Math Magic God Problem

[David Sklansky]

Originally posted on SMP.

[Mike Gallo]

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[PJo336]

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[bxb]

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This doesn't seem to have anything to do with poker theory.

[SplawnDarts]

I'm not sure any complicated or new probability theory needs to be brought to bear here. This is a simple application of Bayes' theorem. The vast majority of people believe P(prophet) is very low for any given individual. Now we want P(prophet|miracle) and to get it by applying Bayes', we need P(miracle|prophet) which we can assume is 1 for simplicity sake, and P(miracle|!prophet) which is the issue at hand.

Roughly speaking, if P(miracle|!prophet) is much smaller than P(prophet), we're going to conclude the guy is likely a prophet because he performed a miracle - in your example you initially assigned a near-zero value to P(miracle|!prophet), so it was very likely the guy was a prophet. But in your example's second part, the stage magician showed us that P(miracle|!prophet) is in fact non-zero and may even be high. Which has the expected result of driving P(prophet) through the floor.

if there's more going on here, I'm missing it I guess.

[pokervintage]

I believe that Pascal, the pops of probability, would turn this into a philosophical argument and in the words of a not so famous mob guy from "Good Fellows" say: " Why take the chance?" Even if the guys a fraud, give God his do.

pokervintage