A town of liars
Posted in Ben on March 28th, 2008
My Discrete math teacher said something along the lines of “You go to a town of liars and ask one if he is asleep” in passing the other day. This is aninteresting situation and I think worked out the outcome of it in class, but I couldn’t find any explanations of it on the internet.
Here is what I have written down in my notes:
You ask a liar if he is asleep, there are only 2 answers: yes and no.
Of course one cannot answer if one is asleep so,
1) if he is asleep, he will not answer and appear to be asleep
2) if he is not asleep, he will lie and appear to be asleep.So there is ambiguity – the same result occurs for both situations.
Update: I found a video explaining the answer.
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Comments
I’m going to punch you in the head for the video… but Dr. Farmer is the one of the coolest teachers I’ve had.
You however did not take into account the level at which the people of the town lie. If one sleep talks and isn’t a deep liar but instead is just told to lie, then that person would say yes.
If you asked me if I was sleeping when I was sleeping I’d probably shatter a glass bottle. Just saying.
I’m going on the idea that everyone in town just flatout lies when ever they can.
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