A little logical chuckle.
Let's say that I show you a deck of cards, unopened, and ask you if the deck contains a blue jack. You would, quite rightly, say that you have no idea, one way or t'other.
I open the package, take out the cards and proceed to shuffle them in front of you. I ask you to cut the deck, which you do. I then begin to turn up the cards from the top of the deck, one by one. The cards appear to be completely normal. There are clubs and spades, both black. There are hearts and diamonds, both red. There are numbered cards and face cards. I continue until I've turned up half the deck. All appears normal for a regular deck of 52 cards.
I again ask you if the remainder of the deck contains a blue jack. If you're answering truthfully, you would say that, thus far, the deck appears normal. I then ask if you're a little bit more certain that the deck doesn't contain a blue jack compared with before I started turning them up. Your answer: 'Perhaps a little bit more certain.'
I continue facing cards from the top of the deck until but 13 remain. Again, the cards are perfectly ordinary. I again ask, 'Are you a bit more certain now than at the halfway point that the remainder of the deck does not contain a blue jack?' Your answer is again, 'Yes'.
I now face 10 of the remaining 13 cards. I ask again about your certainty regarding a blue jack. Again, you're a bit more certain.
I now change the question and ask, 'If I turn up the next card and it is not a blue jack, will you be a bit more certain that neither of the remaining two cards is a blue jack?'. When you answer, 'Yes', I turn up the next card.
It's a green queen.
Regards, and thanks for reading. Stay safe 'n well.
I open the package, take out the cards and proceed to shuffle them in front of you. I ask you to cut the deck, which you do. I then begin to turn up the cards from the top of the deck, one by one. The cards appear to be completely normal. There are clubs and spades, both black. There are hearts and diamonds, both red. There are numbered cards and face cards. I continue until I've turned up half the deck. All appears normal for a regular deck of 52 cards.
I again ask you if the remainder of the deck contains a blue jack. If you're answering truthfully, you would say that, thus far, the deck appears normal. I then ask if you're a little bit more certain that the deck doesn't contain a blue jack compared with before I started turning them up. Your answer: 'Perhaps a little bit more certain.'
I continue facing cards from the top of the deck until but 13 remain. Again, the cards are perfectly ordinary. I again ask, 'Are you a bit more certain now than at the halfway point that the remainder of the deck does not contain a blue jack?' Your answer is again, 'Yes'.
I now face 10 of the remaining 13 cards. I ask again about your certainty regarding a blue jack. Again, you're a bit more certain.
I now change the question and ask, 'If I turn up the next card and it is not a blue jack, will you be a bit more certain that neither of the remaining two cards is a blue jack?'. When you answer, 'Yes', I turn up the next card.
It's a green queen.
Regards, and thanks for reading. Stay safe 'n well.
Comments (5)
Does "I don't know" mean that I don't know whether the dealer is trying to trick me.
Does "I don't know" mean that I don't know whether I'm in a simulation, and even if the dealer is trying to trick me, in that moment, the simulation could place or remove a blue jack, surprising both the dealer and you.
Maybe the joke here could be that neither the dealer nor you were aware of the green queen and perhaps it was the simulation who had the final laugh :)
edit: someone could also say - "the game never ends when the whole world depends on a turn of a friendly card" - a.p.p.
The quirk in that little story, and it is a quirk, is that the responder sees a normal deck up until the third remaining card is turned up. Up to that point, the responder is logically correct in saying that he/she is increasingly certain, at the various stages, in accepting greater and greater probability that the remaining cards do not include a blue jack.
The response to the final question is also correct, based upon that assumption -- that the deck is a a normal deck. The green queen, though, destroys that assumption. One can no longer be certain to any reasonable degree about a blue jack popping up, even in the last two cards.
Regards, stay safe 'n well..
"And the game never ends ... " :) [but I guess you could say the game does end when the card is revealed .. or you could say you never actually know if it is the card you are looking at, perhaps the simulation configured "that" card in such a way that if you peel away the top layer, it will be a completely new card or the simulation makes a card that can be infinitely peeled away to reveal any of the 52 cards in a deck]
Thanks for the response, I was thinking about how to approach this.