Bartosz Milewski on Nostr: I postulate that our brains have a shock-detector. The shock value of a sure thing is ...
I postulate that our brains have a shock-detector. The shock value of a sure thing is zero, so it doesn't even register. The shock value of an impossible thing is infinite. To accommodate a wide range of shocks, the response of the shock detector is logarithmic. So for an event of probability \(p\) we register the shock value of \(sh = log (1/p)\).
Published at
2024-07-21 13:11:43Event JSON
{
"id": "ea33faa9e242ef163b1ad231a34a35ec19e44d87edf13e6546c15c5de3d70eb5",
"pubkey": "a60a88374d8e1cf092c7ea93662aa784fb33b3e75be7725017032e6929ebc5d5",
"created_at": 1721567503,
"kind": 1,
"tags": [
[
"proxy",
"https://mathstodon.xyz/users/BartoszMilewski/statuses/112824647937162222",
"activitypub"
]
],
"content": "I postulate that our brains have a shock-detector. The shock value of a sure thing is zero, so it doesn't even register. The shock value of an impossible thing is infinite. To accommodate a wide range of shocks, the response of the shock detector is logarithmic. So for an event of probability \\(p\\) we register the shock value of \\(sh = log (1/p)\\).",
"sig": "8b10792d2dc900817c20101756a29829d8582b11e3b1b03016bf3a3406646eb566b7079b3fc67fc6795cd1cbfc2faf6fb5bbcabbeaf9040dfd24231d6047d94f"
}