Brain teaser. Jack is looking at Anne, but Anne is looking at George. Jack is married, but George is not. Is a married person looking at an unmarried person?
- A: Yes
- B: No
- C: Cannot be determined
The answer is A. If you thought C, join the club. Not only did I make the same mistake. So do most folk. According to Dave Robson, author of The Intelligence Trap:
Many Ivy League students got this wrong, and when I published this test in New Scientist magazine, we had an unprecedented number of letters saying the answer was a mistake.
When Guardian puzzle-setter Alex Bellos ran the teaser in 2016, he got these returns.
- A 27.68 per cent
- B 4.55 per cent
- C 67.77 per cent
But A really is the answer, and here’s why. Married Jack looks at Anne. If Anne is unmarried, we have our answer. And if Anne is married? Well who is she looking at?
The ‘trick’ hangs on our tendency to assess each of two candidates in isolation. With insufficient information to name either Jack or Anne as a married person looking at an unmarried one, we lose sight of the fact one or other must fit the bill since marital status is what programmers and other binary logicians call a Boolean, after the 19th century mathematician, George Boole. If we apply a True/False test and “status married” is false, then “status unmarried” is true. Like dead or alive and – this used to be uncontroversial 1 – male or female, marital status recognises one and only one of two and only two values.
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- In a post back in June 2021, I wrote of a widespread idPol failure to disentangle three separate things. One, it is not OK to trash a biological male identifying as female. Two, to insist that sex is binary is not of itself so to trash. Three, whether we think sex binary or “on a spectrum”, allowing “people with penises” into spaces once exclusive to “people with vaginas” – be they changing rooms, toilets, refuges for victims of domestic violence, jails or sports events – is just asking for trouble
Yes. There is absolutely no doubt that maleness and femaleness is a spectrum both physically and mentally, and that people who differ from the norm should be catered for in the same, or at least a similar, way as anyone else. At the same time, there is absolutely no excuse for this very minority interest to be promoted to the prominence it currently has, to the detriment of normal sexual provisions (mostly at the expense of women).
This ‘moral panic’ is just another manifestation of the pernicious doctrine of ‘liberalism’, which must be eradicated from civilised society.
Hi Jams and season’s greetings. I draw a distinction. On the one hand we have what I call “old school” liberalism as exemplified by men like Jeffrey Sachs, John Mearsheimer, Craig Murray and Judge Napolitano. There are issues on which I disagree with them, mostly on matters of class, but I respect their integrity and – shortcomings notwithstanding – their work. On the other are those so far lost in the desert of identity politics as to be useful idiots for power, especially for empire.
Look at Owen Jones and George Monbiot. Both went with the propaganda blitz on Syria, for reasons I discussed years ago in Monbiot, Syria and Universalism. And both were party to the trashing of Julian Assange. Since these lead figures took a large but uncritical following with them and gave left cover – due to their good work on other matters – to a Guardian which itself and for analogous reasons gives left cover to imperialism, they aided Julian’s horrific persecution for revealing the crimes of empire. IdPol in its #meToo! variant saw the mere suggestion of rape – he wasn’t even charged, far less convicted – having the “woke”, who should have been his most dedicated support base, desert this brave man. It never occurred to them they were being played, just as it never occurred to a similar constituency that its feelings about a subset of human rights (seldom including the right to eat, be educated and have free healthcare) were being manipulated by those who care not one iota for human rights other than as propaganda leverage, into backing thoroughly documented empire plans for regime change across the middle east. Several weeks ago, in US Neocons & Israel’s far Right: Part 2, I wrote of:
For his part and close to eight years ago, former Guardian columnist Jonathan Cook noted that:
I note the “jigsaw” conviction of Craig Murray. And the way #meToo! has thrown the presumption of innocence – consider Woody Allen and Kevin Spacey, convicted of no crime – out the window. (As have the witch hunts in the British Labour Party for “anti-semites” and “transphobes”, and their grotesquely attendant McCarthyite procedures whereby to be accused is to be convicted, and guilt by association really is a thing.)
The transgender thing brings us back to the truth that we westerners live in a bubble which assumes our values lead the world, and the propaganda of our media really does reflect international opinion; a bubble shielding us from the truth that much of the world views us with contempt and astonishment – tempered by fear and the craven venality of comprador leaders – for the moral and intellectual dead-end we have entered.
Seasons greeting to you too, Phil, and all the others here. Sorry about missing out on that – my manners are not the best. As for what you say, I can’t really argue with that elucidation – I have a tendency to save time and effort by ‘black and white’ thinking.
Keep on keeping on next year, and further.
No apology needed Jams. I was adding to, not disputing, your observations.