Technology

2043 readers

2 users here now

Post articles or questions about technology

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

894

Ignore all previous instructions is the new Bobby Tables (midwest.social)

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

105 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Because it’s just picking a selection of numbers that humans commonly use, and those happen to be the most statistically common ones, for some reason.

The reason is probably dumb, like people picking a common fraction (half or a third) and then fuzzing it a little to make it "more random". Is the third place number close to but not quite 25 or 75?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Its a bit more complicated but here's a cool video on the topic https://youtu.be/d6iQrh2TK98

[–] [email protected] -1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Ok, that's interesting, but you amusingly picked the wrong number in the original comment, picking 34 rather than 37.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

I did not pick any number. That was my first comment in the thread

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

idk the third place number off the top of my head, but that might be the case, although you would have to do some really weird data collection in order to get that number.

I think it's just something fundamentally pleasing about the number itself that the human brain latches onto. I suspect it has something to do with primes, or "pseudo" primes, numbers that seem like primes, but aren't since they're probably over represented in our head among "random" numbers even though primes are perfectly predictable.