Because the order of a stack of DVDs is considerably more fragile than the order of a static list of items on a webpage. The next person to receive the stack of DVDs and make the decision will not necessarily receive them in the same order. That was the whole point of describing the choice as selecting from a stack of DVDs.
(Late to the party, but what the heck.) Rather than a stack, a good trick to avoid the tip-off might have been to describe the set of movies as “a scattered mess of DVDs in a box; in no particular order, they are...”
This might be hindsight bias, but I’m pretty sure that if I were approaching this problem from the outside, and the author said “by the way, don’t use the order in which it’s presented here”, this would immediately draw my attention to the general idea of ordering procedures.
Well, yes, but as addressed in the rot13 block, I couldn’t emphasise that without offering a substantial clue as to my procedure of choice.
I could perhaps have phrased it as “you are handed a stack of DVDs with these titles: pick one”.
I pick the uppermost one, of course.
I can’t tell if this is sarcasm.
It’s not, why wouldn’t that have worked?
Because the order of a stack of DVDs is considerably more fragile than the order of a static list of items on a webpage. The next person to receive the stack of DVDs and make the decision will not necessarily receive them in the same order. That was the whole point of describing the choice as selecting from a stack of DVDs.
(Late to the party, but what the heck.) Rather than a stack, a good trick to avoid the tip-off might have been to describe the set of movies as “a scattered mess of DVDs in a box; in no particular order, they are...”
I will probably adopt something like this in future iterations of this exercise.
You said that, but I don’t accept it. All that does is tell us not to use the SUPER-obvious Schelling point of ‘the first one’.
This might be hindsight bias, but I’m pretty sure that if I were approaching this problem from the outside, and the author said “by the way, don’t use the order in which it’s presented here”, this would immediately draw my attention to the general idea of ordering procedures.
The idea of finding an ordering procedure is also raised by saying that we’re seeking a Schelling point.