[lupire]

So? If I can reliably lose every basketball game, that doesn't make be perfect at basketball.

To put it more plainly: if you were wagering on the outcome, would you rather win 50% of the time (EV=0) or 100% of the time (EV=max)?

100% misprediction is only relevant if a 3rd party adversary is observing the game. In the absence of such an adversary, being reliably wrong it worthless.

[withinboredom]

You are comparing to things that don't even make sense in the current context.

You have two choices.

I predict correctly or I predict incorrectly. If I'm randomly guessing, I will be right 50% of the time (effectively, this is a coin flip). If I always guess incorrectly, then I'm correctly guessing the incorrect choice. If I always guess correctly, then I'm correctly guessing the correct choice.

I'm trying to explain why 50% is your target for "fooling the algorithm" and not 0%, which is not fooling the algorithm at all. There's no reason to be obtuse here, I'm legitimately trying to help you understand some statistics... this isn't an argument, it doesn't matter "what you believe" ... this is math.

[nocman]

> If I always guess incorrectly, then I'm correctly guessing the incorrect choice.

No, you aren't, because you aren't saying that it is the incorrect choice. You are saying it is the correct one.

[withinboredom]

Another way to put it is that there obviously exists an algorithm that can predict what you will choose. It just isn’t this one, but the opposite. The entire point of this exercise is to prove that you have free will. If there obviously exists an algorithm that can predict what you will do, you don’t have free will, do you?

Thus “random,” aka, 50% is the target: this algorithm cannot predict what you do; you have free will.

[benjaminbachman]

50% or 0% are both interesting goals, but the headline implies that the website is some test of free will. If you get 0%, then it shows there is an algorithm that predicts your performance, and the Kolmogorov complexity is finite. That algorithm is the inverse of the one the website is using.

If we conflate "free-will" with "ability to generate truly random sequences" then the goal should be to generate a completely incompressible, unpredictable sequence, which 50% would probably be closer to.

[LanceH]

In the case of this test, 0% means you're defeating the prediction algorithm.

50% means (if you're predicting their prediction) means you're achieving random.

"Free will" is a bit strong, it's more about whether people can produce randomness, which they generally can't.

[bena]

100% misprediction of two choices is an error in the algorithm. You could flip the prediction at the end and be 100% right.

50% misprediction cannot be improved upon with trivial methods.

[mapcars]

> If I can reliably lose every basketball game, that doesn't make be perfect at basketball

What they are saying is that when you have an algorithm you can reverse it to do the opposite. If you could reverse your basketball skills exactly that would be true for your statement.

[jhbadger]

People who are good at chess sometimes like to play reverse chess where the goal is to get checkmated. If you are playing against another good player it can be quite difficult -- as difficult as winning under the normal conditions.