Talk:Boy or girl paradox

message: The sources that call the Tuesday Boy problem ambiguous refer to the wording "one of them is a boy", the ambiguity being about whether one should assume that "one of them" is fixed before asking what sex that child is. This ambiguity is no longer present when the problem is formulated the way it is here, as "at least one of them is a boy". Someone seems to have changed the wording of the problem to eliminate ambiguities (another ambiguity being whether "one" means "exactly one" or "at least one", where the assumption "at least one" jars with the assumption that "two children" means "exactly two"), but the claim that the wording is ambiguous is still in the article, which is inconsistent and quite confusing.--2.204.226.15 (talk) 08:56, 3 August 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Which sources are you referring to exactly? I don't see many sources about the Tuesday Boy problem that are referenced in the article here except Falk's, which is good, mainly an excellent discussion, but can't possibly be represented at length and in mathematical depth in this article. It also seems to focus on making very explicit the procedure by which the probability experiment/process can be described (or what kind of probabilistic filters are applied to the information, which is itself of course relevant information), not to leave room for ambiguity towards the calculations and to make sure all relevant information is clearly available and how variations in them can change the problem and the result. It doesn't seem to mention the wording and ambiguity you refer to though. I mainly agree with what you're saying, but on the subject of interpretation I've already had a very interesting, but far too long discussion here, even if more could be said this might not be the place if it's not immediately relevant for writing the article. Perhaps we should review this a bit though, focussing on the representation of the sources if what you're saying is right. I do indeed seem to remember an older discussion here about the original wording, it might be (if I recall correctly, I may be off) that Gardner's version was considered to have a 'grammatical error' because of saying 'the other one' without necessarily clearly specifying 'one' first, that might have led to a clear reformulation here on wikipedia in which 'at least' slipped in to reduce ambiguity, which I'd say is a good wording, but as you point out since ambiguity and wording are an important part of the discussion and history of this problem, we should probably point those out a bit more clearly and explicitly, citing exactly as originally worded in each work what their formulations were. Still, since I can't see what sources you are referring to specifically now, if you could tell me which ones you mean, we could look into it better to see if we could improve it. (Although for your note on 'another ambiguity', in mathematical terminology the distinction is made for absolute clarity, but given the context interpreting it as 'exactly one' would make the problem trivial and reduce it to the basic assumptions, while in the other reading it is solvable too, where not reading 'two children' as 'exactly two' would make the problem wildly underdetermined and unsolvable without additional information or assumptions, so I'm not so sure it's an entirely reasonable reading of the problem to claim these elements are truly that ambiguous. But of course that is up for debate and precisely the claimed ambiguity problem that remains.) I'm not sure it is entirely inconsistent in the article on wikipedia as it stands, because here and there it already uses or refers to different wordings of the problem. If you mean by 'inconsistent' that not just one wording is used for the whole wikipedia article, I'm afraid that can't be avoided as the problem has known multiple variations with rewordings in various different sources and so it is relevant to the problem and the claimed ambiguity that at different times and for different variants, different words have been used with varying degrees of ambiguity. As long as at the appropriate place in the article, the corresponding version is referenced or written, this isn't inconsistent but a correct representation. MathsWolf (talk) 07:08, 4 August 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ambiguity doesn't refer to the given wording 

message: According to Eliezer Yudkowsky, in the correct version of this question, you ask "Is at least one a boy?"
In a malformed version, the person tells you, without prompting, "At least one is a boy." This gives a different answer. cagliost (talk) 21:38, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Yudkowsky's version 

message: The last sentence of the lead currently says that "[The] answer [1/2] is intuitive if the question leads the reader to believe that there are two equally likely possibilities for the sex of the second child". However, to me it is not clear what "the second child" means. The question talks about "at least one" and "both" children, not "the first" and "the second". (At least one of [the children] is a boy. What is the probability that both children are boys?) Thus, the last sentence of the lead does not seem to be properly worded in relation to the problem. Any input about the best way to fix this? —St.Nerol (talk, contribs) 10:56, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that there is reason to object to the old wording, but I don't think the new wording fixes things. To understand why the old sentence was written the way it was, one would most likely need to read references 2, 8, and 9, which is something I haven't done. If I had to guess at the meaning of the old wording, it would be something like, "The answer 1/2 is intuitive if the question leads the reader to believe that there is an identifiable child whose sex is not yet determined, with equal probabilities for the sex of that child."  With the new wording I am unable to guess what is meant. Usually equal probabilities of boy and girl is an assumption that holds for children in general in both versions of the problem, so the new wording must be saying more than that. But I can't figure out what. Will Orrick (talk) 19:08, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

text: I have reverted the change until a proper review of the three cited sources can be done. Will Orrick (talk) 05:08, 14 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  "the second child"