I've been reading this book called "What is the name of this book?" and it has inspired me to come up with this riddle: Suppose you have two buttons, labeled "A" and "B", and you know that pressing one button will release something bad (e.g. anthrax) and pressing the other button will release something good (e.g. a million dollars). Furthermore, each button has an inscription on it, and you know that exactly one of the two inscriptions is true. The inscription on "A" is "This button does not release something good" The inscription on "B" is "Exactly one of the two inscriptions are true." If one must press exactly one button, can one figured out which button one should press to release something good?

If you want a small hint, the small hint is make sure you read the exact wording of the puzzle. There is a trick in there somewhere.

If you want a big hint, the big hint is that "Press 'A'" is incorrect.

If you want a huge hint, the huge hint is look closely at the sentence which reads "you know that exactly one of the two inscriptions is true."

The correct answer is no, you cannot figure out which one you should press.

Here's the trap that I was expecting most people to fall into: They would look at the inscription on "B" and consider what would happen if it were false: It's negation would be true. Its negation is "Either both or neither of th inscriptions are true", and since we're already considering the scenario that "B" is false, it cannot be that both inscriptions are true, so both inscriptions must be false. Therefore "A"'s inscription of "This button does not release something good" must be false, which means "A" must release something good.

Most people would then consider what would happen if the inscription of "B" is true. In that case, only one inscription must be true, and we've already assumed that "B" is true, so "A" must be false. So once again, "A" must release something good.

The problem with this is that they assume "B" must be either true or false. They fail to consider the case where "B" may be "paradoxical". Consider the case where "A" is true. Then the inscription of "B" can be neither true, nor false. Notice that my exact wording in the puzzle was "Exactly one of the two inscriptions are true". The trap is to then automatically assume that the other inscription must therefore be false. "One true, one false" is certainly one possible configuration for the truth-value of the inscriptions, but so is "one true, one paradoxical".

Thus we can have a consistent solution where "A" is true, and a consistent solution where "A" is false, and so, no, it's not possible to figure out which button you should press.

I used to think that people who felt Microsoft was “evil”, or that Microsoft took pleasure in fucking people over were abnormally stupid. Microsoft is a corporation. It’s not a sentient being. It doesn’t feel pleasure. When I say these people were stupid, I really do mean “stupid” and not “ignorant”: If they were merely ignorant, then after I educated them, they’d no longer be making this dumb mistake. But they keep making it. They have this emotional attachment to the idea that Microsoft is evil, and they refuse to consider rational arguments. I’m trying to make this blog post short, so I won’t get into my arguments why Microsoft is not evil (not anymore evil than any other corporations, or even not anymore than the concepts of “gravity” or “thermonal dynamics”, at least), but if you want to try to work it out for yourself, I recommend you read up on: the Buddhist concept of “dharma” or “nature”; Joel Bakan’s “The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power”.

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I went to the Otakuthon Anime convention, and goofed around on at the DDR section. Me being who I am, I immediately tried to find the hardest song, and start off right away with it. The song was called "Pluto" or something like that, and I failed miserably. Despite this, this guy came up to me and started chatting with me. He asked me if I wanted to try the other mix of Pluto which is on this game. I asked him if it's harder or easier than this song, and he told me it depends. The mix I played had a lot of freezes which, if you didn't know the song, could really throw you off. If you know both songs well, though, then the other mix was harder. So I agreed, and we tried the other song, and he wasn't kidding. It had like 16th beat streams at 400BPM. Crazy. I tried the first mix of Pluto again, just to see if I could remember where all the tempo freezes were, and I got further, but still failed.

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I’ve just had this recurring dream. I think I’ve had it something like 3 to 5 times before, and the last time I had it may have been over 2 years ago. But perhaps this sensation of having had this dream before, this sensation of déjà vu, is an illusion, and this is the first time I’ve had the dream. This is one of the reasons I blog about dreams, BTW: to verify whether my memories about having had these dreams before is accurate or not.

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Over the last 6 months or so, I’ve been contemplating killing myself. I’m not contemplating it so much anymore. I didn’t tell anyone about this until today, so as far as I know, no one knew I was thinking of killing myself. Sometimes I felt like commenting on the notion of suicide itself, merely from an analytical or philosophical point of view, but I didn’t want to let anyone actually know I was thinking of committing suicide, and I especially did not want to make it a public confession e.g. on my blog. When people do that, they’re not really trying to commit suicide, but rather are trying to get sympathy and stuff. A cry for help. I didn’t want help. I didn’t want to talk about it with anyone. I didn’t want to make people worry about me, and try to talk to me and cheer me up and all that stuff.

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Earlier, I twittered: "Is it still called a placebo if the main effect is to trick the person administering the medication, rather than the person receiving it?". The specific scenario I was thinking of are aphrodisiacs: a company may market a particular substance as being an aphrodisiac despite the fact that that substance has absolutely zero effect on one's libido. However, you may believe in the power of this substance, and administer it (perhaps secretly) to some target. You falsely assume that the target's libido has been raised, and thus become more aggressive and self-confident, making advances you might not normally dared have made otherwise.

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