this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2026
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I dont think that works. If i try the 5 ingredient set and get sick, i gained no information about ingrediences 6,7,8,9,10 (if there are 10 ingredients in total). If next i try set 3 and get sick, i have made 2 tries and still have 0 information. If ingredient 1 makes me sick i will need log(n) tries until i try the set that only contains ingredient 1. After that i have only one point of information because everything i tried so far was tainted by ingredient 1. I have to try everything again.
Anytime you get sick you gain no information. If you are very lucky and ingedient 1-x are all harmless, then you will eliminate multiple at once. But if 1 is harmless, 2 makes you sick, and the next 1000 ingredients are harmelss you will still have to try log(1002) times to eliminate ingredient 2 and then you know nothing about 3-1003.
Wait why not?
Maybe we're not thinking of the same scenario here. I thought we were searching for exactly one ingredient that makes you sick. In which case this result would tell you the ones outside the set are all fine.