#probability

[nerdicorntheshipper]

What the fairy vs. walrus thing demonstration to me is that humans are a lot more willing to accept an impossible event over an improbable one.

You see, for an event you believe to be impossible to happen, you must be wrong about it's impossibility. It's not easy to accept that you are wrong about the fundamental nature of reality. But once you do, you suddenly find yourself in a world where it makes sense for the impossible event to occur.

When it comes to improbable events, however, Because our brains are bad at processing probability, we treat improbable events like impossible ones, with one key distinction. An improbable event occurring doesn't disprove it's improbability. There is no re-framing that makes a walrus at your door make sense. you're just stuck grappling with an improbable event

[prokopetz]

There are people on this site having dreams where mysterious figures talk to them and reveal deep truths about life and the universe, and meanwhile my mysterious dream figures are like "hey, if you use this particular roll-and-discard method with a d6 dice pool it results in a super fucked up probability distribution" and explaining the math to prove it, and when I wake up and run the numbers it turns out the dream was right.

[tumbler-polls]

[super-frog-witch]

i just ~really~ wanna see a good bell curve. this can get us there. take my hand.

[blessedwithpolls]

It seems we as a society have evolved from bug races to penis polls to baking polls to statistics

[thepersonalquotes]

As long as I can make them laugh, it doesn’t matter how, I’ll be alright. If I succeed in that, the human beings probably won’t mind it too much if I remain outside their lives. The one thing I must avoid is becoming offensive in their eyes: I shall be nothing, the wind, the sky.

Osamu Dazai

[thydungeongal]

Okay, so here's a really quick post about dice and probabilities, next big update on that series will have to wait.

When you roll a d6, oftentimes you'll get a number in the range of 1 to 6

[shortgremlinman]

ok if im right. the middle 3 polls will have the most votes whilst the ones on the side.

something vaguely about this but im bad at maths so dont quote me on it

[philosophybits]

A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence ... and when at last he fixes his judgement, the evidence exceeds not what we properly call probability.

David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

[quotelr]

If people hate you, then you're probably doing something right

Amy Lee

[learnyouabiology]

Fun Fact: Most moths remember being caterpillars!

About a month ago, I was talking to a kid and their parent about butterflies, because I will talk to anyone and everyone about bugs if given the opportunity. As a throw away comment, I told the child that they should always be kind to caterpillars, because they will remember it as butterflies!

The main reason I said this was to remind the child to be respectful to living things in general, but the parent expressed shock at this tidbit and asked me how on earth scientists could possibly have figured that out. So I told her, and now I’m going to tell all of you!

The short answer is that, basically, we gave a bunch of caterpillars an education, and then, after they transformed into moths, we tested their memory!

(The caterpillar and moth pictures used in this post are not the same species as was used in the study, which were Manduca sexta, and in fact these pictures are of two different species, but shhhh. Edit: apparently the “caterpillar” might just be a sawfly larva, which isn’t even in the same ORDER as moths, so... whoops?)

Of course, caterpillar school isn’t the same as human school. Instead, the caterpillars were taught to associate a little shock (similar to a static shock from a doorknob) with a very specific scent. 

After a few repetitions, the caterpillars were individually given the choice to travel down one of two paths: one with the scary scent and one with “clean air”. 

Before metamorphosis, 80% of the caterpillars chose the “clean air” path. 

After the caterpillars metamorphosised into moths, they were tested again, and it was found that 77% of moths went down the path with "clean air”. 

This means that approximately 54% of the moths remembered their training as a caterpillar!

But wait, didn’t 77% of the moths choose “correctly”? Shouldn’t that mean that 77% of the moths remember being a caterpillar? 

Nope! Why not? Well, mostly due to math (my frenemy).

See, when the scientists tested untrained moths (and also ones who were only exposed to the shock, or only exposed to the scent as a caterpillar) they found that they went down the clean air path about 50% of the time, which is about what we would expect if the moths were choosing randomly. 

This means that, among the moths who completely forgot their training, we would expect approximately 50% of them to select the “clean air” path”. In other words, about half of the forgetful moths in this test were “correct” by accident, sort of like guessing the answer for a True or False question.

54% may or may not be better than the percent of humans who remember literally anything they learned while in school (see: me googling how to do basic algebra to figure out that 54% number). I don’t know what percent of my schooling I remember, but it definitely isn’t 100%

Still, considering how much of the caterpillar becomes mush during metamorphosises, even 54% of the moths remembering is really, really impressive!

Now, these numbers are inexact, simply because we’re working with probability and also because we have to make a few assumptions. 

For example, we are assuming that EVERY moth that remembered their training would have avoided the scary scent and taken the “clean air” path. However, this is not actually guaranteed! Maybe some moths remembered the scary scent and still decided to take the scary air path.

Why would they do this? Well, we can’t be sure, but I’m going to imagine it’s because of something like this:

So there you have it! This is how we know that most moths (and presumably butterflies) remember being caterpillars! 

This has been Fun Fact Friday, warning you to treat caterpillars kindly, just in case one decides to come after you for VENGENCE as a butterfly.

[prokopetz]

I generally consider myself a fairly grounded person, but when I manage to biff a dice roll with an 85% chance of success seven times in a row, I can't help but start to wonder.

[alpaca-clouds]

You wanna know how the supposed "AI" writing texts and painting pictures works?

Statistics. Nothing but statistics.

When you type on your phone, your phone will suggest new words to finish your sentence. It gets better at this, the longer you use the same phone, because it starts to learn your speach patterns. This only means, though, that all it knows is: "If User writes the words 'Do you', user will most likely write 'want to meet' next." Because whenever you have typed, it made statistics on the way you use words. So it learns what to suggest to you.

Large Language Models do the same - just on a much, much bigger basis. They have not been fed with your personal messages to friends and twitter, but with billions of accessible data sets. Fanfics, maybe, some blogs, maybe some scientific papers that were free to access. So, it had learned. In a scientific context the most likely word to follow onto one word is this word. And in the context of writing erotica, it is something else.

That is, why LLMs sound kinda robotic. Because they do not understand what they are writing. The sentences put out by them are noticing but a string of characters for them. They have no understanding of context or anything like that. They also do not understand characters. If they have been fed with enough data, they know that in the context of character A the words most likely to appear are these or that. But they do not understand.

The same is true with AI "Art". Only that in this case it does not work on words, but on pixels. It knows that with the prompt X the pixels will most likely be arranged in this or that manner. It has learned that if you see a traffic light, this collection of pixels will most likely show up. If you ask for a flower it is "that" collection of pixels and so on.

That is also, why AI sucks so hard when it comes to drawing hands or teeth. Because AI does not understand what it is drawing. It just goes through the picture and goes like: "For this pixel that pixel is most likely to show up next." And if it has drawn a finger, it knows, there is a high likelihood, that another finger will follow. So, it goes through it. And draws another finger and then another one and then another, because it is likely. But it does not understand, what a hand is.

What is right now called "AI" is not intelligent. It is just a big ass probability algorithm. Nothing more.

Fuck AI.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

"People are entirely too disbelieving of coincidence. They are far too ready to dismiss it and to build arcane structures of extremely rickety substance in order to avoid it. I see coincidence everywhere as an inevitable consequence of the laws of probability." -- Isaac Asimov

There are 8 billion people in the world. "One in a million" will happen to 8000 people.

People pray and are healed every day. They also pray and are not healed, or don't pray and are healed.

The human brain is a pattern-making machine. You think of a thing, and then two days later it pops up as an ad somewhere, and you think "ooh, they're reading my mind or listening to me through my phone's mic and camera."

But don't you ignore most ads anyway? Wasn't it probably there from time to time over the last six months, but you didn't pay any attention to it until you had that thought?