The Sleeping Beauty Puzzle.

[imhotep]

A new video from Veritasium about the Sleeping Beauty puzzle. The puzzle originated in the 1980's. The Sleeping Beauty is given a special pill which puts her into immediate sleep and on her waking up, the pill wipes out her memory and thus she's briefed again. A fair coin (unbiased) is flipped to make the decisions.

Seemingly the answer is obvious. Regardless of how many times Beauty undergoes her sleep/wake cycles, it does not change the probability of a fair coin toss. It is ½ or 50%.
But there's more to this problem. First watch the video below.




PS: Those who are aware of Bayesian Probability would know that one needs to take the conditional probabilities of evidential experiences also into account.

 

[MrFrog]

Thanks. Nice one (or couple of things) to think about, even though the concept probability was not my favorite subject in the school
(But at the moment Cyclone Gabrielle is disturbing me with strong gusts of wind )

 

[BadBlueGenius]

bump

 

[imhotep]

Thanks. Nice one (or couple of things) to think about, even though the concept probability was not my favorite subject in the school
(But at the moment Cyclone Gabrielle is disturbing me with strong gusts of wind )

This problem is quite controversial. It borders on conditional probablity & decision theory. It's similar to the probability puzzles like the Monty Hall problem or Bertrand’s paradox which can be interpreted in many ways.

 

[Stimulus mind]

TFS, brother.

 

[perv]

it did not make sense to me till the brilliant plug

 

[dayt0na]

Bump

 

[BenMacTavish]

මට මේක තේරෙන්නෙ නෑනෙ
1/3 ක් වෙන්නෙ කොහොමද?

 

[imhotep]

මට මේක තේරෙන්නෙ නෑනෙ
1/3 ක් වෙන්නෙ කොහොමද?

Since the pill makes her memory completely wiped out every time she wakes up, she would not know whether it is a Monday or a Tuesday. Then the coin could be heads and it is Monday, the coin could be tails and it is Monday, or the coin could be tails and it is Tuesday. Each of these is conditions are equally likely from her perspective, so the probability of each is one-third. Since the coin comes up heads in only one of these situations, her subjective probability that the coin came up heads is one-third.

 

[NRTG]

THANKS FOR SHARE

 

[Sx3]

උබල වගේ rich එඋන්ට ඕව තමා ප්‍රසන...අපි වගේ දුප්පත් එඋන්ට එදා වේල....