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OrphanWilde comments on Open Thread, January 16-31, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: OpenThreadGuy 15 January 2013 03:50PM

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Comment author: OrphanWilde 28 January 2013 05:20:23PM 2 points [-]

Well, as I recall the gifted program I attended (in the States, in Texas specifically) was just harder busywork. Logic puzzles featured prominently, and there were crosswords instead of wordfinds. It was there that I formalized my hatred of formal logic problems. (The problems frequently featured concepts or information which, if you used knowledge which came from outside the puzzle, would lead you to the wrong answer. Not uncommon in logic puzzles, and completely wrongheaded; it always reeks of doublethink to me.)

Comment author: DaFranker 28 January 2013 05:53:46PM 0 points [-]

Thanks for the input!

The problems frequently featured concepts or information which, if you used knowledge which came from outside the puzzle, would lead you to the wrong answer.

Could you clarify if this means "an answer marked as wrong, but probably correct in the real world" or rather "an answer clearly wrong in the real world, with the premises of the puzzle broken"? I also notice that the latter interpretation leaves ambiguous whether those answers would usually be marked correct or wrong, which might be intentionally left out if there's no specific correlation there.

Comment author: OrphanWilde 28 January 2013 06:22:27PM 0 points [-]

I'm uncertain what you mean by the latter - the former is one case, but if you mean that the correct answer to the logic puzzle would clearly be wrong in the real world, the latter is also true. So possibly both; I was referring to a pretty broad category of poorly-considered logic puzzles.

Comment author: DaFranker 28 January 2013 07:33:22PM 0 points [-]

Ah, yes, upon re-reading my wording wasn't quite clear either.

What I was referring to is an annoying category of puzzles that require certain specific outside knowledge bits to arrive to the "correct" answer as would be marked, even though by the premises of the puzzle and the information given this is clearly a wrong answer and the desired answer isn't even applicable to the real world in non-contrived scenarios.

In other words, a specific subset of the broad category of poorly-considered logic puzzles. Since you were referring to its parent/superset, the point is rather moot.