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A liar who always lies says "All my hats are green."

theguardian.com

131–140 of 419 posts

Re: A liar who always lies says "All my hats are green."

#131
post #95

SPOILER The statement translates to: ∀x ( IsAHatOfMine(x) => Green(x)) That's just equivalent to ∀x (~IsAHatOfMine(x) ∨ Green(x)) by the definition of implication (it's only false if the antecedent is true, and the conclusion false). The negation of that is (by repeated application of De Morgan's): ~∀x (~IsAHatOfMine(x) ∨ Green(x)) ∃x ~(~IsAHatOfMine(x) ∨ Green(x)) ∃x IsAHatOfMine(x) ∧ ~Green(x)) Thus, the liar has a…

Wait a second.

If the liar says, "All ten-foot tall men have brown hair," we cannot conclude that there must exist a ten-foot tall man.

EDIT: I'll clarify to say I wasn't taking issue with the derivation, but rather with the translation of the English statement into first-order predicate logic. No non-logician would conclude that there must be a ten-foot tall man if "All ten-foot-tall men have brown hair" is false. But since we can derive it from the translated logic statement, then there must be a problem with the translation.

In normal discourse people don't accept vacuous truths like that as meaningfully true. Rather I think people would interpret such a statement as a kind of hypothetical: "If there were a ten-foot tall man, he would have brown hair."

It's not clear to me if first-order predicate logic is really equipped to even handle reasoning about these cases of "a liar who always lies." Such a situation seems to be intrinsically higher-order. If a liar states a hypothetical, what does that mean, exactly?

My interpretation of the negation of the statement is, "If there were a ten-foot-tall man, he would not necessarily have brown hair." This doesn't imply the existence of any ten-foot-tall man.

Re: A liar who always lies says "All my hats are green."

#132
If all statements made by the liar are false, then the statement 'my hats' which is a statement made by the liar about his possession of hats, must be false, right? If the liar claims possession of hats, the truth must be that the liar does not possess any hats.

What if the liar said "I own no hats, but if I did own hats, not a single one of them would be green"? Can we then conclude the liar owns a green hat?

Formal logic generates contradictions easily and confuses people when expressed in word problem format, because humans aren't that logical - liars may only lie 10% of the time, when they see a benefit. It's like rational actor theory in economics - people may only act rationally 50% of the time.

Re: A liar who always lies says "All my hats are green."

#133
post #30
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the liar having no hats would not make the statement true. ‘All my hats implies’ implies the liar stating they have hats. The liar either has zero hats or some amount of hats. The only thing we know for certain is that if they do have hats, there is at least one non Green hat.

No. In formal logic, if you have no hats, it is true that all your hats are green. You can claim anything about those hats, it is even true that each one of those hats is the same size as the universe, or that they are all completely green and completely red at the same time. In normal language, this would be different, but that is not the context here. > Note: this question was originally set in a maths exam, so the…

That's the thing, the problem isn't written in formal logic. It's written in English, which is vague.

Re: A liar who always lies says "All my hats are green."

#134

I never liked this type of puzzle. It is not formal logic but more about the idiosyncrasies and conventions of the English language. I put this puzzle on par with Agatha Christie’s murder mysteries. It requires a suspension of disbelief and logic to be believable. Someone who always lies means in the purest sense means you cannot trust anything they say. Even the word “hat” could mean they are talking about their pet…

Only people with formal training in logic, or those who work with formal definitions of logic, have trouble with this aspect of the puzzles. Trying to return to your more naive understanding of logic not only helps understand the intent of the puzzle, it also makes the puzzle more fun.

I'm genuinely perplexed by this, how is the puzzle even a puzzle if you don't judge it by formal logic?

Re: A liar who always lies says "All my hats are green."

#135

I never liked this type of puzzle. It is not formal logic but more about the idiosyncrasies and conventions of the English language. I put this puzzle on par with Agatha Christie’s murder mysteries. It requires a suspension of disbelief and logic to be believable. Someone who always lies means in the purest sense means you cannot trust anything they say. Even the word “hat” could mean they are talking about their pet…

Puzzles like this are to make more people interested in formal logic. The "gateway drug" of formal logic.

Just like the barber paradox isn't literally Russell's paradox, but it made more people to look up the history of it and perhaps learned what Russell's paradox is. Hopefully 0.1% of them turn out to be mathematicians.

Re: A liar who always lies says "All my hats are green."

#136

I never liked this type of puzzle. It is not formal logic but more about the idiosyncrasies and conventions of the English language. I put this puzzle on par with Agatha Christie’s murder mysteries. It requires a suspension of disbelief and logic to be believable. Someone who always lies means in the purest sense means you cannot trust anything they say. Even the word “hat” could mean they are talking about their pet…

Right. Some people will claim "all my hats are green" is equivalent to "I have no hats which are not green", so he ,must have one hat which is not green. But other people would argue that teh original statement also implies you have at least one hat, so the statement can still be a lie if he has no hats at all. Lewis Carrol explicitly endorses the second view in his book "The Game of Logic". Good luck trying to argue logic with Lewis Carrol.

Re: A liar who always lies says "All my hats are green."

#137
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which leads to a funny fact that if all elements of the set S satisfy proposition P it doesn’t necessarily imply that some elements of the set S satisfy proposition P.

My description of the power set is by definition allowing all to imply some

I don’t follow. Can you elaborate?

Re: A liar who always lies says "All my hats are green."

#138
post #2

My take (possible spoiler): If he had no hats, then his statement would technically be true. Therefore he has at least one hat. He may have some green hats and some non-green hats, but must have at least one non-green hat. He could have any number of green hats, including zero, as long as he has at least one non-green hat. So the only derived statement that we can conclude to be true is A.

Wait, is there are any color space in which Turquoise gets classified as green?

Yes, the one in which there is no word for blue.

Re: A liar who always lies says "All my hats are green."

#139

I never liked this type of puzzle. It is not formal logic but more about the idiosyncrasies and conventions of the English language. I put this puzzle on par with Agatha Christie’s murder mysteries. It requires a suspension of disbelief and logic to be believable. Someone who always lies means in the purest sense means you cannot trust anything they say. Even the word “hat” could mean they are talking about their pet…

Only people with formal training in logic, or those who work with formal definitions of logic, have trouble with this aspect of the puzzles. Trying to return to your more naive understanding of logic not only helps understand the intent of the puzzle, it also makes the puzzle more fun.

> it also makes the puzzle more fun.

No; it makes the puzzle illogical and thus about as much fun, for those who prefer logical outcomes, as discussing religion or politics.

Re: A liar who always lies says "All my hats are green."

#140
post #127
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These puzzles are entirely formal logic. Now you may not like or understand the intricacies of the logic/math and how it interacts with the English language, but the rules, and thus the solutions, are pretty objective and not open to interpretation.

You aren't reading the same article. It's obviously ambiguous

And yet everyone here has come up with the right answer.
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