Violence is always the answer
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The scenario usually says that “one only tells the truth” and “one only tells lies”. at this point it becomes a question of whether a truth and lie in one sentence is considered impossible
Yeah, it’s impossible to say one way or the other because the setup is underdefined and leaves a lot of room for ambiguity or loopholes.
On that note, don’t beat yourself up or consider yourself stupid because of that. Even though it’s questionable whether it would work or give them room to screw you, I think it was a good creative solution to the riddle that I’ve never seen before. If you came up with that on your own, I’d consider that a sign of good potential. Nurture and refine that, don’t try to beat it down to avoid being wrong ever. (Haha I really hope you’re not like 50 or that might come off as really condescending rather than encouraging).
Like, thinking about it more, I think it can be resolved by changing the “and” to an “or”, at least on the lying side. Though that would open up the truth side to be able to sneak in a lie while technically telling the truth. But there might be another adjustment that would close the loophole entirely and give a solution that doesn’t require a reference to the other guard’s answer.
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Alternate solution:
How can they both explain it when one only tells lies?
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But they would have to keep adjusting since they both have to answer acco4ding to what the other one says
The answer is stable because the liar will always say the bad door is safe and the truth teller will always say the safe door is safe, therefore the liar will always say that the truth teller will direct you to the danger door and the truth teller will tell you the same.
I tried to add some self-reference to the question to make a paradoxical answer but can’t see a wording that even causes something like “this statement is false”, at least not one about which door to pick.
Only ways I can think of start with the paradox right in the question. Like “If the other guard said, ‘this statement is false’, would you believe him?”
Sucks someone downvoted just for asking questions to better understand this less than straightforward thing. I’ve always believed that if you think something is wrong, you should challenge it, because even if you are wrong, the resulting discussion can help you understand why your previous perspective was flawed, which might then cascade to other things you didn’t realize you were also mistaken about.
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But they gained no information on which door to choose ='(
Yes, but they did establish that one of the guards is no longer living and that giving barbarians riddles is dangerous for everyone involved.
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That’s funny! but if you want to know how to solve this problem every time, even when asking one single question, just ask this question:
“If I ask the other guy which is the correct path, which path will he tell me?”
No matter who you ask, both of them will point to the WRONG path, meaning the correct one is the one they DIDN’T point to. Here is the logic.
For the sake of argument, let’s assume the correct path is the right path. When you ask that question, if the person is the truthful one, he will be honest and say the left path. Because if you ask the liar what the correct path is, he will say it is the left path (which is false). Now if you ask the liar what the other guy will say the correct path is, he will lie to you and say it is the left path (which is also false, the truthful one will tell you it is the right path and not the left).
“I have no idea what the other guy would say, we’re honest-lier pair of guards, not reading each other fucking thoughts pair of guards”
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The liar responds “I don’t know”
Truth teller: “He’ll point you towards the door that leads to certain death”
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Now let’s make it a little harder. You have three guards: one tells the truth, one lies, one answers randomly. The guards understand you, but only answer either “da” or “ja”. One means yes, one means no, but you don’t know which is which. You get to ask each guard one question.
It’s still trivial, assuming the three guards guard three doors: just ask each guard: “Would the guard that always lies say this door is safe?” The random guard will give a random answer while the other two give the inverted answer. Even better if don’t ask the random guard first, then you can repeat the question about the other doors to the same guard and only need two questions
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Now let’s make it a little harder. You have three guards: one tells the truth, one lies, one answers randomly. The guards understand you, but only answer either “da” or “ja”. One means yes, one means no, but you don’t know which is which. You get to ask each guard one question.
When I was a substitute teacher I would give the kids logic puzzles of varying difficulty. I would offer $100 if anyone could provide me with the answer to this one. If they looked it up on Wikipedia and could then explain it to me, I’d give them a king size candy bar.
I never had to pay out.
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The third guard stabs people who ask tricky questions.
I feel like this is an XKCD…
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Alternate solution:
Is there more of this?
What’s this from?
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Nhim is the artist. The character is Mimi. They’re all standalone comics, but there’s a bunch with Mimi. All have the same crazy goblin energy to them.
