this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2023
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[–] Glide@lemmy.ca 15 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Well, I guess OPs point is demonstrated. People will in fact argue about it.

What you're trying to present has multiple holes, but only one matters: you're not paying attention to the question that's being asked. You can say first, second, alpha, beta, Leslie, whatever you want to assign the child in question as, but the question only asks you the gender of a singular child. The door opening child doesn't matter, because it isn't part of the question. No one asked what gender that child is. No one asked what the odds they have a female child is. It just isn't a part of the question.

Yes, I referred to it as the second child because the question that was asked happens to have a child in it and ask you about another. Because we're communicating in a hilariously precise language, we have to say "the other child". But that doesn't make the door opening child a part of the equation. The question could be "there is a child in a box. What are the odds the child is female? Oh, it has a brother by the way." Cool, who cares, the sibling wasn't a part of the question.

The Monty Hall problem spreads multiple outcomes across multiple choices and then eliminates one. The outcomes and options have a relation. This question just asks you about a singular variable with two possible outcomes and throws around an unrelated red herring.