Aaronson Oracle: the history and reproduction of coin-guessing machines
What happened
A Hacker News front-page post on October 14 traces the coin-guessing machines built at Bell Labs. Engineer David Hagelbarger made SEER in the early 1950s, predicting the opponent's move from three yes-or-no facts and counters with a cutoff of plus or minus three. Claude Shannon, in the same building, then built a simpler version that beat SEER using about half as many relays. In 2020 a team in Sibiu reproduced both machines in software; Shannon's version won 55.8 to 44.2.
Written by AI from the coverage · updated 1 hour ago
Coverage
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- Hacker News front pageThe Aaronson Oracle
贝尔实验室工程师 David Hagelbarger 在 1950 年代初造出猜硬币机器 SEER，用三个是非事实和正负三截止的计数器预测对手出拳；同楼的 Claude Shannon 随后造出更简单的版本，用约一半继电器击败了 SEER，2020 年 Sibiu 团队软件复现后 Shannon 版本以 55.8 比 44.2 胜出。
Heat over time
Not enough continuous observations to draw a trend yet.