xkcd

Gwydion

It seems bizarre to me in any city, the roads and sidewalks wouldn't be public property. I can understand on huge properties out in the country, but I mean is the homeowner's association required to fix potholes or cracks in these sidewalks? That would just be bizarre to me. Yep, the association is...

Gwydion

There are not. The prices you see now are going to be the prices for the remainder of the sale. In addition to the negative feedback, they also changed this when they instituted their return policy, since they would just create a lot of hassle by having people buy and return/price-match the games ev...

Gwydion

This is also what happens in the original game when there are many more pirates than coins. If we assume there are P pirates and C coins, where P>2C, then stable groups form when (P-2C) is a power of 2, with those highest-ranking pirates getting no coins but voting for their own survival, knowing th...

Gwydion

I hope to God this doesn't confuse the issue further: You could make a different Devious machine, called 2Fast2Devious or whatever, that takes two different inputs, just like Oracle. Otherwise it would work the same. If we play around with this new machine and feed it two copies of its own program, ...

Gwydion

Vast is pretty well balanced, but essentially each player is playing a different game at the same table. The teaching takes a while, and if you want to switch roles for a second game you practically have to teach it all again. Overall I liked it a lot, but it takes some dedication to get into it.

Gwydion

SurveyMonkey shows that the registered voters who stayed home were a tad more Democratic than usual. Or at least that's what I think that means. Either way, Democratic voters aren't blameless here. http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/registered-voters-who-stayed-home-probably-cost-clinton-the-elect...

Gwydion

I love the grave digger, and despite the luck-based healing the occultist can give you the highest health boost per turn with some RNG luck and bleed resist. My A party was hellion, highwayman, GD, vestal initially, but then the vestal leveled up faster than the rest (running w two groups) and I had...

Gwydion

Space Cadets has a campaign set up, and it's a wonderful game provided you have 1) a consistent group, who 2) don't mind a complex rules explanation - each player runs one or more different "stations" on the ship, each with their own mini-games, and several times throughout the game player...

Gwydion

Treatid: Pretty sure I made this point pages ago, but all the whole of maths says is 'if x is true then y is also true'. There's no 'absolutes' anywhere there. They are a figment of your imagination. I note your use of quotes around 'absolute' to indicate that we haven't formally defined the term (...

Gwydion

The answer depends on one significant factor: Whether the wizard is willing or able to hang around for about 5.5 hours before making the switch. If so, the rapid wheat production between now and then can be used to make whatever else they're short on. If the wizard has to make the change right n...

Gwydion

I agree with doogly. Where in the gosh-darned fuck did this stuff about relativity come from? The practice of mathematics is necessarily relative. The theory of axiomatic mathematics is not. It starts right here. What does that mean? The "theory of axiomatic mathematics" is, in a manner of...

Gwydion

Treatid, nobody here is pretending that mathematics holds "absolute truth" in the sense that you claim. I'm not sure why you're trying to fight this battle. If it makes you feel better to say that mathematics, as it exists now, is "purely relativistic" then sure, it is. You don't...

Gwydion

This was from a little while ago but I'm just now catching up. Everything is set up so that the limits work that way - the discards are {1,2,3...n} followed by the keepers {n+1,n+2,...10n} which converges to N followed by another set isomorphic to N but higher than any number in N. How would you go ...

Gwydion

Spoiler:

Gwydion

Or x=a, y=A-a^2 for all a. That didn't seem so hard. RSA numbers, here I come!

Gwydion

Treatid, I want to start by saying that I'm not agreeing to any of the things you said just because I didn't directly challenge or question them. You wrote a lot and I don't necessarily have a cogent argument against/for all of it, but please don't take that as me implicitly agreeing with you. The a...

Gwydion

Hmm - it looks to me as though showing reason to question the validity of the 3 laws of thought; and how we can work constructively after explicitly rejecting the assumption of the laws of thought will accomplish much of what I want to show... I want to reject the laws of thought as basic assumptio...

Gwydion

Codenames is quite hard for the clue-givers, but honestly more fun and more exciting. Definitely needs no fewer than 6 players to be worthwhile, but if you have a big enough crowd it's worth a go.

Gwydion

Goahead, I don't think I can advance the conversation about identities vs equations any further than it's gone, I'll leave that up to people who are better at this sort of thing. I'd rather go back to the more important question - how does your equation purport to help factor numbers? It looks like ...

Gwydion

Treatid, to go back to your penultimate post, I had read your entire reply but thought the others here did a better job of articulating my thoughts than I could have. I put together the first part of my post mostly as a joke, to inject a little levity into an otherwise somewhat tense discussion. I d...

Gwydion

4. Red Herring. It doesn't matter whether you call it a paradox, an inconsistency or simply absurd. The point is that given (x & !x) we can prove (p & !p) for all p. Whatever allowed you to write (x & !x) also allows you to write (p & !p) for all p. (x & !x) Guys, Treatid just w...

Gwydion

Sorry for taking so long to respond - trying to make whatever point(s) I might have as clear and unambiguous as I can. This post is mainly me trying to get to the same page as everyone else with regard assumptions/premises. The arguments I put forward are sincere - but not proof. Falsifiability. I'...

Gwydion

Here's one option with 5 clues, all of which appear necessary for a unique solution ABCD BAED - 25 BACD - 50 DDAA - 0 CCCC - 25 ABEA - 50 None of the clues individually give away much information, and this can be logically worked through in a couple minutes. Edit: looking back, the first or fourth c...

Gwydion

If you assume that the four elements/bases are not repeated, you can also solve yours with just clues 1 and 2. I guess it depends whether or not you want players to need all 12 to solve (which will make the puzzle take a lot longer too). In my experience with escape rooms, unless you get lucky and f...

Gwydion

My deepest thanks to everyone in this thread and previous ones. Proof: The premises for this proof are the axioms/rules of propositional logic. That is, we assume that all the rules of propositional logic are true. The proof is intended to show that the axioms/rules of propositional logic are incon...

Gwydion

Iteration 3: ⋅ X is the set of y & z. ⋅ z is a set of every instance of p. ⋅ p are specified to be consistent with the other premises. ⋅ y is the set of all functions q, such that the domain for each q is some subset of z. ⋅ There is at least on...

Gwydion

Here are Treatids old threads: http://forums.xkcd.com/search.php?keywords=&terms=all&author=Treatid&sc=1&sf=all&sr=topics&sk=t&sd=d&st=0&ch=300&t=0&submit=Search "Axiomatic mathematics has no foundation" is the first one I think I was involved i...

Gwydion

Treatid, this conversation isn't going very far because you're not conceptualizing what everyone else seems to be saying in the same way. You're attributing qualities to "Axiomatic Mathematics" that no one else seems to be asserting, because you believe it should have those qualities, but ...

Gwydion

The Tower does have portkeys, but it also has extraordinarily powerful artifacts that probably shouldn't be handed over without a fight. Similarly, surrendering Hogwarts and leaving the students inside to the enemy seems like a poor choice by most standards. Perhaps Harry didn't create a standing re...

Gwydion

Tyndmyr, your argument is remarkably similar to the old question, how many six-year-olds could you take on in a fight all at once? Realistically, it seems like the answer should be hundreds or even thousands, but eventually the combined weight of them will overwhelm you. Even if you have guns, you h...

Gwydion

While they have tried to market it as legitimate sport, that still hasn't taken off. ECW no longer exists except in memories and DVD collections. Smackdown and RAW are separate shows, but no longer have separate rosters. As for NXT, it functions the same as FCW and OVW before that - as a development...

Gwydion

From the perspective of addition, this just looks like a straightforward base 5 system. However, multiplication no longer follows the pattern of "repeated addition" that we're used to. To use the initial example, 7x7 is 59, but 7+7+7+7+7+7+7 is only 55. Also, how does subtraction work? If ...

Gwydion

Sorta trivial solutions: Making two identical signs: "both rooms contain a lady", "neither room contains a lady", "both rooms contain a tiger", or "neither room contains a tiger". When placed on both doors, none of these 4 possible signs can be true, so a lady...

Gwydion

Obviously there are 2 jars and 3 pencils. Putting 6 or 9 pencils into a jar is impossible, because who has that many pencils?

Gwydion

It's simultaneously easier and harder than that. In the NFL anyway, schedules are not created equally - not all teams play against each other, and some teams meet twice instead of once - so none of the lines on your table are actually possible. The schedule looks like this: Each conference of 16 tea...

Gwydion

I want to expand on SirGabriel's point further. Flewk, what happens in the following scenarios (with superrational islanders etc)? Who leaves, and on what day? 1) There are 5 blue eyed islanders. 2) There are 4 blue eyed islanders and 1 brown eyed islander. 3) You are on an island and see 4 blue eye...

Gwydion

They will leave the island after one night instead of waiting two nights like I would. If they waited until the second night, then I know for sure that I am blue because the people who see 3 blues would have left on the first night. Ok, given that statement, what would you need to see to leave on n...

Gwydion

They will leave the island after one night instead of waiting two nights like I would. If they waited until the second night, then I know for sure that I am blue because the people who see 3 blues would have left on the first night. Ok, given that statement, what would you need to see to leave on n...

Gwydion

Given a system that contains a contradiction; that system can prove anything (is inconsistent). The system of axiomatic mathematics contains contradictions. Therefore the system of axiomatic mathematics is inconsistent. This is where we have problems, as expertly outlined already. Your use of the w...

Gwydion

Part 1. Any proof within an axiomatic system only applies to that axiomatic system. On that we are in agreement. Inconsistent systems tend to be discarded quickly because the ability to prove anything and its inverse isn't very constructive. However, this leaves the nature of inconsistency less exa...

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