[HN Gopher] A brief meditation on formal systems and lying goblins
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       A brief meditation on formal systems and lying goblins
        
       Author : mprast
       Score  : 9 points
       Date   : 2025-03-06 22:00 UTC (59 minutes ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (the-nerve-blog.ghost.io)
 (TXT) w3m dump (the-nerve-blog.ghost.io)
        
       | thaumasiotes wrote:
       | I see this problem differently, as mainly exhibiting a problem
       | that cannot be analyzed without self-reference. Self-reference
       | causes problems.
       | 
       | The more obvious solution that the postscript hints at is the
       | question "what would you say if I asked you whether [this door]
       | leads to the castle?". Here, we immediately cancel out the
       | influence of whatever goblin we're speaking to, and we get the
       | right answer, whereas in the movie's solution we immediately
       | incorporate the influence of the lying goblin and get the wrong
       | answer.
       | 
       | But the movie's solution is better for the movie, because "what
       | would you say if I asked you X?" is a normal English way to ask
       | "X", and in this case, where the two questions are different, the
       | audience is guaranteed to be confused.
        
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