Smart Disagreement
May 23rd, 2007
This one is a riddle of my own invention. I am really proud of it as it sounds impossible at first, but it can be resolved in a very satisfying fashion. I must admit that had I heard about it from someone else I would not have gone through the trouble of trying to solve it, as it sounds like a ”cheap-trick” riddle. I can only ask you to trust me that it is indeed a purely mathematical riddle. Although it did provoke several harsh disputes with some very smart people (Matan, Eyal, how are you guys?), I was able to finally convince them of the mathematical validity of my solution.
The riddle goes like this:
A group of very smart men perform an experiment. There are no restrictions on the men’s behaviour during the experiment. After the experiment is over, each of the men reveals to all the others everything that he knows. Despite the fact that none of the men lies and they all know of everything that happened, there are 2 individuals in the group that reach different scientific conclusions. Your task is to devise such an experiment.
Note that the experiment is scientific in that it does not concern individual tastes or opinions. All the men are assumed to come from similar backgrounds and have similar likings. The different conclusions regard real aspects of nature.
The dice picture is a (vague) reference to one variant of my solution.
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May 24th, 2007 at 7:30 pm
As one of the ppl who heard this riddle and thought it’s a silly one, I must say that the answer is amazingly interesting, because it’s really something that you understand about the foundations of science (at least that the way I see it…)
I’m sure that after the solution will be submitted there will be a long discussion about it
May 28th, 2007 at 6:07 pm
do those smart men all know that the others do not lie?? is any of them female?
May 29th, 2007 at 12:49 am
Let me clarify these two important points:
– All the men know of all the rules (specifically, they know others are not lying).
– Obviously none of the men are females (as I specifically said that they are “very smart”). Just kidding!
May 29th, 2007 at 1:37 am
I think its time I gave some hints for the solution (I am refering to my solution as “the solution” although there may be others. Please feel encouraged to post your thoughts!).
Well, first of all, consider a very big group of people – for example 100,000,000,000 men. Of course, the phenomenon demonstrated here occures in every-day life (for much smaller groups of men) but considering the huge group emphasizes the result.
Now a second hint is, try to consider an experiment involving something random.
Good luck!
September 3rd, 2007 at 10:44 pm
Well, I’ve read the question several times already and have yet to come up with a satisfying solution. How about posting one?