INic

Request

Thank you for your changes to Probability theory. And I have one request. Would you mind using the edit summary more often when you contribute. It is rather helpful, at least for me, when I stuble into some change on my watchlist, to get a contributor's view of what he changed. Thanks a lot, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:56, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

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vandalism

At frequency probability, I added this:

Frequentists assign probabilities only to random events according to their relative frequencies of occurrence, or to subsets of populations as proportions of the whole. They refuse to assign probabilities to things that cannot be so interpreted. For example, if one were to attribute a probability of 1/2 to the proposition that there was life on Mars a billion years ago, one would violate frequentist canons, because one cannot say that there was life on Mars a billion years ago in 1/2 of all cases. Such degree-of-belief assignments of probability are used in Bayesian probability theory.

In an edit summary, you called this whole paragraph "vandalism". I think the material you called vandalism is factually correct, very much on-topic and well-positioned within the article, and in conformance with Wikipedia's NPOV policy. I've taught probability and statistics at the University of Minnesota, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, and the University of Toledo. I also have far more experience editing Wikipedia articles on topics related to this and on other topics than you do. "Vandalism" is not defined as "material that User talk:INic doesn't like. You are using the word incredibly promiscuously and stupidly. Michael Hardy 21:19, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

What I considered vandalism is that the very definition of what a frequency probability is vanished after your edit. The concept of a random experiment is essential, as well as to define a sample space. A "random event" can't in general be assigned a frequency probability. This is a very crusial point I think. Don't you? Your edit totally destroyed the essence of what a frequency probability is. Please correct me if I'm wrong. In addition you talk about bayesianism in your contribution with an example about martians that is nowhere to be found in the references in the article. Isn't it good practice at wikipedia to only have material in the articles that readers can find references to in the article? iNic 21:35, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

INic, you've made it evident that any attempt to engage you in discussion is a waste of time. You've repeatedly shown you know nothing about Wikipedia and much less than you think about the topic under discussion, while insulting everyone else who edits the page. Until you change your attitude, you're wasting your time here JQ 11:12, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Two-envelopes paradox

The problem is not to find another way to calculate that doesn't lead to contradictions (that is easy), but to pinpoint the erroneous step in the presented reasoning leading to the contradiction. That includes to be able to say exactly why that step is not correct, and under what conditions it's not correct, so we can be absolutely sure we don't make this mistake in a more complicated situation where the fact that it's wrong isn't this obvious. So far none have managed to give an explanation that others haven't objected to. That some of the explanations are very mathematical in nature might indicate that at least some think that this is a subtle problem in need of a lot of mathematics to be fully understood. You are, of course, free to disagree!

Well said, and applicable to many articles on paradoxes. 192.75.48.150 17:39, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Thank you! iNic 22:41, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

 

What to do about St.Petersburg Paradox?

I saw your edits on that page and I would call them very reasonable indeed. However, Slam is still watching the page and won't let go, so corrections are frutile and just give him the opportunity for more insults. - In the meanwhile I see that this is his major reason to work on this article. (Compare the huge number of comments he wrote with the small number of actual changes he did on this article!) - What should we do? Give up and leave it like that? Maybe he's going for new targets then? Rieger 22:37, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Slam is a new and very unexperienced editor and we have to show some patience with him. But he has already made many editors upset, not only here, and even been blocked twice, so I'm a bit worried for him. He seem to have a very steep learning curve understanding what wikipedia is all about and how to behave here. If he continues like this he will probably be blocked indefinitely from wikipedia by the admins, I'm afraid. iNic 00:17, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I didn't know this about the two blocks... Regarding the "learning curve", I hope you're right. I'm sometimes afraid he's more into making people upset rather than raising his voice. Well, we'll see! Rieger 07:33, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

That's called “projection”, Rieger. Hence you troll, as here and in your remarks about archiving. And if, for example, iNic really wanted that reference per se, he'd copy it himself. —SlamDiego 06:45, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Nope, I'm not a new editor; my first edit was on or before 15 October 2005 (when I creäted the article on chalkware). When was yours? —SlamDiego 06:45, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

The first block was reverted by the admin who'd imposed it, with an adminision that it had been inappropriate. (In fact, that admin's behavior during that period had other admins suggesting that he be desysoped.) And the person who brought the complaint resulting in the second block made a de facto admission that he'd misrepresent something as a violation of 3RR which wasn't. (I was away from Wikipedia during the 12 hours of the block, and they just don't undo expired blocks, legit or otherwise.) —SlamDiego 06:45, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

The operative rule here is that you don't get to kick the goose if you want its eggs. iNic never actually wanted the eggs, but he wanted to prove that he could, after all, kick them out of the goose. He has failed. I'll continue to ensure that the article remains correct, without exerting myself to expand it or write it to a lower level. Eventually agr (who, unlike either of you, proceeded in good faith in discussion, and got something out of it besides a few giggles) will expand the article. (It kind-of backfired for iNic to request that expansion from him.) —SlamDiego 06:45, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

See, iNic: that's exactly what I mean. :( Rieger 10:44, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Hardly. —SlamDiego 11:00, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Of course I see what you mean, Rieger. He's the perfect example of a person that as soon he's running out of good arguments he start to curse. And he curse a lot. Only time will tell if he eventually will understand what wikipedia is all about and how to behave here, or if he will be blocked away forever. iNic 16:52, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I gave sound arguments, which is why agr said that he will expand the article. (If you'll recall, at the beginning he too didn't get the resolution.) If you can find an occasion of my cursing, then please present it.

There's not much need for me to further respond to your insults. The attempt here to spin some pseudo-history has failed. And your excuses to trash the seller-motivation argument have failed. I have no problem with you and Rieger forming a society for mutual support so long as you're no longer able to effectively attack the articles that concern me. —SlamDiego 00:13, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh, by the way: [[1]] No comments. Rieger 09:14, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, you have for certain done everything you can trying to reveal any human side in him! But all you get in return for that is rudeness and even more insults. Oh boy... I'm sorry Rieger, I guess I were wrong all along while you were correct. You know, when confronted with this massive amount of irrationality it sometimes takes a while (for me at least) to locate the source. The only good thing in all this is that all the accusations and name callings are so extremely silly that any explicit rebuttal is unnecessary. iNic 00:32, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Your vandalism of my user page.

This is your last warning. If you again vandalize a user page as you did mine, then you will be blocked from editing Wikipedia. —SlamDiego 06:24, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

HAHA you are very funny. Think Slam. I made a comment about you because you had a comment about me on your page. That is not vandalism. If it were every comment on my user page by you about me would be vandalism too. Not to mention all your comments about me on talk pages to articles. Why don't you try to learn the rules and definitions of things here before you resort to personal attacks? Have you even tried to read the guidelines? They shouldn't be that hard to understand. Most of it is common sense actually. Because you know Slam, even if I and everybody else around you actually were trolls and vandals you are handling us in a completely wrong way. You always escalate the conflicts you are (constantly) drawn into and that is not the way to handle conflicts here (nor in the real world). You should instead do what I did when you vandalized my page for the first time. I silently removed your vandalism without a word. Then you reverted my kind and forgiving removal and vandalized even more, adding some of your own rules. At that stage I let an admin take care of you and I became silent for quite a while thus avoiding a totally pointless conflict with a newbie. I didn't respond to any of your numerous personal attacks or accusations against me. THAT is the correct way to handle a vandal, especially a newbie vandal. But as you've been an editor a while now other editors might one day get tired of treating you as a newbie. Please consider that and spend some quality time reading the guidelines. Welcome to Wikipedia! iNic 16:18, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

My user page linked to a comment that you actually made, which comment was about me. It isn't your prerogative to add further insults to my user page . In fact, for the most part, your comments about my user page should be confined to my talk page.

If you think that linking to a personal attack by you constitutes a violation of WP:NPA on my part, then perhaps you should bring that matter to the attention of an administrator. However, he or she is as likely to be irritated with you as to be amused by your complaint.

Nor am I the one escalating here. Your claim that I am inhuman is by far the harshest claim made to-date, and came after the fight over St. Petersburg paradox had ended.

My original warning about your edit to St. Petersburg paradox was not vandalism, nor did the admin to whom you complained offer agreement that my warning was vandalism. He just mistakenly believed that the edits about which I warned you were being made in good faith, and therefore disagreed with my assessment.

Since you keep wanting to claim that I am or am acting like a newbie, allow me to draw your attention to a newbie mistake that you have recently made: When you were (absurdly) trying to get JzG to apply a long-term block to my account, you referred to blocking as “punishment”. You just haven't understood its approved function at all, which should suggest to you that you may not be understanding various other rules. —SlamDiego 04:17, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh, Slam, you're getting boring now... 84.72.29.27 09:34, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Probability theory

You deleted a paragraph at Probability theory with edit summary deleted confusing paragraph.[2] Could you explain what you find confusing about this paragraph, so that it can be made less confusing, rather than just deleting this quite essential information?  --Lambiam 23:23, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

What a probability is is the subject matter of probability interpretations, not probability theory. However, we do need to update the See also-links in the article so that readers interested in that are directed to the relevant articles. iNic 09:39, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

The deleted paragraph does not discuss, or attempt to discuss, what a probability is, but how a probability is represented in probability theory. This passage used to be in the Probability article but was removed from there with the edit summary belong in theory.[3] What do you think, should we have a third article for information that belongs neither in Probability nor in Probability theory but is somewhere between the two?  --Lambiam 19:51, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

The issue of what events are impossible or not is still a matter of philosophical dispute. In any case this belongs to the interpretation or application of probability, not probability theory proper. iNic 11:10, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Hi, iNic. I ran across this interesting discussion quite by accident. The point Lambiam is trying to make is not philosophical, but mathematical. I'll try to clarify it.

Modern probability theory is based on the concept of measure. Certain events that could in theory happen can have probability zero, if the set of points constituting those events have measure zero. Perhaps you're alluding to the idea that an event which might happen, but for which the expected waiting time is infinite, is "impossible" in a philosophical sense?

Traditional terminology does say that probability zero is equivalent to "impossibility", but a careful interpretation of the underlying theory indicates that this language is imprecise. Can you suggest alternative wording? Thanks! dcb —Preceding unsigned comment added by DavidCBryant (talk • contribs) 13:16, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Hi David! I know the way mathematicians use talk about these matters. But what makes sense to a mathematician isn't always what makes sense to the lay person. In this case the usual jargon of a mathematician regarding measure theoretic probability is presented out of context and before measure theoretic probability is even introduced in the article. And when it comes to what is impossible or not it suffices to talk to a physicist to get a different opinion. iNic 20:54, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

two envelopes page

This is regarding this revert. I think that when you say the distribution, you should be more precise. Do you mean the distribution of the total sum of the money in both envelopes, or do you mean the distribution of the money in the envelope containing less money, or do you mean the distribution of the pair. Of course, in this case it does not really matter. So I suggest that we just say the distribution of the total money in both envelopes, as this is simple. Oded (talk) 16:51, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

What is meant here is the expected monetary value of (randomly) taking one envelope out of a pair of envelopes containing money, which have been filled according to the distribution at hand. It should be obvious from the context what is meant here, but if you think this part is in need of a clarification please go ahead and clarify this. iNic (talk) 01:06, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Which of the versions of the "paradox" do you consider to be still unresolved? Oded (talk) 05:24, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Which version do you consider to be resolved? Who resolved it and when? iNic (talk) 18:16, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

I consider all versions resolved. I don't know the history, though. The WP article itself provides nearly adequate resolution of all versions, though I could quibble on some details here and there. Oded (talk) 15:28, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't agree that the article doesn't mention different opinions about resolutions. However, all disagreements in the literature aren't mentioned due to the simple fact that all different ideas aren't presented either. After all, this is just an encyclopedic article and as such must be brief. Encyclopedic articles should act as good starting points into the literature but can never replace the literature itself. This is quite obvious, but nevertheless it doesn't hurt to repeat it. iNic (talk) 22:48, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Fisher's dislike of frequentism, surprising to most!

I removed Fisher from the frequentist probability article on the basis of the documentation in Savage:

• Leonard J. Savage (1976)). "On Rereading R. A. Fisher". The Annals of Statistics. Vol. 4, no. 3. pp. 441–500. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |year= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)CS1 maint: year (link) Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2958221

I'm sure that you can find the discussion of Fisher's strongly expressed dislike of frequentism, which is early in the article.

(Of course, all probabilists and statisticians are frequentists in some sense: The law of large numbers implies that any theory of probability implies that frequencies exist.)

Thanks for your consideration. Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 14:07, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't get it. Savage makes a lot of wrong statement in this posthumous paper (corrected by the editor and later by Rao) but he never claims that Fisher would be a subjectivist. Savage wasn't THAT crazy. iNic (talk) 00:20, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Fisher was bitterly opposed to optimization, to loss functions, .. His aim was to summarize what the data had to say about the world, in the most succinct and powerful way possible. He had a disdain for those (whether americans or east europeans) who wanted to blindly do the best in the long run. He hated the Neyman-Pearson paradigm (he hated Neyman). He wanted to do the best in each particular case. There are lots of examples in statistics where doing the best in the long run (on average) involves not doing the best for a particular case, think for instance of the Stein paradox.

So he did believe in frequentist probability but he did not see statistics as decision theory. He saw it as a search for the truth. Moreover he knew that he had a deeper grasp of how to come to the truth than anyone else, and hence actively suppressed the known "counterexamples" to his "theorems" since this would only confuse the ordinary members of his Church. 192.87.136.63 (talk) 07:58, 3 May 2011 (UTC) Sorry, that was not meant to be anonymous. Richard Gill (talk) 13:45, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Sure, it's well known that Fisher disliked (or hated, if you wish) the Neyman-Pearson school of frequentism. But that doesn't imply that Fisher was against frequentism as such. On the contrary he promoted his own variant of frequentism. As an analogy, let's say that Shi'a muslims dislike Sunni muslims. Does that imply that Shi'a muslims dislikes muslims in general? Of course not, they are muslims themselves. In the same way Fisher didn't dislike frequentism in general, only certain variants of it. In fact he was one of the greatest frequentists that has ever lived, and he didn't hate himself. iNic (talk) 23:24, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

That's what I said. Fisher was a frequentist in the sense of using a frequentist notion of probability. He was not a frequentist in the sense of being focussed on the long term average behaviour of his methods with respect to some loss function. He sure did think a great deal of himself. Richard Gill (talk) 13:45, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

WQA notice

Hello, INic. This message is being sent to inform you that there currently is a discussion at Wikipedia:Wikiquette alerts regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. MartinPoulter (talk) 19:22, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject Macintosh Revival

Hello, INic! You've listed yourself as an active member of WikiProject Macintosh, which is currently seeing very little activity. We are trying to revive the project and your help would be appreciated. To see who is active and who is not, we will be listing all active members under "status pending" in the project's participant list. Please move your name to either the "former members" section or "active" section. Hope to see you in the "active" column! For more information on how to help the project, visit the How to help section at our project page! · EdwardsBot (talk) 02:33, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject Macintosh Role Call

Hello, INic! You've listed yourself as an active member of WikiProject Macintosh, which is currently being revived. Your help would be appreciated! To see who is active and who is not, we will be listing all active members under "status pending" in the project's participant list. Please move your name to either the "former members" section or "active" section. The role call will end May 31; please move your name now if you are still interested. For more information on how to help the project, visit the How to help section at our project page! &middot MonoBot04:17, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Main sources of two envelope problem

Dear iNic, could you please email me pdf's of the main articles cited on the two envelopes problem page? gill@math.leidenuniv.nl (if you do have them yourself).

I will post my analysis (currently written out on my talk page on wikipedia) on my university home page [[4]] and after I've had some feedback, also post this as a short article on arXiv.org

I'll probably add a literature survey and critique.

Then any editor who finds the material useful and notable can refer to it.

Your comments on the content are welcome.

Thanks in advance. Richard Gill (talk) 06:55, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Which articles are you interested in? Unless some copyright law forbid me to send them I'll send the ones you want. iNic (talk) 23:05, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

In the meantime, I think I was able to collect just about all the sources, though as Syverson (2010) says "Indeed if there is anything inherently unbounded about the two-envelope paradox, it is that each search will uncover at least one more reference."

Are you still interested in the article? I just rewrote the "non-probabilistic" section, after some deep study of many papers in logic and philosophy. Richard Gill (talk) 09:25, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Sure I'm always interested. Thanks for the improvements. However, the article is starting to become as messy as the literature itself... This is good in the sense that new readers don't get the wrong impression that this is an elementary and easy problem (an opinion even you held at the beginning, remember?). The drawback is that the article is harder to read for anyone that just want to get a quick understanding of the central problems. Also, some unsourced explanations written by you that is more complicated than what they need to be should be removed. During the summer I think I will have some time to improve this article. iNic (talk) 08:46, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Tell me what you think needs to be sourced and I'll give you references. Sure some of my texts are hard to understand. They shouldn't be REMoved, they should be IMPRoved. (You can understand them, I hope? If not, tell me, and I'll try to explain, and once you've understood, you'll be able to improve. Collaborative editing. Always make the good faith assumption. Just deleting is not constructive; and it exhibits bad faith in the other's motives).

The sections with the tags are the ones that need to be sourced. You have openly admitted that you wrote these sections directly from the top of your head as OR. All OR should be deleted directly from Wikipedia. Every serious Wikipedia editor knows this rule. If they are not sourced next week they will be deleted. iNic (talk) 21:42, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Those sections do not contain OR, they contain absolutely routine totally uncontroversial elementary calculations and logical deductions. I found the same calculations in ten or twenty publications all over internet, each one presented as something routine (back of the envelope). An exercise for students in Probability 101. This is not rocket science. No one is hoping to get a Nobel prize. Do you know the literature, @iNic? Why don't you source them, if you find it necessary? We just had a huge discussion on the meaning of OR in the context of MHP (Monty Hall problem) arbitration. The rule about OR is intended to prevent cranks from expounding their own theories of gravity or relativity on wikipedia. It is not intended to prevent expert editors from documenting routine calculations or elementary logical deductions.

I just went to a lot of effort to document what I wrote about the controversial "two envelopes with no probability" section. And found the missing references for half the rest of the article. I am really annoyed by your negative attitude. Why don't you find the missing references for the uncontroversial probability part of the article?

If you don't agree with what I wrote, you may demand to see a source. If you don't understand what I wrote, you may demand a better explanation. If you don't know the literature on this field yourself, I don't understand why you are taking such a possessive stance to the article. (Similarly to MHP - one editor actually got told off by the arbitration committee for "ownership" issues which were preventing constructive editing by other editors).

No, sourcing at Wikipedia is not required only if someone disagrees or doesn't understand a particular unsourced statement. Sourcing is mandatory no matter what. iNic (talk) 01:26, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Fortunately you are so well-read on the two envelopes problem that it is easy for you to add references yourself, if you think they are needed. But in the meantime I added a reference for each of the sections which needed one. I also suggest you take a good look at WP:FIVEPILLARS, especially the fourth and the fifth. Nothing is mandatory, "no matter what". Richard Gill (talk) 10:30, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Of course sourcing is mandatory. "Wikipedia does not have firm rules" should not be interpreted as "'Wikipedia has no rules". It only means that the rules of Wikipedia can change gradually over time, slowly and in small steps. So no hope for any anarchy here. I think you should read the first two pillars more carefully as well. For example, the second pillar state "All articles must strive for verifiable accuracy: unreferenced material may be removed, so please provide references. Editors' personal experiences, interpretations, or opinions do not belong here. That means citing verifiable, authoritative sources, especially on controversial topics[...]" iNic (talk) 01:32, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

I certainly do not hope for anarchy. I hope for good sense, intelligent and constructive editing - that is the opposite to anarchy. Anarchy results when people who can't understand what is written in sources themselves delete material randomly which doesn't consist of literal quotes. Unreferenced material *may* be removed, says pillar two. Unreferenced material which is controversial will probably be removed rather fast. Unreferenced material which is not controversial at all will probably stand - it gets in the way of the reader to add references where they are pretty superfluous. You may call TEP a controversial topic as a whole, but standard maths and logic which an intelligent writer should use to inform the lay reader what is in the sources is not controversial. I certainly did not write anything which contradicted anything in any reliable source. And I am not pushing a personal point of view, nor do I have a conflict of interest on the matter. Since there are almost no secondary sources, we either should delete almost all of the article, or we have to trust editors who have the background knowledge to translate the content of the primary sources into plain words. Richard Gill (talk) 09:15, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Your description of anarchy above describes exactly what the TEP page has been experiencing for years. Now when we have two editors (you and me) that have read the published sources there is at last some hope we can make TEP into a good article and rescue it from the anarchy state it has been in for so long. That our personal views on TEP itself differ is totally irrelevant. I'm working on the complete list of TEP sources right now. iNic (talk) 21:57, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

There are at least three completely different two envelope problems. With and without opening the first envelope, with and without probability. They all have very easy solutions, in their own terms. And they have different solutions for readers with different backgrounds. Probabilists, economists, logicians all see different issues. A layperson can "defuse" the paradox (es) by common sense, but is not equipped to even see what the different academics are on about. Should the layman care? Probably not. Should the academic professional care that the layman doesn'tcare? Probably not. The literature is vaste and complex. A big challenge to an encyopediist who has to write both for laypersons and for *all* the academic communities. Solution: collaborative editing. It requires that *all *participants recogniise the "relativity" and hence incompleteness of their own point if view Richard Gill (talk) 08:26, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Is TEP philosophy or mathematics?

iNic, will you please provide me with sources which explain why TEP is a philosophical problem. It seems to me TEP is a problem about logic and logic lies at the basis of both philosophy and mathematics.

Please will you also tell me if you are a philosopher or a logician yourself. I'm interested to understand why you think that Schwitzgebel and Dever is such a brilliant philosophy paper (written by two philosophy PhD students about a problem outside of their specialist fields). Richard Gill (talk) 16:34, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Please will you also tell me if you are aware of any secondary or tertiary sources about TEP (eg University undergraduate texts) in philosophy. There do exist such sources in mathematics, e.g. Cox's book on inference (though some would call this a graduate text, not undergraduate). Research articles are primary sources according to wikipedia rules which you so strongly adhere to. We are not allowed to write articles whose reliable sources are original research articles. This rules out almost all of the literature on TEP. The rest consists of blogs by amateurs. That is also not a reliable source for an academic subject. The main message for the layman should be that original TEP and Smullyan's TEP are examples of faulty logical reasoning caused by using the same symbol (or verbal description) to stand for different things at the same time. This is the executive summary of almost all the articles I have studied so far, by the way. Then TEP with opened envelope belongs to probability and decision theory and is useful in the classroom for showing the strange things that happen with infinite expectation values. You do *not* expect an infinite expectation because you never live long enough. You are always disappointed. In the long run you are dead (Keynes). That's it. That's the executive summary of the decision theoretic / statistical literature on this topic. I will write a survey paper containing no original research and not promoting any personal point of view, and then at last we will have a good secondary source for the wikipedia article.

I think that Falk's paper constitutes a secondary source. She analyses TEP from the point of view of teaching probability. Her executive summary is the same as what I just mentioned: examples of faulty logical reasoning caused by using the same symbol (or verbal description) to stand for different things at the same time. Don't worry, almost all of the philosophers say the same thing, but of course want to say it in a subtly different way from earlier authors, since their job is to publish papers in which they nit-pick in previously published papers.

I'm participating in a philosophy conference tomorrow at which several authors of TEP papers are present. That will be interesting. Richard Gill (talk) 16:41, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Please see my answers at the TEP talk page. iNic (talk) 00:17, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, excellent answers! I think we're making a lot of progress. Do you still have no interest in sharing my dropbox folder on TEP? It's an offer I make to build mutual trust and confidence, as well as being rather practical. Richard Gill (talk) 09:17, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Thank you but I think that I have all the published sources on this topic already. iNic (talk) 01:01, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Please have a look to my attempt to distinguish "either/or" from "as well as". Gerhardvalentin (talk) 08:24, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

"rvv"

Did you intend to call me a vandal? "rvv" means revert vandalism, as opposed to a garden-variety revert (rv).--Father Goose (talk) 02:30, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, a typo. iNic (talk) 23:07, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

Some baklava for you!

Food for thought! Richard Gill (talk) 10:44, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Dear iNic, please note the following exchange on Martin's two envelopes sub-talk page:

In fact we could without loss of generality define the unit of currency to be half the smaller amount. Call that 1 Doubloon. Then the smaller amount is 2 Doubloons and the larger amount is 4 Doubloons. In fact, without loss of generality, we can indeed take, just like you did, the two amounts to be 2 and 4! We just remember that we don't know the currency unit. Richard Gill (talk) 18:08, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Bravo Richard! You just made more progress towards a real solution than ever before. (Even if you didn't realize it.) This observation is brilliant and yet very elementary. Still I have't seen it in any discussion of TEP so far, which is quite strange. The currency can be an alien currency which means that seeing "2" or "4" or any other number of that currency doesn't give you any information at all of how 'much' it is. So where does this leave your Unified Solution argument? Do you realize that that solution doesn't survive this simple observation? iNic (talk) 14:13, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Dear iNic, you clearly didn't look at the proof of my "unified solution" nor my explanation of how it applies to two neckties, two-sided cards (Schrodinger), two-sided cards (Littlewood). The mathematical heart of that derivation is a proof that if random variables A, B have a joint probability distribution which is symmetric under exchange of the two variables (this is called exchangeability) and if they have positive probability to be different, then the event {A < B} (more precisely: the three events {A < B}, {A = B} and {B < A}) cannot be independent of the random variable A. The only restriction on the outcome space of A and B is that the outcomes can be ordered and can be mapped one-to-one and order-preserving to the real line. Here's the proof once more. Without loss of generality we can map A and B one-to-one and order preserving to a bounded interval of the real line. Note that statistical independence of the event {A < B} and the random variable A is conserved under 1-1 monotone transformations. From now on I'll write A and B for these transformed variables. When I have obtained the desired result for the transformed variables, it also holds for the original, by the remark just made. Now E( A-B | A > B ) is well defined and positive by the assumptions we have made (bounded range and positive probability to differ). It follows that E( A | A > B) > E( B | A > B) (here again bounded range is used to exclude the possibility both terms are infinite or undefined). By symmetry the last expression equals E( A | B > A). Thus E( A | A > B) > E( A | B > A). This implies that A is not independent of the events {A > B}, {A = B}, {A < B}. QED. Richard Gill (talk) 15:15, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Elsewhere you wrote:

OK I'll explain what I mean. If the envelopes contain money of a completely alien nature we still don't know how much we have in front of us when we open our selected envelope. We have a case of complete ignorance. Even if we open both envelopes we can't tell which contains the largest amounts of money. Your Unified Solution argument is based on the assumption that the values can be mapped onto the real line, and then you use some topological properties of the real line to prove your thing. But TEP is not confined to the topology of the real line. This is why your solution as well as a majority of all other proposed solutions are invalid. iNic (talk) 02:55, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

You are saying that if the money was alien, not only would we not know the actual worth of the amounts in the two envelopes, we wouldn't even know which envelope contained the larger amount. This situation is easily solved by thinking about utility. Since our knowledge about the currency is zero our expected utility for the amount in either envelope is the same.

You say that TEP is not confined to the topology of the real line. I disagree. It depends only on the ordering of the real line, and our ability to map the ordering monotonely to utility. My unified solution applies to all known variants. It also applies to alien currencies whose value is not known (but whose ordering is known) and to totally alien currencies - those whose ordering is not known. If you have got to choose an envelope before you get to learn about the currency, then the appropriate utility to use is not the actual but unknown utilities of the two amounts of alien money (which you would only know if the inscriptions on the coins were explained to you, and the exchange rate was fixed) but the expected utility of the amounts before getting this information. By ignorance and symmetry the expected utilities of two completely alien amounts of money, even whose ordering is unknown, is equal. Richard Gill (talk) 08:59, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

TEP is not confined to the real numbers R in much the same way as TEP is not confined to the natural numbers N. Even though all ordinary and known currencies in the world has a smallest unit that can't be divided this is an artificial and irrelevant restriction for TEP. To base a solution of TEP on a restriction to N is simply not correct. Not much imagination is required to realize that this restriction can be lifted from the TEP formulation by simply imagining some kind of money that can be divided indefinitely. I hope you are with me this far. iNic (talk) 14:44, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

So far I am with you, of course. Richard Gill (talk) 11:12, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

In the same way the real line R has a lot of topological properties that are not relevant to TEP. All TEP reasoning leading to infinities, and also all reasoning trying to get rid of these infinities, are all due to this assumption that the real line R (or N) has to be invoked to even state the problem properly. But TEP itself has nothing to do with infinities at all. It's when R (or N) are brought into the story as a required item that infinities start to pop up. This is not occult as these objects are infinite. If you bring an infinite object into a finite story the result might be infinite. If you don't bring infinite objects into the story the TEP calculations will never become infinite. To repeat, R has nothing to do with TEP itself. iNic (talk) 14:44, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

TEP is a problem in subjective Bayesian decision theory and this theory assumes that people behave as if they have utilities and prior probabilities. And the standard assumption about utilities is that they are real numbers.

Exactly! iNic (talk) 11:49, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

But I don't see any unsolved problems concerning the infinities which turn up in some variants of TEP. The known paradoxes all involved real numbers whether money or utility, and all have decent resolutions, though Anna Karenina means that people might always disagree about the assumptions of the resolutions. So far, as far as I know, there are basicly five variants and they all have been satisfactorily solved many times over, often with the authors not realising that someone else did it already. You seem to be the sole person saying that TEP is not solved because you envisage a new version of the paradox which no-one has considered before. Well, that would be wonderful, if your new paradox does indeed turn out to be great brain-teaser too! And all the better if it causes us to rethink decision theory! So go ahead, invent it, publish it, and see if it catches on. Richard Gill (talk) 11:12, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

The most basic variant that can't be modeled on R you invented all by yourself. The one with alien money. You didn't provide an acceptable answer to that paradox. All you did was to invoke utility theory to say that as the situation is symmetric there is no point in switching. Well of course we all know that the situation is symmetric. This is why any argument for switching must we wrong. And we have also always said that just saying that is not an acceptable solution to the problem. It's like saying that we know how a magic trick is performed because we conclude that as the girl is still alive after the trick she can't have been really cut in half during the trick. Sure we ALL know that. That is NOT the same as knowing how the trick is performed. The same applies here. You have claimed many times that the only case when the TEP reasoning is valid is when the subject is totally clueless whether the other envelope is half or twice the amount already taken. And this is exactly the case here. When you have answered this one and the fish soup version I will reveal other more involved variants of TEP that is also not modeled on R. iNic (talk) 11:49, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

By the way, do you have the two Zabell papers? Could you put them in the dropbox (or email to me personally)? Richard Gill (talk) 11:12, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

These are I think the only two papers I haven't read yet. Zabell has a book with the same name as one of the articles, but it seems to be concerned with mainly historical issues. I just bought it on Amazon. If you get hold of these papers please let me know. iNic (talk) 11:49, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

In the meantime, I got all the Zabell work from the man himself. Richard Gill (talk) 12:24, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

iNic, in a personal email you asked for my present reaction to one of your ideas above. We had a discussion here, which stopped with your comment posted at 11:49, 29 November 2011. Sorry I did not respond earlier. Here is a fresh answer: Ah, so you suggest to rephrase the problem. I will make a start. Maybe you can fill in the two bits I left empty, marked X and Y:

We have two envelopes. They each contain a certificate. Each will lead to some outcome, not divulged. All we know is that one is preferable to the other and that we will only know which is which at some later date. Our friends will admire us if we pick the right envelope. If we pick the wrong envelope we will be thought a fool. We must make a choice, now. We reason to ourselves, since we know nothing but must pick one, we can only pick at random. We do so. We are now holding one envelope. The devil now says: you made your choice, but now I’m changing the rules. I give you the opportunity to switch. After you have decided to switch or not (and after the switch has been performed, if that was your choice) I will tell you, and all the world, which envelope you have. I now reason ...X... and decide it is wiser to stick to my first choice. But I realise I can also reason ...Y... and then it would be wiser to switch.

iNic: I think it is *your* task to come up with those two “reasonings” (the ones marked X and Y) so that we have a new paradox. And once we have a paradox we can discuss its resolution.

This is a more down to earth version: You are presented with two hidden dishes in front of you and you can pick one for dinner. You are told that one dish is twice as good as the other. You pick the one to the right and it turns out to be fish soup. Now, if you want, you can take the dish to the left instead, which is still a secret. Do you switch? iNic (talk) 16:24, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

So what does "twice as good as the other" mean? It means that I am told that the difference between the two dishes is equivalent to a difference between two choices for which numerical utilities are highly relevant. Richard Gill (talk) 14:02, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

Ok so you claim that you can map all possible dishes in the world onto the infinite real line. That is totally unbelievable. This means that for each real number you can think of there is at least one dish corresponding to that number. How do you even go about doing that? Which real number to you attribute to the fish soup in front of you? iNic (talk) 11:38, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

I sense that you might be on to something interesting connected to Buddhism or to the thinking of Wittgenstein or to artificial intelligence, ie to a paradox of consciousness and the mind-brain problem. Or to exchangability in physics, which leads to the great issues in quantum mechanics and the question, what is reality. Or both. Does reality exist, or is there only information? There is nothing but the information which we have. We are agents and have the possibility to gain information but we won’t know what we have gained till after we have gained it. This is actually simply solipcism, which is a rude word in philosophy, but it stands for a perfectly reasonable intellectual position to take. I heard a great talk recently where it was explained that all the paradoxes of quantum entanglement go back to the notion of “identical particles”. Once you accept that a particle here and another far away are identical, and you assume quantum mechanics, you generate spooky action at a distance and the interrelatedness of all things and the Schrödinger cat problem... Richard Gill (talk) 12:21, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Haha no I don't think you need to be a Buddhist or solipsist to decide if you want the fish soup above or not. But you can try to explain how you use the real line to solve it. iNic (talk) 16:24, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

BTW, *my* now nearly published work (and already available on arXiv) does not really assume "topological properties" of the real line. It really only assumes a total ordering. Under axioms of set theory which are as consistent as the usual axioms, and for practical purposes indistinguishable, any totally ordered set is isomorphic to a subset of the real line. The random variables A, B, X and Y can take values in any space you like. We can always map it one-to-one into the real line. Richard Gill (talk) 12:27, 10 July 2020 (UTC

Total ordering is indeed a topological property of the real line. Not everything in life is totally ordered, and, in particular, TEP is not dependent on total ordering. iNic (talk) 16:24, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

TEP is dependent on the ordering of amounts of money. Richard Gill (talk) 14:02, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

Very little imagination is required to realise that this mathematical and logical puzzle is not dependent on the concept of money. All you need is a local preference ordering. The topology of the ordering can be circular, i.e. not transitive, or even finite and bounded and it's still possible to reproduce the paradox. iNic (talk) 11:38, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Two envelopes problem/sources

A tag has been placed on Two envelopes problem/sources, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a redirect to an article talk page, file description page, file talk page, MediaWiki page, MediaWiki talk page, category talk page, portal talk page, template talk page, help talk, user page, user talk or special page from the main/article space.

If you can fix the redirect to point to a mainspace page, please do so and remove the speedy deletion tag. However, please do not remove the speedy deletion tag unless you are fixing the redirect. If you think the redirect should be retained as is for some reason, contest the deletion by clicking on the button that looks like this: which appears inside of the speedy deletion ({{db-...}}) tag (if no such tag exists, the page is no longer a speedy delete candidate). Doing so will take you to the talk page where you will find a pre-formatted place for you to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. You can also visit the article's talk page directly to give your reasons. Feel free to leave a note on my talk page if you have any questions about this. DASHBot (talk) 06:00, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Harassment made by you

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you.

You have been warned about the harassment you made against me in talk page: http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Talk:Two_envelopes_problem#The_full_basis_of_the_argument_to_switch_must_be_made_clear_at_some_point Specifically, you intentionaly exposed my work organisation. 89.31.176.13 (talk) 06:07, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

I have oversighted that information, and all the subsequent edits up to my removal of same. Since you have been editing for about as long as I have and have no apparent issues, I'm assuming that you were just unaware that posting information which could be used to identify an IP user's workplace when the edits aren't about their employer is a violation of the outing policy. So, you do now. Daniel Case (talk) 15:17, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

Hello Daniel. This is actually a false accusation by the anonymous editor. I have not revealed his workplace, he did that himself by revealing that the ISP he is using is in fact also his workplace. I had no clue this was his workplace. How would I know? In fact, given the fact that he knows so little about how Internet works I would never have guessed that he worked at an ISP. That is quite ironic. I have told him that if he want to keep his ISP secret he need to remove his IP address from Wikipedia permanently. Anyone can otherwise easily look up his ISP by using services like http://www.iplocation.net. iNic (talk) 12:09, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you.

User INic has threatened me twice that I would be blocked if I continue to revert his deletions. The incident has happened in the revision summary of the following history page: https://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=Two_envelopes_problem&action=history on 14:28, 14 October 2014‎ and on 19:18, 2 October 2014‎. The reason provided by INic is the 3RR rule which clearly doesn't apply to my case because I revert his deletions at most one time per day. I believe that he is doing that on purpose to frighten me and to stop me from reverting his deletions. I believe that this case is also a harassment - threat as described here: http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Wikipedia:Harassment#Threats Caramella1 (talk) 18:11, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Dear Caramella, asking you to read, understand and follow the rules of Wikipedia is not a threat. On the contrary it is my sincere advice to you as a completely fresh editor, so that you one day might become a respected editor. For example, putting false accusations on an another editor's talk page which you have done twice already is not the best way to behave as an editor. You should actually understand that even if your overall learning curve for how to behave here seem to be steep. iNic (talk) 10:49, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Dear INic, although an old member, you seem to ignore some very basic rules of WP or to interpret them as you please in order to achieve your goals. Caramella1 (talk) 11:45, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Two envelopes problem

@Magioladitis:.

First, you did not follow the instructions when applying {{bots}}, specifically, Address the root problem with the bot owner or bot community. Vast majority of the time the template doesn't need to be applied and a solution can be worked out.

Second, using <br> for spacing goes against html standards. It also can cause problems with accessibility. Looking at how other math equations look on the page, using the two br tags makes it look out of place... way too much vertical blank space compared to the other equations.

What Yobot did is also wrong. Not only does it look way, way wrong, it also blows accessibility out of the water.

I've added the {{ordered list}} template while using the ':' wiki notation. The colon not only indents but applies the right amount of vertical space. The ordered list template makes is accessibility sound when using a colon or br tag. Personally, I like the look of it being indented... it looks better and is like the other big equations on the article. Using a br tag instead of a colon makes it look claustrophobic. If you have questions or concerns, please ping me. Bgwhite (talk) 06:59, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

Thank you! Actually the <br> tag was used as a bad hack before only in order to not to break the paragraph into two paragraphs. When Ybot removed the <br> tags the paragraph was split in two by the equation, making the numbering markup # start from scratch under the equation. As the article explicitly refers to steps 8 to 12 of the list that now was gone the article didn't make sense after the Ybot cleaning. Thank you for introducing a new and better list mechanism that fixes this problem! I totally agree that it also looks better now. iNic (talk) 11:36, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

Thank you both for fixing this. -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:16, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

3RR

Your recent editing history at Two envelopes problem shows that you are currently engaged in an edit war. Being involved in an edit war can result in your being blocked from editing—especially if you violate the three-revert rule, which states that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Undoing another editor's work—whether in whole or in part, whether involving the same or different material each time—counts as a revert. Also keep in mind that while violating the three-revert rule often leads to a block, you can still be blocked for edit warring—even if you don't violate the three-revert rule—should your behavior indicate that you intend to continue reverting repeatedly.

To avoid being blocked, instead of reverting please consider using the article's talk page to work toward making a version that represents consensus among editors. See BRD for how this is done. If discussions reach an impasse, you can then post a request for help at a relevant noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases, you may wish to request temporary page protection. GiantSnowman 12:32, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

INic, you have reverted again even after you have been warned. Please stop. Please try to understand how the BRD-cycle works. Caramella1 (talk) 10:28, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Blocked

You have been blocked from editing for a period of 48 hours for edit warring, despite warning, at Two envelopes problem. Once the block has expired, you are welcome to make useful contributions. If you think there are good reasons why you should be unblocked, you may appeal this block by adding the following text below this notice: {{unblock|reason=Your reason here ~~~~}}. However, you should read the guide to appealing blocks first.

GiantSnowman 11:17, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

This user's unblock request has been reviewed by an administrator, who accepted the request.

INic (block log • active blocks • global blocks • contribs • deleted contribs • filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))

---

Request reason:

There is a consensus among all other editors to keep the disputed section off the page. I will let other editors remove this section in the future.

Accept reason:

Following the discussion on this page, I've unblocked your account. PhilKnight (talk) 16:51, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

From my perspective, the above is a reasonable unblock request, and is substantially better than the usual 'my edit was right and therefore reverting was justified" type of unblock request. However, could I suggest you have a look at the BOLD, revert, discuss cycle? Before unblocking, I'd prefer if you committed to avoid edit warring in future, and instead used a different approach. PhilKnight (talk) 15:33, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Yes I can commit to that no problem. In this case we had problems getting the completely new anonymous editor to appear on the Talk page at all. However, he has now started to talk to us there why I'm more hopeful now that the dispute from now on will be resolved in the usual more calm manner. iNic (talk) 16:05, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

I would agree with PhilKnight ... except that I personally don't see the consensus noted above. However, WP:GAB suggests that acknowledging behaviour is first step, and as per Phil, providing the warm-fuzzies that you'll never ever edit-war again would be part 2 of WP:GAB the panda ₯’ 15:54, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

There is a consensus that the edit repeatedly made by Caramella1 doesn't belong in the article. However, there is an ongoing discussion if the paper promoted in the edit should be mentioned at all, and if so where and how. iNic (talk) 16:31, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

@GiantSnowman:- would you object to an early unblock? PhilKnight (talk) 16:34, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

@PhilKnight: - no, no issues at all. Block is to prevent, not punish, and if the editor realizes where have they have wrong and will adjust their behavior in future then it's all good in the hood. GiantSnowman 16:38, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks GiantSnowman. PhilKnight (talk) 16:51, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Thank you all! iNic (talk) 18:05, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

October 2014

You have been blocked from editing for a period of 1 month for socking: Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/INic. Once the block has expired, you are welcome to make useful contributions. If you think there are good reasons why you should be unblocked, you may appeal this block by adding the following text below this notice: {{unblock|reason=Your reason here ~~~~}}. However, you should read the guide to appealing blocks first.  Drmies (talk) 01:27, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

This user's unblock request has been reviewed by an administrator, who accepted the request.

INic (block log • active blocks • global blocks • contribs • deleted contribs • filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))

---

Request reason:

These allegations are ridiculous, and of course totally false. However, this is not the first time this user has made false allegations against me so I'm not surprised.

Accept reason:

Following the checkuser of your account, it seems that you are not the same user as Perswapish. PhilKnight (talk) 09:50, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

• I've run a checkuser, and your account is  Unrelated to Perswapish. As it happens, Perswapish is  Technically indistinguishable to about half a dozen other accounts. I'm not entirely sure what to make of this, however it's possible the situation is more complicated than it first appeared. PhilKnight (talk) 23:03, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

• I'm a little bit shocked how fast you administrators tend to jump to false conclusions. In this case you should easily be able to see that I and Perswapish are different users by simply checking the IP addresses we use. That Perswapish and some other WP editors uses the same ISP where the IP addresses are assigned using DHCP is totally irrelevant, as I'm not using that ISP. Blocking a new and honest user like Perswapish without any valid reason is not a nice first experience of the Wikipedia community. There is a risk he will turn away from Wikipedia and never come back as an editor. Please unblock Perswapish immediately. An apology for blocking him for no valid reason would be a nice gesture on top of that. iNic (talk) 00:55, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

• Based on Perswapish's latest unblock request, it seems the account is a sock puppet, or at least, a legitimate alternative account of long term user. PhilKnight (talk) 01:20, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

• OK but I can't see how this is in any way related to the false accusations leading to both of us being blocked now, namely that Perswapish and I should be one and the same person. Apparently we are not, and if one of us happens to have other accounts on Wikipedia used in other contexts is totally irrelevant. If this is allowed by the rules of Wikipedia, as it seems to be, then what's the problem with that? iNic (talk) 01:44, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

• @Drmies:- based on checkuser information, it now seems that Perswapish is a sock of Urgent01, and not INic. In this context, would you object to an unblock? PhilKnight (talk) 01:50, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

• It is obvious that user INic knows how Internet works and has taken his measures not to be exposed. Look at the facts I mention here: Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/INic. It is obvious that INic is using Perswapish to support his opinion. He needed so much this support because he has been warned for 3RR and has been blocked for editing war. User Perswapish was the one who reverted my edit the last time instead of INic who had done the same several times in the past. Also, in the same page, who is this user Tkuvho who all of a sudden cares to support INic the exact same day that admin Drmies decided that the two users have "same edits, same writing style"? Is it normal for an unrelated user like Tkuvho to "request that these blocks be lifted immediately"? Also compare that request with the latest comment made by INic here: "Please unblock Perswapish immediately". Caramella1 (talk) 06:26, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

• Haha there is no limit to the conspiracy theory poor Caramella has created in his mind. According to him every editor with a normally working brain is a different incarnation of me! Should I be upset or flattered by this conspiracy theory? Haha I don't know. Apparently Caramella thinks that just knowing some basic facts about Internet is enough to magically orchestrating random people around the world to support "my case". I can understand how 'knowledge' must seem like magic to a person like Caramella, but trust me, I'm not a magician Caramella. People with normally working brains will often have coherent views and that is a kind of 'magic' you should encounter in your normal life every day. And to care about other fellow humans, even humans we don't know, is a feature all normal humans share. At least in my part of the world. In particular fellow humans that are treated unjust which is the case here. In fact, Wikipedia wouldn't work at all if normal humans only cared for themselves and their closest relatives as you do. What really worries me is how administrators so easily buys into your lies and conspiracy theories. They should know better. First they bought your lie that I outed your work place, and now they seem to buy into this totally hilarious conspiracy theory of yours. iNic (talk) 09:00, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

• INic, you don't fool anyone with your speeches. I think that Wikipedia's administrators are convinced that you control Perswapish's account but they unblocked you because they couldn't prove it. Caramella1 (talk) 17:53, 25 October 2014 (UTC)
  • Please User:Caramella1 refrain from disruptive and abusive behavior since it may lead to your being blocked. Tkuvho (talk) 17:54, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Perswapish unblock request

I have added my support to Perswapish's latest unblock request. You might like to add yours. Martin Hogbin (talk) 00:59, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!

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Two envelopes problem

I made an edit to Two envelopes problem based on a problem I identified on how readers would be mislead. I justified this change on Talk:Two envelopes problem. While my talk page thread necessarily discusses details of the paradox, I'm not making an argument about the problem specifically; it identifies how the article doesn't correctly summarize the sources, and my justification of the edit shouldn't be removed from the talk page. If you're going to revert the change then please to provide sources for the text that's on there. The current paragraph has no sources and is not encyclopedic. Awwright (talk) 23:40, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

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