I see this conclusion as a mistake: being surprised is a way of translating between intuition and explicit probability estimates. If you are not surprised, you should assign high enough probability, and otherwise if you assign tiny probability, you should be surprised (modulo known mistakes in either representation).
That’s not true at all. Before I’m dealt a bridge hand, my probability assignment for getting the hand J♠, 8♣, 6♠, Q♡, 5♣, Q♢, Q♣, 5♡, 3♡, J♣, J♡, 2♡, 7♢ in that order would be one in 3,954,242,643,911,239,680,000. But I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to get it.
In the terminology of statistical mechanics, I guess surprise isn’t caused by low-probability microstates ― it’s caused by low-probability macrostates. (I’d have been very surprised if that were a full suit in order, despite the fact that a priori that has the same probability.) What you define as a macrostate is to some extent arbitrary. In the case of bridge, you’d probably divide up hands into classes based on their utility in bridge, and be surprised only if you get an unlikely type of hand.
In this case, I’d probably divide the outcomes up into macrostates like “red”, “some other bright color like green or blue”, “some other common color like brown”, “a weird color like grayish-pink”, and “something other than a solid-colored ball, or something I failed to even think of”. Each macrostate would have a pretty high probability (including the last: who knows what Omega’s up to?), so I wouldn’t be surprised at any outcome.
This is an off-the-cuff analysis, and maybe I’m missing something, but the idea that any low-probability event should be surprising certainly can’t be correct.
Thank you, my mistake. I don’t understand ‘surprise’.
Let’s see… It looks like ‘surprise’ is something about promoting a new theory about the structure of environment that was previously dormant, forcing you to drop many cached assumptions. For example, if (surprise, surprise...) you win a lottery, you may promote a previously dormant theory that you are on a holodeck. If you are surprised by observing 1000 equal quantum coinflips (replicated under some conditions, with apparatus not to blame), you may need to reconsider the theory of physics. If you experience surprising luck in a game of dice, you start considering the possibility that dice are weighted.
That’s not true at all. Before I’m dealt a bridge hand, my probability assignment for getting the hand J♠, 8♣, 6♠, Q♡, 5♣, Q♢, Q♣, 5♡, 3♡, J♣, J♡, 2♡, 7♢ in that order would be one in 3,954,242,643,911,239,680,000. But I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to get it.
In the terminology of statistical mechanics, I guess surprise isn’t caused by low-probability microstates ― it’s caused by low-probability macrostates. (I’d have been very surprised if that were a full suit in order, despite the fact that a priori that has the same probability.) What you define as a macrostate is to some extent arbitrary. In the case of bridge, you’d probably divide up hands into classes based on their utility in bridge, and be surprised only if you get an unlikely type of hand.
In this case, I’d probably divide the outcomes up into macrostates like “red”, “some other bright color like green or blue”, “some other common color like brown”, “a weird color like grayish-pink”, and “something other than a solid-colored ball, or something I failed to even think of”. Each macrostate would have a pretty high probability (including the last: who knows what Omega’s up to?), so I wouldn’t be surprised at any outcome.
This is an off-the-cuff analysis, and maybe I’m missing something, but the idea that any low-probability event should be surprising certainly can’t be correct.
Thank you, my mistake. I don’t understand ‘surprise’.
Let’s see… It looks like ‘surprise’ is something about promoting a new theory about the structure of environment that was previously dormant, forcing you to drop many cached assumptions. For example, if (surprise, surprise...) you win a lottery, you may promote a previously dormant theory that you are on a holodeck. If you are surprised by observing 1000 equal quantum coinflips (replicated under some conditions, with apparatus not to blame), you may need to reconsider the theory of physics. If you experience surprising luck in a game of dice, you start considering the possibility that dice are weighted.