Jeff, you're completely wrong.

[Zorfox2]

Firstly, you made the riddle crazy easy to solve. Let's say the good land is on the left. The answer to your version is, "Which direction did you come from?" If the native is a truth teller, he comes from the good land and will say left. If he is a liar, he comes from the bad land but will still say left, since he lies. If the good land is on the right they will both say right.

So in fact there is a logically sound answer to yours, and also the original riddle, which is harder and goes like this.

You are in an oblong room with a door at each end. One door leads directly to Heaven, the other straight into Hell. Each door is guarded by a man, and the men look identical. One man can only tell the truth and one man can only lie, and neither can speak at all except to say 'Yes' or 'No.' Either man may be in front of either door; that is, the door to Heaven is not necessarily guarded by the truth teller, and the door to Heaven may be on your right or left.

Assuming you want to get to Heaven and you only have a single question, what should it be?



I'll leave that open ended at least until someone posts back. But you see it is harder (giving more possible options and fewer possible questions), and it definitely does have a solution, which I will remember by tomorrow.

I guess the EAE is jsut full of idiots.

[Zorfox2]

Ugh, sorry, I posed it wrong. If I remember correctly, it should state that the two men can only say 'Yes,' 'No,' 'Hell,' or 'Heaven.' That is, I think it can be solved with only Yes or No but I can't remember it. I do have a solution for allowing any four of those answers. Of course you only actually get one.

[Zorfox2]

Oop, sorry. I remembered the answer with Yes and No only and now you have to too.

[Jeff]

Odds are I am indeed completely wrong, since it is a modified version of the famous old riddle. Taking the second native out of it should've done the trick (I think). Still, there's always the possibility of some meandering logical trick.

However, I don't think "Which direction did you come from?" is logically sound. Natives pay each other visits all the time for trade or warfare or what have you. A good native could've just gotten back from missionary work in the bad land, or a bad native could've just gotten back from stealing chickens in the good land.

You could ask "Which direction to the land of your birth?", which would work, except for immigration. Then you've got the whole semantics argument around the term "native".

And knowing Dr. Kodgers, he would make up some excuse for any answer (much like I've just done, heh). I'd imagine there really is an inarguable answer out there, but I'll dodge it as long as I can.

As for your riddle, is that the ole "which door is the other guy standing in front of" one?

[Zorfox2]

There is always some inarguable answer, but in fact once you get into that you are overanalyzing. Which direction to the land of your birth would be perfectly sound, I think, because I doubt there's much immigration-- doesn't seem like they'd get along.

Your answer would not work, but you are close. The correct answer (as I don't think anyone else cares to try and find out) is "If I were to ask the other man if he is standing in front of the door to Heaven, what would he reply?" The trick to this is that now there will be exactly one lie in the answer; if you ask the truth teller, he will truthfully say the other's lie, and if you ask the liar, he will give you the opposite of the other's truth. This way you know that, regardless of whether your person is the liar or the truth-teller, if he replies "Yes" then the other man is _not_ guarding the door to Heaven, and if he says "No" the other man _is_ guarding the door to Heaven. In other words, it comes out logically equivalent to asking "Are _you_ guarding the door to Heaven?"

The only difference if you allow "Heaven" and "Hell" as answers is you can shorten the question by a few words, i.e. "If I were to ask the other man which door he is guarding, what would he reply?" which is really not that important.

[Jeff]

The beauty (or ugliness, depending on how you look at it) of logical arguments is the constant disagreement over terms and little details outside the original parameters. Since it's a hypothetical situation, people can make up whatever they want. Maybe the good guys and the bad ones do surprisingly get along since they always know what the other is going to do, whereas we in our culture often have difficulty telling whether or not people are pulling our legs. Plus, the riddle only says "native" not necessarily a native of either country. Everyone's a native of somewhere.

Actually, your points have given me a great idea for a short storyline. Check for it toward the end of July. It should work out to be infuriatingly hilarious!

[Jeff]

So there ya go.

(tune in next time I make a blatant error to see how I worm my way out of THAT one)