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But the difference is that in this puzzle you can deduce that something is wrong by just using logic: In the absence of any hints, you'd just consider everythin

But the difference is that in this puzzle you can deduce that something is wrong by just using logic: In the absence of any hints, you'd just consider everything true. This obviously does not lead to a solution, as the red box states that one box lies. When you come to this point, you might wonder why you were trusting the boxes in the first place and reconsider your assumptions, i.e. not putting any trust in what the boxes say. After this step you realise that there suddenly is not enough information to determine which box the treasure is in. The difference between the blog post and your example is that in your example there's nothing that makes you recheck your assumptions. A puzzle in the style of the author's would be: Knights always tell the truth, Knaves always lie. John and Bill are standing at a fork in the road. John is standing in front of the left road, and Bill is standing in front of the right road. John says: "One of us is a knight and the other a knave". You also know that one road leads to Death, and the other leads to Freedom. Bill says: "My road leads to freedom".

ajanuary 11y ago
If you attacked that formulation with the normal assumptions for logic problems, the answer would be the same. If you break the assumption that you can trust all logical statements in the problem, regardless of their origin, then you could get a solution like "John is a dick and tells a mixture of truth and lies as he sees fit just to mess with you". But you could get that solution with any problem where the source of information is an entity in the problem itself, which is why we tend to assume that isn't the case.
- peteretep 11y ago
  That's entirely wrong. The whole point of the article is that there are two distinct types of information present in all problems of this type: information about the problem (which the author calls certification, and which is assumed to be true), and then information presented in the problem, which - in almost every problem I've ever seen of this type - has statements that aren't true in it. > "If you break the assumption that you can trust all > logical statements in the problem" That is never the assumption - you are normally told explicitly that you can trust some and not others.

ajanuary 11y ago

If you attacked that formulation with the normal assumptions for logic problems, the answer would be the same. If you break the assumption that you can trust all logical statements in the problem, regardless of their origin, then you could get a solution like "John is a dick and tells a mixture of truth and lies as he sees fit just to mess with you". But you could get that solution with any problem where the source of information is an entity in the problem itself, which is why we tend to assume that isn't the case.

peteretep 11y ago
That's entirely wrong. The whole point of the article is that there are two distinct types of information present in all problems of this type: information about the problem (which the author calls certification, and which is assumed to be true), and then information presented in the problem, which - in almost every problem I've ever seen of this type - has statements that aren't true in it. > "If you break the assumption that you can trust all > logical statements in the problem" That is never the assumption - you are normally told explicitly that you can trust some and not others.