MLK Jr wrote on it, everyone who has ever concerned themselves with politics knows that unless the crowd is sufficiently wise and capable of thinking for themselves, a democracy can descend into tyranny.
A nation that continues to produce weak minded men purchases its enslavement on the installment plan - MLK Jr
Rybot9000 1 year ago
@Rybot9000
"You can't derive the correct answer from a crowd alone"
I didn't mean to imply that you could. It needs to be a diverse crowd using a variety of methods to deduce the answers. What I was trying to say is that Shane's instruction helped to prohibit such diversity in his experiment.
amcnea 1 year ago
@amcnea Well, that might work to predict the whether to whatever accuracy meterologists can actually predict the weather. But on questions of ultimate reality, absolute truth, and what is good, the crowd sucks balls. I'm sorry to say it, but their methods are all wrong. There are plenty of them, but they are all wrong. It comes down to 1 out of 1,000+ finding and using the right method, which in a democracy means a delusional one.
Rybot9000 1 year ago
@Ryb