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Rain comments on Open Thread: April 2010 - Less Wrong
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I've become a connoisseur of hard paradoxes and riddles, because I've found that resolving them always teaches me something new about rationalism. Here's the toughest beast I've yet encountered, not as an exercise for solving but as an illustration of just how much brutal trickiness can be hidden in a simple-looking situation, especially when semantics, human knowledge, and time structure are at play (which happens to be the case with many common LW discussions).
Extensive treatment and relation to other epistemic paradoxes here.
Why not give a test on Monday, and then give another test later that day? I bet they would be surprised by a second test on the same day.
True, there's nothing saying there won't be two tests.
Rather than solve this, I was hoping people'd take a look at the linked explanation. When phrased more carefully, it becomes a whole bunch of nested paradoxes, the resolution of which contains valuable lessons on how words can trick people. It covers some LW material along the way, such as Moore's Paradox.
But if there's a solution, it's not really a paradox.
And I don't like word arguments.
Ugh, yes. Why are we speaking of "paradoxes" at all? Anything that actually occurs is not a paradox. If something appears to be a paradox, either you have reasoned incorrectly, you've made untenable assumptions, or you've just been using fuzzy thinking. This is a problem; presumably it has some solution. Describing it as a "paradox" and asking people not to solve it is not helpful. You don't understand it better that way, you understand it by solving it. The only thing gained that way is an understanding of why it appears to be a paradox, which is useful as a demonstration of the dangers of fuzzy thinking, but also kind of obvious.
Maybe I'm being overly strict about the word "paradox" here, but I really just don't see the term as at all helpful. If you're using it in the strict sense, they shouldn't occur except as an indicator that you've done something wrong (in which case you probably wouldn't use the word "paradox" to describe it in the first place). If you're using it in the loose sense, it's misleading and unhelpful (I prefer to explcitly say "apparent paradox".)
We're all saying the exact same thing here: words are not to be treated as infallible vehicles for communicating concepts. That was the point of my original post, the point of Rain's reply, and yours as well. (You're completely right about the word "paradox.")
Also, I'm not saying not to try solving it, just that I've no intention of refuting all proposed solutions. I didn't want my reply to be construed as a debate about the solution, because that would never end.
Words frequently confuse people into believing something they wouldn't otherwise. You may be correct that this confusion can always be addressed indirectly, but in any case it needs to be addressed. Addressing semantic confusion requires identifying it, and I found this riddle (actually the whole article) a great neutral exercise for that purpose.
EDIT: Looking back, I should probably just have posted riddle and kept quiet. Updated for next time.