Sleeping Beauty Problem

Sleeping Beauty Problem

Release Date:  //
Country of Release: 
Length: 
MPAA: 
Medium:  Paradox
Genre: 
Release Message:  A probability problem that can be correctly answered as one half or one third depending on how the question is approached.
Description:  The Sleeping Beauty problem is a puzzle in probability theory and formal epistemology in which an ideally rational epistemic agent is to be woken once or twice according to the toss of a coin, and asked her degree of belief for the coin having come up heads. The problem was originally formulated in unpublished work by Arnold Zuboff (this work was later published as "One Self: The Logic of Experience"[1]), followed by a paper by Adam Elga[2] but is based on earlier problems of imperfect recall and the older "paradox of the absentminded driver". Sleeping Beauty volunteers to undergo the following experiment and is told all of the following details: On Sunday she will be put to sleep. Once or twice, during the experiment, Beauty will be awakened, interviewed, and put back to sleep with an amnesia-inducing drug that makes her forget that awakening. A fair coin will be tossed to determine which experimental procedure to undertake: if the coin comes up heads, Beauty will be awakened and interviewed on Monday only. If the coin comes up tails, she will be awakened and interviewed on Monday and Tuesday. In either case, she will be awakened on Wednesday without interview and the experiment ends. Any time Sleeping Beauty is awakened and interviewed she will not be able to tell which day it is or whether she has been awakened before. During the interview Beauty is asked: "What is your credence now for the proposition that the coin landed heads?".