Extrasensory perception?

[Elixir]

Sure but I thought you had discounted luck as different from a "good guess".



So, what else would be the paradox here? You don't say.



Again, the solution is less likely to be in the 3 than in the 27, unless the expert is not an expert or the non-expert is just lucky.

You may have a point, but you haven't said what it is.



I don't see why the expert wouldn't have the advantage even in the short run. Come on, spill the beans! What is it?
EB

Explaining a joke to someone who didn't get it, is seldom worth the effort.

Well, I think you messed up the joke aspect by stipulating in the first case that the actual solution was one of the three available to the non-expert. If that is the case then ... yeah. But of course if there are 27 discrete solutions corresponding to the 27 causes, and only three of them are available to the non-expert, there only a 1 in 9 chance that any of his three solutions are correct - IOW if the non-expert gets it right, it's lucky.
I tend to think of luck though, as a word we use to describe networks of causes and effects of which we are only marginally - if at all - aware.

 

[Speakpigeon]

I don't see why the expert wouldn't have the advantage even in the short run. Come on, spill the beans! What is it?
EB

Explaining a joke to someone who didn't get it, is seldom worth the effort.

Well, I think you messed up the joke aspect by stipulating in the first case that the actual solution was one of the three available to the non-expert. If that is the case then ... yeah. But of course if there are 27 discrete solutions corresponding to the 27 causes, and only three of them are available to the non-expert, there only a 1 in 9 chance that any of his three solutions are correct - IOW if the non-expert gets it right, it's lucky.
I tend to think of luck though, as a word we use to describe networks of causes and effects of which we are only marginally - if at all - aware.

Nah, you don't get it. It-was-a-joke.

A good one, apparently.
EB