Re: The \"Emperor\'s nose\" fallacy & poker
 

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There's absoloutly no rigorous reason to believe that the expectation for a number of hands averages to the expectation for the hand villain actually has.

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Of course not - but then, we are doing this whole process because we're not sure what the villian has. If we actually saw his cards as in FTP, there wouldn't be a need to put a villian on a range, would there?

The Chinese peasant is in a similar predicament. He makes a reasonable effort to reach an accurate answer, even though it turns out to be incorrect. The Census isn't completely accurate either, but that doesn't mean you stop counting and just guess.

I'm not sure what else you're suggesting a player do?

EDIT:

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if you are consistently adding too many weak hands to the range you need to adjust your thinking.

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Exactly - how could there be a problem with the method if you're able to come up with a fairly accurate range? You going to put the guy on an exact holding every hand? (No, you can't.)

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Whats the alternative? Tea leaves and tarot cards?

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Seriously

Re: The \"Emperor\'s nose\" fallacy & poker
 

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If you're consistently finding that your hand range estimates are too wide, you adjust and refine them - you don't just abandon the process!

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The process is : reading hands.

The process is not flawed if you do not abuse it the way you describe. Putting someone on a hand is done for a reason (duh). You can't just put someone on one hand (unless you're right most of the time, but you'll be very rich by now) so you have to put someone on a possible range. If you compare your expected results of your actions to that range you will be able to make a decision based on your opponents possible hands. If you don't, well that's up to you, but you're missing out. If there is something principally wrong with putting your opponent on a hand, than I'd like to know what it is [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]. I agree many people fail to be realistic with the ranges they put their opponents on, but that is an entirely different mistake. They tried the right process, but implemented it wrong.

Re: The \"Emperor\'s nose\" fallacy & poker
 

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There's absoloutly no rigorous reason to believe that the expectation for a number of hands averages to the expectation for the hand villain actually has.

[/ QUOTE ]

Of course not - but then, we are doing this whole process because we're not sure what the villian has. If we actually saw his cards as in FTP, there wouldn't be a need to put a villian on a range, would there?

The Chinese peasant is in a similar predicament. He makes a reasonable effort to reach an accurate answer, even though it turns out to be incorrect. The Census isn't completely accurate either, but that doesn't mean you stop counting.

I'm not sure what else you're suggesting a player do?

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The fact that you sympathize with the peasant's fallacious reasoning explains a lot. The peasant's answer from averaging was no more accurate than asking a single person or no one at all (ie. not at all accurate) because he wasn't averaging things with a mean value equal to the value he was trying to find.

What he did bears no resemblance to the census (which in turn has little to do with averaging). Do you see why?

Re: The \"Emperor\'s nose\" fallacy & poker
 

You still haven't answered the question - what is your alternative?

(For the peasant OR the poker player)...

Re: The \"Emperor\'s nose\" fallacy & poker
 

Oh, and before you start playing your little semantic games, and the "obviously you are not very smart" nonsense, I'll tell you right now you're just going to embarrass yourself again. You can try to weasal out of it, but you are just flat wrong, again.

Re: The \"Emperor\'s nose\" fallacy & poker
 

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You still haven't answered the question - what is your alternative?

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My alternative is to avoid fallacious reasoning and replace it with correct reasoning. The particular type of correct reasoning I would employ would of course depend on the circumstances.

Even if you find yourself with no alternative whatsoever, that doesn't justify fallacious reasoning. You must simply admit you don't know rather than employing it. The peasant was incapable of getting an actuarte value, but that didn't make his averaged one any more useful. It would have been more accurate for him to simply admit that he had no idea how long the nose was, and move on.

Re: The \"Emperor\'s nose\" fallacy & poker
 

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Oh, and before you start playing your little semantic games, and the "obviously you are not very smart" nonsense, I'll tell you right now you're just going to embarrass yourself again. You can try to weasal out of it, but you are just flat wrong, again.

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wtf?

Re: The \"Emperor\'s nose\" fallacy & poker
 

So... you don't have an answer?

The peasant should just quit and the poker player cannot make a decision?!?

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wtf

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Toward Splawndarts

Re: The \"Emperor\'s nose\" fallacy & poker
 

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Oh, and before you start playing your little semantic games, and the "obviously you are not very smart" nonsense, I'll tell you right now you're just going to embarrass yourself again. You can try to weasal out of it, but you are just flat wrong, again.

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wtf?

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He's got his panties in a twist. Nothing to worry about.

Re: The \"Emperor\'s nose\" fallacy & poker
 

Agreed, but you have an idea of the hands your opponent might and might not be holding. So what's wrong with taking that into account? It'll be a reasoned estimate of the probabilities he's holding certain hands and a mathematical estimate/calculation of your expectation against these hands which leads to an expectation of your different actions that will make a good choice possible. If you do this intuitively, calculate everything or just go through the range in your head and pick an action, you DO make use of this range and you want it to be as accurate as possible.

I don't see how the example relates to poker (there are many hints that might tell you the length of the nose in poker, while there are none in your story). Also to replace 'fallacious reasoning' with 'correct reasoning' will not mean that you replace 'putting your opponent on a range and reacting appropriately' by something else. You just make sure you do a better job of putting him on a hand.

All you're realy saying is: Do not assume things to easily. And I agree on that.