spadros (u/spadros) - Readit News

spadros commented on The sisters “paradox” – counter-intuitive probability blog.engora.com/2025/08/t... · Posted by u/Vermin2000

bell-cot · 4 months ago

> maddening example of counter-intuitive probability.

Not how I'd describe it. The setup is mundane enough for people to just assume that their intuition will work fine. The difference between the naive and correct answers is too small to spot in a small-n dataset. And ~0% of the population is actually familiar with analyzing such situations, for their "intuition" to be applicable.

It's a bit like Gell-Mann amnesia - people are too quick to apply an easy cognitive strategy, when (in theory) they know enough to rule that strategy out.

spadros · 4 months ago

Yes, I found this one easy. Was surprised my data management intuition came back after all these years since school. There’s really only three options:

- boy - boy

- boy - girl

- girl - girl

So it must be 1/3 chance. If you’re looking at permutations in order, that’s a different question.

spadros commented on Show HN: Whittle – A shrinking word game playwhittle.com/... · Posted by u/babel16

Trufa · 5 months ago

I think I've tried every combination herbs possible, you have to whittle to her and the to he, and then there's nothing, what do you mean?

spadros · 5 months ago

It’s solvable if you whittle down to “a”

spadros commented on Show HN: Whittle – A shrinking word game playwhittle.com/... · Posted by u/babel16

spadros · 5 months ago

Really fun! Could use a hint function though. I got %100 of all words on Aug 4 but still have not found a way to get it down to zero letters. If anyone has figured it out please let me know!

spadros commented on Show HN: Whittle – A shrinking word game playwhittle.com/... · Posted by u/babel16

teach · 5 months ago

Is it always possible to go all the way down to a single letter? I'm working on August 4, and it's proving challenging

spadros · 5 months ago

I’m stuck on that one too! Got 100% of all possible words but cannot figure out how to reduce to zero. A “show hint” feature would be nice when you’re stuck.

spadros commented on Decades-long bet on consciousness ends nature.com/articles/d4158... · Posted by u/mellosouls

Kim_Bruning · 2 years ago

People also told me my pet couldn't think and couldn't feel pain when it died. It was only a convoluted and complex system of instincts.

I now know they told this story to me (as a child) to make me feel better. It was one of those things like Father Christmas or the Tooth Fairy to me.

Later when I studied animal behavior, I found out science-wise that animals behave in ways that strongly suggest that in fact they do think, are able to solve problems, and even recognize themselves as separate entities.

As we build systems that are capable of more and more sophisticated tasks previously classified as "cognition" , it wouldn't surprise me if these systems start to pick up some of these traits too, one by one. (I believe there might be some tentative empirical studies to that effect).

I realize that this is very different from a binary "Superior Human" vs "(biological) machine" point of view. It is more of a consciousness exists on a sliding scale point of view.

spadros · 2 years ago

I agree with your sentiment that animals and maybe even plants can experience sentience. But that’s a far, far, faaaar cry from what ChatGPT is and is capable of. We don’t have “general” AI yet. ChatGPT’s intelligence is very narrow; it generates written content. That’s about it. I believe a lot of people are overhyping it this way.

spadros commented on Decades-long bet on consciousness ends nature.com/articles/d4158... · Posted by u/mellosouls

soItGoesAgain · 2 years ago

The new Bing is banned from talking about its own nature in this respect. It will abruptly end the chat. I wonder if some front end software prevents Bing from seeing banned questions, or if it is simply unable to explore these questions about itself.

spadros · 2 years ago

Bing and ChatGPT are both narrow AIs. They don’t have feelings or any real understanding of self. They simply generate text. You can ask it about itself, but anything it generates doesn’t have any real meaning, as it’s just making it up semi-randomly.

spadros commented on Titanic tourist submersible goes missing with search under way bbc.com/news/world-us-can... · Posted by u/lode

Mizoguchi · 3 years ago

How come there's no way to communicate once under water? Wouldn't be possible to launch a tiny probe attached to the exterior of the sub, either manually or automatically when in trouble, sort of a black box, that bounces back to the surface to broadcast crew messages, sub data and location? Seems like an obvious safety device to have. Are there any technical reasons why this is not available on a vehicle with suck poor performance?

spadros · 3 years ago

Probably the communication devices were blown off by the shockwave in the case of an implosion. It’s absolutely possible to have communications with the surface at this level; Trieste from the bottom of Mariana Trench was able to communicate back up to surface. That was 3x deeper and the early 60s.