I was accused of robbing a bank today

I also did all this running on around 4 hours of sleep. I'm tired now.

Did you get a chub when you eye-molested the cripple?

Nah, I actually tried my hardest not to look.

This blog disappoints. I demand explanation.

Yeah, care to elaborate a little?

Sounds like you had fun.

What can you tell us about the dog?

Sexy feeb pics or I can't jerk off.

details later

Okay, I was walking somewhere from my friend's house (after just smoking a j of powerful weed), and the location I was headed towards is right across from the bank in town (the library). So I was walking down the sidewalk, headphones on, blazed out of my skull and I suddenly see a car go whipping by right beside myself. Then another. And a third one. And suddenly there were cars everywhere, and tons of cars in the parking lots trying to get out, it was like a beehive of people. And they were all so close.

Then I stopped walking and stood by a telephone poll to wait for tge traffic to slow down, and it just wouldn't (well, so I thought; everything felt rather...slow), so I started shuffling around like a madman until I realized that I was standing [I]right in the middle of the fucking intersection for the bank and the road. [/I So, naturally, I got the fuck out of there (as I saw a big ol' pickemup truck turning towards me) and jolted back up to the safety of the sidewalk.

Just then, I looked at the streets and there were no cars to be seen. So I jolted over to the library, but decided I was way to high to deal with the librarian, and figured I'd just walk to my other friend's house, since I was on my way there anyways.

So on my way there the cops pulled over, telling me that there was a report of suspiscious from someone with a black hat and "some kind of bag" (guitar case without an actual guitar in it) down near the bank/library.

I told them I hadn't done anything wrong and they started asking questions for a solid 5 minutes about my age, for my passport, asking whether I worked or not, where my guitar was, what I was doing, where I was going, and finally If I was planning on robbing a bank. It was especially terrifying because I had a bong in the bag and $40 worth or marijuana in my front pocket, and when they first pulled over I (being quite stoned) automatically assumed "oh my god the cops are busting me they'll know I'm stoned I'm going to jail to get buttraped", but fortunately they had no idea.

I don't think I should walk around town stoned anymore. At least not alone.

Who cares, *what about the dog*?

What were you listening to?

Oh, they knew you were stoned.

The dog was my friend's crazy puppy.

I was listening to this.

Asking you if you are planning to rob a bank must be the stupidest question I've ever heard a policeman say. People who say "yes" are less likely to be telling the truth than people who say "no." So it's better to arrest someone who says "no." But you are still almost certainly going to arrest an innocent person when you do. So what is the utility of the question?

To watch the reaction, I suppose.

Your logic is unsound. Clearly you need to learn more about Bayesian Probability.

That's what I used. The proportion of people who are actually planning to rob a bank is very small. Of those, the number who are both smart enough to plan such a robbery yet stupid enough to tell a police officer who asks is even smaller, and perhaps non-existent. And it is almost certainly smaller than the proportion of the population who will offer false confessions (there's even a mental disorder that compels the sufferer to admit to things they haven't done). I submit that there are more such people than there are stupidly truthful criminals. So those who say say "yes" are almost certainly lying and those who say "no" are almost certainly telling the truth. But there would be a greater proportion of liars in the "no" category than truth-tellers in the "yes" category.

Okay, I think I misinterpretted your sentence 'So it's better to arrest someone who says "no."' as suggesting that they should be arrested, rather than a comparitive statement that it's better to arrest someone who says "No" than someone who says "Yes".

My apologies.

your apologies, Nate. your apologies.

i have no idea what you two are on about.

No one answered my question. Sigh.

We were discussing the difference between the frequentist and Bayes views on probability. One example of the difference is this webcomic.

Or I could explain Bayes probability with an example. Say there's a certain virus that 0.5% of the population is infected with (therefore probability of 0.005 that any one person has it). There's a test for the virus that is very accurate; 99% of people with the virus will get a positive result and 5% of people without the virus will also get a positive result (and thus will need to be retested to clear up whether they're infected or not).

Say you get tested and the result is positive. What is the probability that you are infected with the virus?

The naive way of working it out would be to say that it's 95%, given that there's just a 5% chance of a false positive. But actually, you need to also take in to account that the virus is really quite rare and thus include the likelihood of actually being infected (small number) multiplied by the probability of a true positive result (large number). The actual probability is 9.05%.

I won't go in to the maths here. This page goes in to more detail.

thats actually very interesting.

Force that enthusiasm, MA!