The Truth (As I see it)

If a door is partially opened, and someone carefully puts a bucket filled with water on it, what will happen when someone swings open the door?

A) Any buckets on it will fall off.
B) The door will be open.
C) The door will refuse to open until someone ensures that the bucket will survive the experience unharmed.
D) The window will close.

Place your bets now, and any winners will receive a free cookie.

 

B, and not not A, C (except in the case where 'open' doesn't mean 'open further', since the door is already open, ex hypothesi, and assuming 'refuses to open' means 'doesn't open', since the door could, e.g., verbally refuse to open but do so anyway; but disallowing ambiguities, C is false), or D, pending other information.

In short: B is true, A and D are undetermined, and C is ambiguous.

 

The "until someone ensures that the bucket will survive the experience unharmed" bit was meant to hint at an empathical response. How would you formulate the question so A and B are true, C is false and D is undetermined?

 

Unfortunately, I don't really think that there's a way that doesn't make the answer obvious! B will always be true, D will always be undetermined, and C is false if it reads 'The door shall not open until...'; but to make A true, you'd need to specify that the bucket is in a gravitational field or an accelerating chamber and dictate that the law of inertia holds (you could just mention that the scenario is occurring on Earth, to amalgamate) and is not secured to the top of the door or has any such opposing force. The question is a little bit ambiguous, too, being anal, because it doesn't make it obvious (it doesn't even include mention) that 'swinging the door' open means 'swinging it further open', and it could be misread as saying that the swinging of the door either doesn't make sense, or refers to the original opening of the door!

The way you've phrased the question here, the bucket could be nailed or glued, &c., to the top of the door, it could be suspended by a couple (or any amount) of strings that just tilt the bucket (or don't; either way!) and stop it from falling off, there could be no gravity, &c.; i.e., there's pretty much no way I can think of phrasing the question that doesn't effectively include the phrase 'the bucket will fall when the door is opened any further', though somebody else might think of something!

Wow, I'm boring...

 

That's easy;
Locate the bucket resting on the door
Apply one hand to the underside of the bucket
Open the door slowly, so that the bucket more and more rests on the hand applied
Catch bucket
Place bucket on floor.

 

Step in bucket by accident.

 

When one learns a new language, any word CAN mean anything at any given time because you have no knowledge to begin with. Sometimes it is helpful in order to progress in knowledge to go back to a point that assumes that you know less than you do in order to review and verify that you learned the lessons necessary to establish a firm foundation upon the later lessons are built. Like reviewing addition if you are having trouble learning multiplication. Phonics in order to better learn pronunciation.

And except for the mathematical descriptions that science have proven, science itself is not exempt from misunderstandings generated by language. Afterall, it frequently describes abstractions as well. Especially when dealing with scales that humans cannot experience.

 

Yes, but those abstractions are still a description of reality, and so can be verified against reality in the cases where there is a misunderstanding or disagreement. Scientific theories are not "open to interpretation" in the same way as, say, literature. At most they are "open to implication", and that's only in cases where there is a shortage of evidence as to what the actual implications are.

 

Moop moop moop moopity mooping moop moop!

 

Yes, like the Japanese word "taberu", which can, depending on the context mean something like "to eat", or... Actually that's it. It only has one meaning. You idiot.

 

"Meow, meow, meeeow. M'meow, m'meow, mmmeow. Meow meow meooow."
But, sir! I don't understand. Why can't I meow in public? (jk)

Scale: extremely small or extremely large requiring large and expensive instrumentation in order to experimentally determine the validity of the theories posed by scientists that have access to such instrumentation. Meaning that the poor have only words to read and no reality to experience when determining the validity of concepts.
Take the Quantum Zeno Effect for example, combined with the movie Star Trek Insurrection (I think it was that Star Trek movie) specifically the scene where Picard "stops time" through massive awareness of the moment. If it is possible to fully measure and/or be aware of reality so that position is fully known, then combined with the uncertainity principal, is not possible that to disrupt reality on such as scale? Granted to develop the technology to do so is equalivalent to changing lead into gold -- possible, but not economically feasible. ...But my point was understanding or rather the ease of misunderstanding science ... Would not the lay consider such as not purely fantasy after reading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Zeno_effect ?

Of course, I realize that I present this as trick question, but do you see the trick and therefore what I mean or are you going to argue that I am saying it is possible and its not?

 

I can press a button on a small pebble-like object to open a gate leading to a carriage that is propelled by the power of explosions. Who knows what science will bring us next?

 

Yes, but the concepts are still a description of reality. The key point being that if the astrophysics of the Big Bang REALLY bothered you, you could take a degree in astrophysics, and then a masters, and then a PhD, and eventually you'd get access to the instruments that are used to measure the universe, and could collect your own data, and analyse it, and come to your own conclusions about the theories, and even come up with new theories that could be accepted into the scientific mainstream if they stood up to scrutiny.

Whereas there is no way to ask the various authors of the Bible what they meant by various passages. No matter how many times anyone reads it, a fallible understanding of an imprecise language is all they'll ever have.

Heh, I'd never heard of that before. My brain hurts. This is why I'm not a quantum physicist...

Sorry, was there a question? Something about Star Trek? My mind is still boggling over the Quantum Zeno Effect. Man, universe crazy!

 

I would argue that Hebrew is a quite precise language. At least, it measures emotion and spirituality in physical, measurable terms (ie, descriptive of the physiological reaction to the psychological processes rather than the abstracted descriptions in Greek and English philosophy) and it has a wonderfully integrated system of mathematics and semantics, where each letter equates to a number and each word adds up to a number which is in turn related mathematically to related concepts [eg, (m+o+t+h+e+r) x (f+a+t+h+e+r) = c+h+i+l+d].
Then again, I am only arguing for the sake of conflict rather than elucidation so, whatever.

 

I assume you mean something like saying "hot and bothered" instead of "frustrated", in which case the language is less precise, not more precise, because physiological reactions can be the result of any number of things. There is hardly any difference, physiologically, between crying and laughing, but there is a significant emotional difference.

You're probably going to call me ignorant, and then delete the post, but - sorry, there is no way that can actually be true of the original language.

 

I doubt he just made that up (I can't think of a reason why he would have) and I think I have a vague recollection of having read that somewhere...

 

I didn't mean that ytzk made it up. What I suspect happened is that a few scholars with an obsession to prove the divine provenance of Hebrew sat around at some point and juggled with the alphabet and spellings and numbers to force a few key words into this alleged numerical relationship.

Then they went out and said "Hey look everyone, Hebrew has been like this ALL ALONG!"

ytzk's only crime is believing it.

 

I never said it was divine providence. I also never said I believed it, nor would it be a crime if I did.

Anyway, why shouldn't ancient desert tribesmen obsess over letters and numbers? Their attention span far surpassed yours or mine.

Your outright disbelief betrays your ignorance, sir.

 

It's a pity that ytzk's posts don't have a wonderfully integrated system of semantics.

 

I believe this is called Moore's Paradox.