Why would we stretch the definition of lawyer in such a way? That's not what the word "lawyer" means, either in the dictionary sense or in the sense of how people use the word. And even if you can come up with a reason to stretch it to include all those professions, what makes you think that's what Eliezer was doing?
Dang, I missed seeing this before the solution was posted. And oh dear, it's high-complexity. Oh well, I'll give it a shot anyway!
Edit: Hah, I spent an hour checking one thing (which went nowhere), and then ran out of steam, and now I can no longer resist checking the answer. So much for that 😅 Next time I'll try to check my notifications more often so I see the next one before the answer is up, maybe that'll give me more drive to keep at it.
I normally just read these for fun and make no effort to solve them (I know nothing about data science or data analysis). This time I fooled around with the dataset for about half an hour, and managed to get a small inkling that the Phantom Pummelers disliked Sliminess and maybe liked Corporeality. I feel inordinately proud of myself for that minor achievement. (Full disclosure, I also got some inklings that were wrong, like thinking PP also disliked Hostility.)
Feels weird to be at the end. Looking forward to the next one. Might actually try to solve it, even though I will have absolutely no idea what I'm doing.
A shame that the dataset links don't work anymore :(
Vaarsuvius’ Law (“every trip between plot-relevant locations will have exactly one random encounter”)
I appreciate the Order of the Stick reference!
The other day I bought some quick oats and raisins and dried cranberries, and have been serving myself some very delicious bowls of oatmeal. Thanks, bhauth, for reminding me this exists.
Still, when several individually-questionable pieces of evidence are pointing in one direction, and nothing in particular is pointing in the other, that seems like the correct conclusion. I think the story is probably true.
…Huh? The entire rest of the post gave me the exact opposite impression. It sounds like most of the evidence points to the story being false, while hardly anything points to the story being true. Did I miss something?
Ah, gotcha. Thank you.
Most people's experience with oatmeal has been from one of:
- packets of instant oatmeal that have low-quality cheap flavoring and might have gone stale
- quick-cooking rolled oats without any flavoring
Those are my only experiences with oats, but I like both of those experiences. I love instant oatmeal, and I love quick oats boiled on the stove, though of course in the latter case I have to supply my own flavouring. Even just sugar is enough to make it great. But adding raisins takes it to another level; especially adding them while the oats are still boiling so that they rehydrate a little. Dried cranberries are also great. Sometimes I like to add some apple juice to the pot while the oats are boiling. This narrow range of possibilities is already plenty of variety for my narrow palate; and if I'm already making oatmeal, those additions are basically zero added effort. If I didn't have crippling executive dysfunction, I'd eat quick oats much more often than I actually do. (Unfortunately, the activation energy required to make anything on the stove is more than I usually reach; and I find the microwave to be a poor substitute, not to mention that it doesn't even solve the part that I find aversive, which is measuring out the oats and water. Also, raisins and dried cranberries are expensive.)
The linked PDF has a number of typos (OCR errors, perhaps?). Might be better to link to an Internet Archive version, such as this one (from New Dimensions 3; I can't find The Wind's Twelve Quarters on IA to link to that one).