heresiarch @44: Can I have a ruling from someone who knows the answer whether Chris @ 14 or Raphael @ 31 is right?
I would suggest that the answer is Mu. In theory, there are questions where the distinction is important. For instance, any god who is capable of answering "Are you going to answer (your language's word for) 'no' to this question?" is Random and not bound to lie or tell the truth. But here you should assume that "yes-no question" means a question that any god *can* answer with (their word for) yes or no. A similar non-issue would be whether False lies out of delusion or contrariness (and, hence, whether his beliefs are correct even if his statements are not).
And wow. I like playing Fantastic Contraption this much. But I like watching other people's fun designs THIS much!
Sadly, nearly all of Smullyan's work is out of print, but he has some real gems. For me, the real masterworks are later in his books when he leaves the Islands behind and takes the reader on a tour of combinatorial algebra (in "To Mock a Mockingbird" or "Satan, Cantor, and Infinity") or modal logic (in "Forever Undecided"). But it all winds up being relatively accessible.
Just for lulz, here is a Full Monty solution. Here there be spoilers. First, the easier problem where the gods answer yes/no:
Gurer ner frireny cbffvovyvgvrf sbe gur svefg dhrfgvba, juvpu lbh fubhyq nfx bs N. Urer ner n srj jvgu avpr jbeqvatf gung lbhe nirentr tbq jbhyqa'g dhvooyr jvgu:
* Ubj jbhyq lbh erfcbaq vs V jrer gb nfx lbh "Vf O Enaqbz?"
* Vf O "zber yvxryl" gb gryy gur gehgu guna P?
Sbe rvgure bs gurfr dhrfgvbaf, nffhzr N nafjref lrf. Vs N vf abg Enaqbz, gura lbh pna fubj gung O vf Enaqbz. Va bgure jbeqf, vs N nafjref lrf gura rvgure N be O vf Enaqbz. Lbh pna fvzvyneyl frr gung vs N nafjref ab gura rvgure N be P vf Enaqbz. Ohg gur vzcbegnag cneg vf gung rira gubhtu lbh qba'g xabj jub vf Enaqbz, lbh xabj fbzrbar jub qrsvavgryl vfa'g. Gur bgure gjb dhrfgvbaf tb gb gung crefba, naq lbh pna frr gung "Vf gjb cyhf gjb rdhny gb sbhe?" naq "Vf N Enaqbz?" jvyy tvir lbh rabhtu vasbezngvba gb gbgnyyl fbeg bhg gur vqragvgl bs nyy guerr.
and to adapt it to the ja/da problem at hand:
Sbe rnpu bs gur dhrfgvbaf D va gur cerprqvat fbyhgvba, nfx "Vs V jrer gb nfx lbh D, jbhyq lbhe erfcbafr or qn?" Vs gur tbq nafjref qn, gura gur tbq jbhyq unir nafjrerq lrf gb D vs fur fcbxr Ratyvfu, naq fvzvyneyl wn zrnaf ab. Nzhfvatyl, nsgre fbyivat gur ceboyrz va guerr dhrfgvbaf lbh fgvyy qba'g xabj ubj gur erfcbafrf genafyngr vagb Ratyvfu.
Liza @ 6: Lbh pna'g. Ohg lbh qba'g arrq gb anvy qbja gur Enaqbz tbq va gur svefg dhrfgvba. Nyy lbh arrq vf gb svaq n tbq gung vf qrsvavgryl qrgrezvavfgvp. Fcrpvsvpnyyl, lbh pna nfx n dhrfgvba bs N jvgu gur cebcregl gung vs fur nafjref bar jnl gura lbh xabj gung O vf abg Enaqbz naq vs fur nafjref gur bgure jnl gura lbh xabj gung P vf abg Enaqbz.
Nope, each question is posed to an individual god, and the gods cannot predict how Random will answer. It deserves its reputation as a hard question (although I don't think it's the hardest one that Smullyan has devised); as a start, you might prefer assuming that the gods will answer yes or no instead of ja or da.
Hint: Gur xrl vf gb nfx gur svefg dhrfgvba va fhpu n jnl gung lbh xabj bar bs gur tbqf gung vf abg Enaqbz. Gura nfx gur arkg gjb dhrfgvbaf bs gung tbq.
Raphael @39: Are you sure Palin wants to run in a special election now?
To be honest, I'm just parroting the pundits that I've heard who seem automatic in their assumption that she would seek the Senate seat. But it does seem like a reflexive rule that the Senate is a step-up for small-population state governors. Overly simplistic math supports it: having 1% influence over 305 million people is bigger than total influence over 680K, plus she will obviously have superior media access and the ability to gain experience in more than energy policy and perma-surplus budgeting.
Frankly, I'm not sure I'd be sad about it. An Alaska senator with aspirations for higher office who knows that she would be mocked back to the Stone Age if she requested an earmark -- that has a certain appeal even if it does mean having to hear her voice more often. Folks talk about the threat of Republican filibusters like an exclusively bad thing, but I almost want to give them some rope if they feel like casting themselves as the party that doesn't want government to do its part to get us back on our feet.
Sure, Stevens will have to step down almost immediately to avoid being evicted by the unanimous consent of his Senate colleagues. But if Mark Begich couldn't beat a convicted felon, I don't like his chances against Sarah Palin in the special election to fill his seat. If the Dems don't pick up the seat today, we're not going to get another chance at it for a long long time.
I'm very relieved about the NY Senate. The major news story on the western half of the state is that reform is powerless against the wall of the powers of legislative incumbency. We're glad that you downstate folks managed to get the deed done, although there is some local fear that the new three men in the room are now going to ignore everything north and west of Albany.
Still, this discussion is missing the real historical importance of the 2008 election which was undoubtedly the driving force behind the 83% turnout rate in the Rochester precinct where I was an inspector this year: the swan song for our beloved lever machines. Ka-chunk! *sniff*
Rob Rusick @ 13: I had heard some good things about Al Lewis' thoughtfulness when he started his campaign, but unfortunately I saw nothing from him but sophomoric insults towards George Pataki and the two-party system. I've got nothing against the Green Party, but I thought they really missed an opportunity to educate the electorate because the actual result looked exactly like a joke campaign would.
Matt McIrvin @ 15: I'm also a big fan of fusion. http://www.howiehawkins.com/2007/CommonGraphics/ballot.jpg is a nice sample of what our ballot looks like in an off-election year. The most confusing part of the instructions is for judgeships and school boards and the like where you have to vote for four different names even if some are in the same column, but that's a teachable skill. And you can see goodness like the Independence Party which sometimes supported the Republican, sometimes the Democrat, sometimes their own candidate, and sometimes decided to sit out. I suppose a lot of the power is the same as having the unions endorse and support you at the beginning of your campaign (which is probably exactly what the WFP is), but the freedom for a platform-based entity to cross-endorse or field their own candidates is great for the richness of choice and information and all that gooey democratic freedom stuff. I understand people that feel queasy about patronage jobs, but if a party helped achieve your election it seems only fair that they have someone on your team to ensure that the constituents they brought to your campaign are being satisfied.
Yeah, the key is 50,000 votes on your line for the gubernatorial race. At the moment, that threshold is crossed by the Democratic, Republican, Conservative, Independence, and Working Families Parties. The Liberal, Green and Right To Life Parties have made it in the past but aren't at the moment, and the Libertarian, Socialist Workers, and Marijuana Reform parties haven't ever made it in. If there are more than eleven state-wide parties in New York, the remainder are pretty darned small.
If you don't make the cut, I believe you need to pass a petition drive for each candidate you field which is expensive and challenge-prone. So you get things like Al "Grandpa Munster" Lewis running for governor on the Green ticket in 1998, arguably to splinter the Mickey Mouse vote in a (successful) bid to make it over 50K.
Andrea@2: It isn't entirely an exercise in futility. For instance, the Conservative Party is proud to proud to point out that no Republican has won statewide office without their cross-endorsement since 1974, although of course it could be argued whether they punish moderate candidates or merely diagnose them.
RMKrist/PurpleGirl@1: AFAIK, if you vote for a "major party" candidate, they really don't care which party line you are voting on. The only exception (again, IIRC) is the race for governor, because that establishes which parties can skip the petition drives to make it onto the ballot and the order in which the parties are listed.
I live just downwind of the world's largest collection of lilacs, so that's always been pleasant. I don't know much about horses, but cow pastures have that wonderful warm earthy smell. I also agree that snowfall is heavenly, and will add the smells after a thunderstorm and before a rainstorm.
But the wildest is the smell of VapoRub. (Is that camphor that makes it smell like that?) I seem to have no memory of the smell; I find it to be completely indescribable and it never triggers any memories other than the surprise that my brain is incapable of processing it.
Because look, I love John McCain. He is one of my dearest friends. But at the same time, he's also dangerously unbalanced. I mean, let's be frank, John McCain -- and again, this is a man I would take a bullet for -- is bad at his job and mentally unstable. As my mother would say, 'God love him', but he's a raging maniac. And a dear, dear friend.
... and the next time you revise the spelling reference, I nominate principle. Sigh.
Personally, I'm willing to consider McCain's principal point with one small amendment. It may be that Sarah Palin has as much relevant POTUS experience as Barack Obama had four years ago. (Frankly, I tend to believe that the only non-incumbents who have relevant experience are ex-presidents like Grover Cleveland and Teddy Roosevent, but that's another matter.) The crucial difference is that the Democrats gave Obama the keynote address instead of the vice-presidential nomination and we have spent the intervening four years getting to know him. He has endured more than his share of shitstorms, some more relevant than others, and through them he has shown himself (to me) to be a man of intelligence, dignity, and vision.
Sarah Palin may well be all of these things as well. She may as easily be a rising star with feet of clay like John Edwards or Eliot Spitzer. There is no reasonable way that one can expect the electorate to feel comfortable making such a judgment in a two month period, and simply trusting any biography that Steve Schmidt is peddling to be accurate and complete is not on the table. If it will mildly ameliorate my sexist attitude, I will say that I feel the same way about Admiral James Stockdale; an outstanding American whose only significant flaw is that he didn't turn down Ross Perot's flattering but highly inappropriate job offer.
I'm in Rochester, close enough that we get the gist of the larger stories, but far enough away that we don't live it 24/7.
I agree completely that the larger nation does not currently view him as batshit-crazy and every bit the romantic scoundrel that Bill Clinton was during his term of office. Were Rudy to pick up a majority of delegates in January, the Democratic party would have nine months to make the case nationally that he is unfit for office. I don't think they'd need nearly that much time. ^_^
It's a curious thing, but the thought of Giuliani winning in November 2008 is so far-fetched to me that I welcome his position as the presumptive nominee. It seems more likely that were Rudy to win the Republican nomination that the power of Christ would compel a true conservative to run as a third-party candidate than the other way around. Frankly, it is Fred Thompson with his highly conservative agenda and fictional-DA gravitas that frightens me the most -- it seems that that is the recipe for having the shots called by the same power brokers as are currently calling them.
Let me make a few points in Rudy's defense, as I think that, like quips made while performing in drag, this should be very low on a long list of reasons to reject him. Keep in mind that 9/11/2001 was Primary Day in NYC, and his proposal was made during the two-week delay before the rescheduled primary. Also, it is not entirely "scrapping" the system, as the NY State Constitution contains provisions for extending terms of offices in times of emergency. He did evidently threaten to register as a candidate and challenge the term limitation law in court if the candidates didn't agree to his proposal for a three-month extension of his term, and of course that is inexcusably despotic. Aside from that, though, it seems excusable to suggest that rushing an election and transition might be against the city's best interest and see whether anyone salutes that flag.
#31: O.o That claim isn't substantiated by any of the books that *I* read....
I agree with the "easy way out" crowd. I am reminded of a scene in the Simpsons in which a naturalist looked down on a rhino stampede and smugly said "I *told* 'em that this would happen! No, wait, I didn't. I *meant* to tell 'em!"
It would have been moving to include in the story that destroying Grindlewald affected Dumbledore's heart as much as his sense of right. Let's go farther and assert that Nicolas Flamel was also a lover and Dumbledore took a further hit in causing his death by taking the Philosopher's Stone away from him. My gosh, you've got so much fuel for some really powerful character development there.
This isn't that, this is just outing a dead man. This is reading a fortune cookie and adding the words "in bed" at the end.
And I call dibs on the revelation that Snape is Jewish.
I agree that these people's behavior is beneath contempt (although, fortunately, not beneath ridicule), but I am leery of a determination concerning which religious tenets are ripe to be jettisoned. I believe that people should be afforded the freedom to believe counter-scientific notions if that is their (informed) choice, and along with that is the freedom to share those beliefs with others.
Yeah, I've heard before that there are some freedoms we can't afford to grant because that plays into the Evil Agenda of the Sinister Opposition. I didn't believe it when it was the fundamentalists making this argument, and frankly I won't buy into it now that they are the targets.
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