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Posted

The answer would be no, if it said only, but because of the reason stated by Skwish-E, there is no known solution.

 

I remember hearing an "impossible" riddle once, that no one had ever found the answer to yet, but I forget what it is.

Posted

You'd have failed at your objective and succeeded at failing. You aren't trying to fail everything, merely a specific objective that you designate beforehand. If you fail your predetermined objective, then you will have succeeded in your goal to fail but failed in your primary objective.

 

Understand?

Posted
Originally Posted By: Sylae
Riddle: What if Pinocchio said "My nose will grow now"?


This is not a statement of fact but a prediction. Pinocchio can be wrong without lying.

If he said "My nose is growing now," when it wasn't, that would clearly be a lie, which would then cause his nose to grow. The order of events is crucial.

Someone should tell Pinocchio that anytime his nose is growing, he can stop it immediately with that same statement.
Posted

Just so you know, the answer is infinity. So all of you were wrong.

 

Click to reveal..
Just kidding
Click to reveal..
Stop opening me, or something bad's gonna happen.
Click to reveal..
I warned you. nyan-cat-image.jpg
Posted

The guy laughs while stating that he laughs when he lies. But 'he laughs when he lies' only means that, whenever he lies, he also laughs.

 

The guy hasn't said that he ONLY laughs when he lies. So it could be that whenever he lies, he laughs, but he also sometimes laughs when telling the truth, in which case he would be telling the truth this time.

 

Or it could be that he sometimes laughs when he lies, but not always. In which case his statement, that he always laughs when he lies, would be a lie; this time would happen to be one of those times when he does laugh while lying.

 

So his statement could consistently be either true, or false. It's not tightly enough formulated to yield a paradox.

 

 

Posted

Actually, it is quite possible to make an untrue statement without lying. To lie requires intent to deceive. For example, if you ask a man how much he weighs, and he weighed himself on an inaccurate scale this morning, he tells you what he believes to be the truth, but he is incorrect. He is not lying, just misinformed. If, however, he understates his weight by 10 pounds from what the scale told him, he is lying, even if what he says is the truth, because the scale was heavy by 10 pounds.

 

A true conundrum is the following statement.

 

This statement is false.

Posted
Originally Posted By: Karoka
There are two swords in a room locked room. I have both of them. In order for you to get your sword, you have to beat me in a sword fight. And you can only hit me with your sword.


You are in for a bad day, my friend.
Posted
Originally Posted By: Karoka
There are two swords in a room locked room. I have both of them. In order for you to get your sword, you have to beat me in a sword fight. And you can only hit me with your sword.

Is this like the one where you ask the guy why he keeps hitting himself?
Posted
Originally Posted By: Darth Ernie
if you try to fail and succeed, what have you done?

Failing is not really something you can do in itself. You need an aim that you can fail to achieve. You can intend to fail to achieve it, in which case you succeed at your goal of failure and fail at your goal of whatever else.

For example, if you work for a company manufacturing widgets and are bribed by a rival company to sabotage production, you can fail to make your production quota for the month and succeed at failure.

If you tried to fail and failed, you would succeed at your initial objective and make all your widgets.

—Alorael, who thinks the obvious solution is to bring in another sword and win by disarming. There's no hitting people with swords involved. Challenging, but not impossible.
Posted

It's a succes at whatever you failed to fail at.

 

—Alorael, who thinks this makes much more sense if you make it less abstract. At work you are given the task of bringing coffee for a meeting. You don't want to become a coffee provider, so you set out to deliberately mess up the coffee so that you won't be asked again. You bring too little coffee, all of it cold. You have therefore failed to provide coffee and succeeded at failing to provide coffee.

Posted
Originally Posted By: Trenton Uchiha, rebel servile.
-_- THIS IS WAY TOO CONFUSING!

But yes skwish-E thats what happens when you failed to succeed at failing.
If I define a function f(*) that returns "Success" if the argument fails, and a function s(*) that returns "Success" if the argument succeeds, then what would happen if I infinity composed f(s(f(s(...(Success)...)))?
Posted

Oh my god. If you all can get anymore confusing, im going to cry.

 

Originally Posted By: Skwish-E
"However, you would have thought that I would have guessed that you would have known that I knew the powder's origin, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you!"

 

I know thats from a movie I watched, I just dont remember the name. It was about this guy who was supposedly killed by pirates, but comes and saves this princess who he loved that got kidnapped?

Posted
Originally Posted By: Dantius
If I define a function f(*) that returns "Success" if the argument fails, and a function s(*) that returns "Success" if the argument succeeds, then what would happen if I infinity composed f(s(f(s(...(Success)...)))?


Your brain would explode. That is what we call a BAD IDEA. Like dividing by zero. Please don't do it.
Posted
Originally Posted By: Skwish-E
Your brain would explode. That is what we call a BAD IDEA. Like dividing by zero. Please don't do it.


What would happen if I divided by zero whilst crossing the streams?
Posted
Originally Posted By: Nikki.
Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity
Marshmallow supernova.


Well that doesn't sound awful at all!


A giant marshmallow man didn't sound so bad either, but look how that ended up!
Posted
Originally Posted By: Triumph
If exploding turnips are worth three kilotons, how much mousse would moose and squirrel sequester when he who is one is none?

Since exploding turnips are worth 3e6 kg, and since the moose is much closer to one ton in mass than the squirrel, the moose is none and the squirrel has a net worth of 3.33e-8 exploding turnips (for a squirrel mass of .1 kg). Assuming a mousse density of 2e3 kg/m^3 (2 tons per cubic meter), the cost of mousse is 6.67e-4 exploding turnips per cubic meter, and so the squirrel can simplistically afford 5e-5 m^3 of mousse, or 50 mL.

If, however, the moose and squirrel have all year to prepare for winter, they can greatly increase their stockpile by growing and harvesting turnips during the summer. Assuming that the turnips are Congolese (rather than Mongolian), they should grow to maturity in about 10^-8 seconds and produce exactly 8 seeds. The period of the cycle is therefore dominated by the time required for planting and harvesting. If we assume that the moose and squirrel live in an area with a growing season of (pi/2)*10^6 s=1.57e6 s, can plant a turnip seed in 10 seconds, and can harvest a turnip in 100 seconds, a cycle with n turnips is completed in 110*n seconds and increases the number of turnips by a factor of 8. The initial condition is then 3.33e-8 turnips. I compute that 14 harvests could be completed, yielding a final crop of 18325.2 turnips. This, in turn, is sufficient to buy 2.75e7 m^3 of mousse. (Note that I have not taken into account here that some number of turnips would have to be spent to build the storage facilities for the mousse.)

EDIT: This reminds me of something I'll have to do tomorrow. I'll give you 6 and a half guesses what. (If you try to take any more guesses I will have to develop a suitable punishment. I'm thinking a curse on your ancestors for seven generations into the past.)
Posted
Originally Posted By: Niemand
EDIT: This reminds me of something I'll have to do tomorrow. I'll give you 6 and a half guesses what. (If you try to take any more guesses I will have to develop a suitable punishment. I'm thinking a curse on your ancestors for seven generations into the past.)

Ooh, ooh, is it the--

Aw, now Dikiyoba only has six guesses left.
Posted
Originally Posted By: Neimand
EDIT: This reminds me of something I'll have to do tomorrow. I'll give you 6 and a half guesses what. (If you try to take any more guesses I will have to develop a suitable punishment. I'm thinking a curse on your ancestors for seven generations into the past.)
Uh...uh...I got it!

You have to wake up!
Posted
Originally Posted By: Karoka
Originally Posted By: Neimand
EDIT: This reminds me of something I'll have to do tomorrow. I'll give you 6 and a half guesses what. (If you try to take any more guesses I will have to develop a suitable punishment. I'm thinking a curse on your ancestors for seven generations into the past.)
Uh...uh...I got it!

You have to wake up!


Prepare to have your mind blown.

Or, prepare to be really disappointed. That's more like the SW way, to be fair.
Posted
Originally Posted By: Niemand
pure genius


Well, done Niemand! I knew that of all the forum-dwellers, I could count on you to solve a dastardly problem. Now just translate your entire proof into Akkadian (without using your thumbs) to receive full credit.

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