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GeekNights 090115 - Faking Your Death
Tonight on GeekNights we discuss faking your death, or simply running away and starting a new life.
Scott's Thing - Yuppie Invention
Rym's Thing - Arm-chair logic test
Scott's Thing - Yuppie Invention
Rym's Thing - Arm-chair logic test
Comments
BTW the front page links to another post.
I disagree with Q15 though; I think it's stupid.
EDIT: Also, I'm a southern wimp. Down here, the average winter high is roughly 40 degrees Fahrenheit, and I hate winter.
EDIT: Good to hear Scott had the same problem. Again, the question sucks.
I have a minor psychosomatic problem with the wifi from my DS is on my hand and arms actually hurt thought I feel it's just confirmation bias. I also have a real thing against electric shocks (yes, I cam a computer technician).
School buses are only good with friends and plenty of space.
I didn't have any trouble at all with the water question. Like Mary, in actual practice, it is so unlikely that there's another configuration for water, that it's unreasonable to expect to see one. However, one must think within the box of the question, and that box gives no indication of what may happen in the future. The quiz foreshadows this with the "all ducks bark" question. One knows that ducks don't bark, but one must accept that it's true within the box of the question.
Further, both Bloody Mary and the funny water questions want to trick one into thinking inductively, not deductively. The inference drawn from induction may be correct, even within the bounds of the question, but it's not a valid deduction from the given information in the question.
I know I'm really being lawyer-y about it, but that's how you have to treat these things. That same lawyery-ness is what allowed me to answer the first 14 questions correctly.
Aliens come to earth and start abducting people, they find out that the dominant species are in fact humans, having Male (XY) and Female(XX) each with their own characteristics. One day Blorg beams up a girl, he classifies her as such, as she has breasts a vagina, uses a skirt, hits on guys, has sex with guys, buys makeup etc. Once he takes the sample BAM! XY chromosomes. Turns out she was a pseudo hermaphrodite, now, he knew all about females, he knew they were XX how they act, what they do, how they look like, and how they are built, so he can safely make the assumption that in fact it was a girl but alas poor Blorg was wrong.
1) All Ducks are yellow.
2) Examination by looking at Ducks has confirmed this.
1) + 2) != Future examinations of Ducks will confirm 1).
This because you can examine them some other way.
Arguing about the validity of "predict" is also self defeating, as taking it to be ambiguous renders the statement not a logical one and thus, again, making it invalid (though the sentence may be valid). Perhaps a demonstration is in order:
1) A is B
2) B is C
Conclusion: I can say A is a butterfly.
This is not logic and clearly invalid.
If you now take the point of view that "say" does not specify the truthfulness of what is being said and merely focus on the fact that "I can say A is a butterfly" (because you obviously can, even though this may be a lie), then you simply mean that the sentence is valid. The logical conclusion remains completely absent.
If you take "predict" at face value, the logic is flawed; If you don't, the logic is absent. Both cases are invalid.
1) A = B
2) B = C
3) D = F
Conclusion: F = D
In this example, you can just ignore 1) and 2). All they are asking for is the validity or invalidity of the conclusion statement. The numbered items are simply assumed truths in the same universe as the conclusion. They do not necessarily have anything to do with the conclusion.
I view the water question the same way. The composition of water molecules and our observations of them under a microscope have nothing to do with our abilities to predict. The same way that A = B has nothing to do with whether or not F = D.
If they wanted something different, they should have worded the conclusion differently. For example, they could have written this conclusion instead.
Therefore it would be logical to conclude that every future examination of water will reveal the same chemical composition.
I approached the problem both in a vaccum and outside a vacuum. Inside the vacuum, we were given the assertion that "Water IS a molecule composed of..." That is a definition, and that definition does not change, nor are we given any information to indicate that it could change. Ergo, water will always have the same structure. The conclusion is valid.
Outside the vacuum, I'm with Scott about the whole "we can predict" wording. We can predict anything; a prediction doesn't mean that it's going to stay that way, but we have sufficient information to make a predictive model.