
Probability, Paradox, and the Reasonable Person Principle - sinamdar
http://nbviewer.jupyter.org/url/norvig.com/ipython/Probability.ipynb
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tunesmith
The thing about the value of money being roughly logarithmic sent me on a
google exploration where I ended up on a suggested "logarithmic flat tax
plan". The gist is, you figure out how many times the poverty rate you make,
take the log-base-10, and multiple by some flat constant that is the same for
everyone - the result would be your tax rate. Right now in the US that
constant would be around 9, assuming the same tax scheme would apply to
companies that make billions in profits like Apple and Exxon.

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JoachimSchipper
So Alice earning 10x poverty pays 9 (somethings), while Bob earning 100x
poverty pays 18 (somethings)? Note that poor Carol earning 1x poverty pays
nothing. I'd expect Alice to be rather unhappy with this system.

(Also, if someone ever manages to earn 0 in a year, you'll have to give all of
the world's wealth to him/her. ;-) )

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tunesmith
Alice pays 9% of her $117k income. Bob pays 18% of his $234k income. Those are
lower tax rates than the present, so not sure why Alice would be unhappy with
it. Carol pays nothing. Floor is the poverty rate, so no one makes infinity.

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njonsson
Unless I’m mistaken, if Alice pays 9% of $117,000 (i.e., $10,530), then Bob
pays 11.7% of $234,000 (i.e., $27,400).

An 18% tax rate would apply to earners of $1,170,000 (i.e., $210,600 in tax).

The high end would be a 63% tax rate applicable to earners of $117 billion
(i.e., $73.71 billion in tax).

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tunesmith
Yes, I got 2x and 10x confused, thanks.

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doesnotexist
At first I thought there was a bug in experiment 2b he writes that the sample
space should be:

{'BB/?b', 'BB/b?', 'BG/b?', 'GB/?b'}

Because he describes the event as "He is observed at a time when he is
accompanied by one of his children, chosen at random."

I thought he also needed to include two more cases:

{'BB/?b', 'BB/b?', 'BG/b?', 'GB/?b', 'GB/g?', 'BG/?g'}

Which again gives us 1/3 probability of both being boys.

but I guess the part that comes after the '/' indicates the observation event.

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lbarrow
Great post, I really enjoyed it. Norvig has a knack for modeling these domains
in simple, powerful ways.

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hammock
I've always believed the most common responses to St Petersburg Paradox felt
incomplete. The biggest miss is not looking at the other side of the
transaction. What's the lowest that the casino offering the game would be
willing to charge to play it?

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jwmerrill
I think the gap between what a person would be willing to pay to play this
game and what a casino would be willing to charge is the reason that no one
plays it.

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tunesmith
Previously discussed when it was an ipython url instead of a jupyter url:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10327409](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10327409)

