h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: An Essay commenting on some Observations regarding the Bounds of the Doctrine of Chances in respect to natural plausibility Judgments. - A8556780
Author: Gardener - U196976

Christmas time being plentiful, I wrote an Essay regarding the probability theory and its scope of applicability. In acting towards this end, I persued a balanced approach encorporating an endevour to prepare a passable encyclopediac entry exploring recent research in the field of bounded rationality(in its conjunction with probability judgements), at the same time I took the opportunity to encorporate my own judgements and speculations, which I do not feel in the least reprehensible on account that paradoxes which I adduce have many dimensions to them, some of them evoking metaphysical thoughts, not exactly verifiable by outside experements. Far from being didactic, I hope that my exposition of the topic, which has been occupuing my thoughts for a while, will be deemed worthy of being submitted to the consideration of our h2g2 audience,on which account I beg the aceptance of this article to be included among peer-reviewable Entries.

Hi Gardener

You need to shorten or split the title, so we don't have to keep scrolling across to read each lineI'm afraid I can't read your work until you have done this, sorry.

yep, at the moment it is a bit hard to read, I promise to have abetter look though when I'm on a quicker computer.

It would be a lot more friendly to readers if you could just stick a line between each paragraph. Helps the eye keep track and doesn't overwhelm our poor little brains.

Is this you own work? The Linda section is very similar to parts of an entry here http://www.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/dok/full/gg/gghdwpb__/gghdwpb__.html (under Empirical Evidence for Two Systems of Reasoning) and other parts, at a brief scan, are extremely similar to other sources on the internet.

In general, I'd say that this is rather long and complex for the Edited Guide. You need to explain concepts in a way that a layperson would understand; though it's difficult to simplify complex concepts, I personally would find it hard to recommend this as I simply don't understand large parts of it.

I'm sure someone who knows the subject would be able to comment better on the content, but I feel a shorter entry in plain English would be more appropriate.

You may want to check out some other entries in the Edited Guide to see what sort of style you should aim for: you can use the <./>RandomEditedEntry</.> tool to get a broad look.

I hope you'll be back to edit this! As it stands this is a no-go in my opinion. It's virtually impossible for a non-expert to read or to follow - even though the ideas might be clear, you lose the general reader after the first three sentences.

A few succint and very general comments / guidelines / thoughts that might help you:

Who is your readership?

Is h2g2 the right place to put this - in this form?

Break the Entry down into three (or more) Entries.

Write an introduction. Tell the reader why this should be read.

We don't need insets or keyword lists.

Good luck,

SAUSAGE

I am thanking you for a multitude of your comments here.
I have a graph to add on to my Entry but I do not know how to make it fit in with GuideML format.Would please somebody advise?
This topic which is researched here is a complex topic (indeed, the problem we explore are the judgemental operations of the Mind, and we have to do it with our own minds (but as we see not all minds are similitudious) - so there is exactly a loop in reasoning), and some difficulity in understanding is not really avoidable.To assist in rendering ideas as much pellucid as possible I made a number of footnotes, but I am also unable to include them in the Entry (they simply refuse to go in plain text format- once again a plea for help).
I have thought of breaking the essay into manageable chapters, when the diffuculty of presenting the issues has become overburdening- that is why I introduced certain "insets". But people here say they won't do.
It is of course displeasing to observe that my presentation is too obscure. I for my part did much to circumvent the tedium by enlivening the narrative with paradoxes (one of which I can't illustrate because the picture I made doesn't go in). and some things that are unclear at the outset are becoming settled in explanation in the end. I want to know more what is exactly unclear.(For example, if it is the terminology I suggest that I can insert links to explain terms- More than that: I suggest that people not familiar with basic aspects of probability theory familiarize themselves with it through Wikipedia, which has exeptionally good coverage of probalility and Bayesian Reasoning. If my reasoning is unclear, I own that I myself (and nobody in the world as yet) am unable to present the ideas in more formal way. If someone feels that he can expound some view here expresed or issue raised in more clear and engaging way, I will greatfully accept the cooperation and allow joint authorship (that is why I had foresight enough to write the entry in first person multiple ("we") voice).
So I need more feedback of a more constructive nature.

It is also a bit thick that people are here that feel it decent to accuse me of plagiarism (not even reading the entry to its end) for I went to utmost length to furnish references to various sources that I used to refer to over the course of writing (and made the source list at the end). Particularly, I gave a link to the excellent on-line library of bounded rationality sources from the Max Planck Instutute on Human Development(which houses many articles which I utilized in my writing- and the link provided to me as the reproach (regarding Sloman) is included among this library).
I take this opportunity to affirm that my entry is original, I have not previously come across an article or a book which deals with the issue by standing on "both sides of the line". The problem with the standard dissection of the natural plausibility judgements is that many people that apply themselves to writing about it are too zealous in experimenting (on others) and do not want to explore their metaphysics and the foundations of the normative theory, against which they contend.In my view it is much more fruitfull to start from the axiomizations of CPT and how they relate to real-life situations that environ the applications of the CPT and then proceed towards drawing the line (or Bounds) in the CPT applicability. And nobody presumes that those bounds do not exist, so many efforts at arquing about the consequnces of Tversky and Kahneman experimentations that proceed in this vein along delienating only the contrary territory, are often misspent, for it is much more important where to draw the boundaries, than to wax at length about affirmation that CPT is not universal (which is clear enough). That is why I devote many words to clarification of CPT Axioms, and run the risk of listening many a written harrangue that what I do is even more obscure and useless.To justify myself, I specifically refrain from using the Boolean notation and symbolism and opt for using clear words. (definitions of which can be obtained from Wikepedia or any school book about the CPT). In this I assume that many a British person that attended a secondary school is well familiar with many aspects of the probability theory, for, as I am informed, the CPT theory is now within the curriculum of many school math programs.
I also defend the "Keywords" section of my article as an excellent way of giving the brief and concise introduction to the coverage of the topic which I provide.

<./>GuideML-Clinic</.>

and also please split your title so we don't have to scroll across the page to read every line, thanks.

Like this:

An Essay commenting on some Observations regarding the Bounds of theDoctrine of Chances in respect to natural plausibility Judgments.

Gardener, you seem confused about why the material is a bit too technical, so I'll try to elaborate.

First of all, the people who visit h2g2 and read the entries could be anyone - they're not necessarily academics or specialists in a particular field (though some certainly could be). I, for my part, am 16 years old - I haven't had the experience of study and of accumulating the sort of knowledge and level of understanding that you have. I don't even understand what the title means. I've just used the <./>RandomEditedEntry</.> function. Here are the first five entries I've come up with:

A1118288 Dirt Road Etiquette
A660232 'The Wicker Man' - the Film
A356979 The Aces Bar and Grill, Sacramento, California, USA
A487613 Iceland
A193961 Hobbits

As you can see, each one says in the title exactly what it's going to be about, without using technical terms. Having not studied in your field, I don't know what the Doctrine of Chances is or what natural plausibility judgements may concern. You need to assume that everyone's like me in that respect and explain every technical term you introduce.

Does that help at all?

Ok, just so we know what we're talking about here:

From AskOxford (http://www.askoxford.com/results/?view=dict&field-12668446=plagiarism&branch=13842570&textsearchtype=exact&sortorder=score%2Cname):

plagiarize

/playjriz/ (also plagiarise)

• verb take (the work or idea of someone else) and pass it off as one’s own.

— DERIVATIVES plagiarism noun plagiarist noun plagiarizer noun.

— ORIGIN from Latin plagiarius ‘kidnapper’, from Greek plagion ‘a kidnapping’.


The following paragraph appears on the website I quoted, and in your entry:

"Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in antinuclear demonstrations.

Which of these two alternatives is more probable?

Linda is a bank teller. (T)

Linda is a bank teller and active in the feminist movement. (T&F)

A majority of subjects -- some 80% to 90% -- choose T&F as more probable. Tversky & Kahneman argue that this is an error in reasoning: since the mathematical probability of a conjunction cannot be greater than that of one of its conjuncts, the correct answer is T instead. Their explanation of their subjects' behavior is that people seem not to reason by the laws of probability, and that they use similarity instead, a strategy termed the "representativeness heuristic." This similarity-based heuristic is considered by Sloman to be an element of the associative system, while explicit following of the conjunction rule is considered to be rule-based."


It is not 'thick' to ask the question 'is this your own work?' when "The copyright of this electronic version remains with the authors [Gerd Gigerenzer and Terry Regier] and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development". This is a fair question, as you must own the copyright to anything that gets published here.

In any case, the Scouts and other commenters here have raised entirely fair points about this rather obtuse work. Quite simply, if you don't try to address their points, this won't get picked. This is not an academic site; it's one where we presume a fairly basic level of understanding and work from there. You need to explain things to us properly; no-one is going to research keywords in order to be able to understand your entry. Simple as that.

I don't want to seem like we're ganging up on you here, Gardener, and I don't mean to injure your integrity or anything. But one thing being a student has taught me is that references can easily be forged (not that I've done it myself!). Also, some people don't really understand the difference between copying from a source and citing it, and restating the information from the source in their own words. This is why I (at least) have learnt to be cautious with regards to plagiarism.

Dear Sir that deems it beffiting to accuse me of plagiarism,
I indeed do not consider it charitable to accuse people of anything but sometimes one feels a disposition to 'shy a stone on every dog that barks'.Perhaps you are in this disposition yourself,not having an authority enough to exercise it in privite cicles and putting it up on public Billboards, and would fain induce me towards this same state of frenzy.
Moreover calling another person's work "obtuse" is nothing short of disgraceful (especially when you are not reading it to the end)and deserves uttermost reprehension on account of sheer lack of diplomacy in all it.
On the plus side, however, I checked the references today and acknowledge that this is indeed truthfull that I used that Comment on Sloman and forgot to give it a proper attribution, which I will proceed to amend.
Anyway, if you have to say anything constructive than do it (for example you can check the other references to ascertain my integrity and report the results), else, you would better refrain from picking at me in this deplorably foul-language and untolerable manner.
Specifically I myself assisted in staging Linda Experements,originally proposed by Kahneman&Tversky,and come to believe that they are singularly ill-concieved,and are not susceptible of interpretation in the manner traditionally presented in all cited works of heuristics-and-biases program, but only explainable in terms of Transcendential Psycology approach (see http://www.trans-psych.org.uk for brief outline), which I will endevour to elucidate, when I again will have time enough.

Dear Marchioness,
Thank you for such flattering comments about my entry. Specifically I assure you that my understanding of the topic is quite on par with yours.The point is that this field is such a magnificient field of exploration, where so little is done, and what is being done is so rule-based and inadequate that it hardly furthers the understanding of what it tries to explain.
I specifically think that school-goers are much better in grasping the essense of those problems, which I expound, for their understanding is not yet much clogged by following hard-and-fast heuristics, and much more creative on account of this.
Something to answer your questions:
The Doctrine of Chances, another name for probability theory, was developed in 17th century starting from the ground-breaking correspondence between Pascal and Fermat. But we used to judge about uncertain events even before this!- and made valuable judgements at that.
I hope that you will find your time to review my entry further and post a list of questions which you do not understand,I will certainly undertake to answer your comments, which are much more sweet and to- the- point than anything that I recieved of late.

Having read as much of this as my brain could stand (and all before my morning cup of tea... well done me!) I have to say that, speaking in my capacity as a Scout, I would not pick this as it stands.

You have failed to address most of the issues raised in this thread; the title's too long, the essay is hard to follow because it's not in paragraphs and you don't use layman's terms. I will say now, at the risk of coming across as too harsh, that I don't care one jot how complex the subject is if you cannot put it in layman's terms you severely jeapordise your chances of getting this Edited.

In my opinion this is not ready for Peer Review at this time.

Haven't got time to read it right through at the moment, but the topic is an interesting one.

I'll try to comment on the content later, but in terms of presentation it would be a good idea to break it up into several shorter entries with section headings, as this would be easier to read.

Also try to add some footnotes giving your references and possibly putting any actual quotations in .

Good luck

Noggin

Nearly first cup of tea time... I'll give it a proper going over in about 30 minutes.

I know I said this isn't ready for Peer Review, but to Hell with it... I'm gonna do it anyway (the day's first is helping restore my brain's higher functions, it's a British thing). I have put spelling and grammar corrections in capitals for clarity.

Firstly let's deal with the title... at the moment it's far too long a better one might be "The Doctrine of Chances and Natural Plausibility Judgements" it's a lot snappier while pretty much saying the same thing.

Everything from 'by Mr. A. Artemenkov' to the list of keywords can be dropped. The authorship is stated in the right-hand sidebar and we don't use keywords on h2g2.

You really should include an introductory paragraph or two describing what the Doctrine of Chances is. It'll make the rest of the Entry a lot easier to follow.

Regardless of whether you view it as plagiarism or simply quoting a source that is useful to the subject the bit about Linda is a breach of copyright laws and will prevent the Entry being picked. Why not invent your own similar situation?

As has been stated before the main body of the article should be broken down into sections and sub-sections

Marking out insets is pointless, h2g2 doesn't work like that.

Also you'd need to contact the Editors about the diagram you wish to put in. Unless it is absolutely essential to the understanding of the article they may not allow it.

The Monty Hall problem is dealt with here: A1138655 which is already in the Edited Guide, it would be more useful to include a link to the Entry and reduce your explanation of Monty Hall to the bare bones needed to follow it.

The conclusions are probably unnecessary. h2g2's Edited Guide is a light-hearted (yet solidly factual) encyclopaedia, not an academic journal. The Entry *really* needs to be either chopped in half or you need to brutally prune out a lot of it.

<>

Except I decided to leave the spelling and grammar corrections until the Entry has been presented in a more Hootoo-friendly format...

Note: Inserting graphs. While you cannot add graphics directly on this site, you can add a link to a graphic you prepared and put elsewhere. This has some advantages: a) It would help us (peer reviewers) already at this stage, b) it will always be there, and c) it would help the editors if (notabene: if) this makes it into the Edited Guide. You do it like this: "blah, blah, blah. The author of this Entry has prepared a graphic to illustrate all this: http:put_your_link_here.gif" Note: Peer Review Discussion. No-one is interested in losing a valuable and (from what I have read) eloquent writer. The topic seems interesting, and there *is* space in h2g2 for more 'obtuse' (to use the word that has been around) Entries (some of which I have written myself). That being said, I think that everyone in this thread is trying to help. At least that would be the intention of this thing. There are two important things that should be accomplished before we can move on: a) Gardener, the author of this Entry, has to acknowledge that people are having serious problems to follow this Entry. Consequently, he has to change this (some handy pointers have been given above - e.g. breaking the Entry down into more digestible chops, adhering to the Writing Guidelines - i.e. no keywords, no insets) The best thing for an Entry of this magnitude would be to have it written in GuideML, which is not all that difficult to learn, and which would give you the possibility to use footnotes and the like (if you are interested in that I could help you - just bop a note at my space). b) Us peers should try to help beyond just saying this Entry is (in its present form) not suitable for the Edited Guide. However, I think rioght now this has been done, and the ball is on Gardener's court. Good luck, SAUSAGE

I'm glad you accept that part of it was indeed taken from another site, Gardener.

I have read it to the end; hence my feeling that this is tough to read to a non-expert and therefore obtuse. With plainer language and some headers, I might well be able to understand this.

I don't see any foul language in my posts; I save my obscenities for the pub.

If you feel it necessary to start attacking me personally, please feel free to do so on my PS - U931109 - rather than on the PR thread; I really don't mind . I have simply pointed out that a section of your work appears on another, copyrighted site elsewhere on the internet and suggested some reasons why I feel this won't get through Peer Review - especially if you are unwilling to change any aspects of it.

Apart from that, I think Sausage has hit the nail on the head as usual.