4 Logic Riddles ft. SciShow! 

Me too and I didnt even look at the video :)

+Filip 'GenGariCZek' Kejnar O.o

MOTAY Official I mean I was just listening.

And no cameras.

+Filip 'GenGariCZek' Kejnar haha okay

haha!

a few years, hopefully less than 5

900 months, and 99 women are there for moral support!

9 months

9 months

I find reading the questions MUCH easier, so from my perspective I think Hank, Caitlin and Jessi are at a bit of a disadvantage as they only heard them verbally. Next time I think I'll bring them printed out too!

Yep ... pressure is on for the guys, what with the cameras rolling.. harsh comments below on their response .. and their peers roaming the set!! Eeek ... Must be a Nessy video on the fight/flight, deer in the headlights syndrome coming up soon !!!

+LocoPal 5 I don't think it really has to do with any pressure, but more the hearing vs reading

Could it be for the same reason that writing tests in weird fonts makes the results better? Maybe we think more when we read, so avoiding intuition is easier.

Some people process things better hearing them, others reading them; and some actually have to draw or use objects or something to visualize the concepts better; and I'm probably leaving out a few other ways.

^^^

Same. Except what is really sad is there is already a video on RU-vid of Hank answering that riddle..... in a SciShow episode!

I never heard of it and the way it was phrased here "a bat and a ball cost 1.10$" made me think that each of them costs 1.10$ and I got completely blocked when the next sentence was "X costs 1$ more than Y" wait what?? Probably just because English is not my first language.

Yes! With Veritasium! :D

english is my first language and i did the exact same thing

John Green is very smart.

I don't think he felt dumb as much as he felt ashamed to have his bias, that he otherwise knows to be wrong, so blatantly acknowledged. He not only got the question wrong. He got it wrong because of a social bias that he is ashamed to have.

There's always a difference in people between their psychology and philosophy. People who try to slowly adapt their psychology to their philosophy have my respect, as they're trying to get rid of these bias. Also, riddles like these are a lot harder only hearing them instead of reading them. It somewhat changes the whole experience.

I don't enjoy it, but pain and humiliation are humbling experiences that help balance the scales of pleasure and accomplishment so it's cool in that way. He really added insult to injury when he described his plethora of masculine scenarios though. lol

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+BrainCraft You are my hero.

All except for the baseball one at the start. Then my brain was like "Hold on a second. You might have to think for these", and then it was a solid performance. Watching Hank struggle was fun :)

+Occams_Blades same

me too, except the first one (i had to pause it for a minute) even though i heard it before

Yep...me

Yes. I don't really feel special.

Not me! I spent 5 to 10 secs on all the riddles except the 1st one because I had to double check my work just in case (mentally).

I have heard the last one the rest were just easy.

Yup. the version of the "widget" question was this: "If a chicken and half can lay an egg and a half in a day and a half, then how long would it take 2 chickens to lay 30 eggs?" which is more blatantly a math problem and probably wouldn't stump someone as easily.

Or go the safe way the government has on the forms and say "parent two"

I really cant comprehend how it was so hard to think of that... My immediate response was mom.. wtf

same here.

On the other hand, it's a rather old and well-known riddle, so chances are you've heard it before at some point (I know I have at 25, and so has my 56-year-old mother).

IceMetalPunk no, i swear I haven't

Same with me as well and I've been accused of being a misogynist once in the past. I'd be interested in hearing more of those questions in the future.

I'm a girl, and the first time i heard it, i was a confused as Hank was. It doesn't have to do with gender. I bet the results would be the same, if it was a mother.

Some Person You're right. It has to do with social bias and the tendencies that the average person has.

entertainment...it wouldn't that funny for us if they all knew the answers

the rumors are true!!

+lodevijk As I said in another reply, if you think by translation it adds a layer of complication. I believe it mostly freezes the wrong assumption induced by the social bias, making it harder. You could argue, on the other hand, that translating forces you to examine whether you'll use "male surgeon" or "female surgeon", so it would help. But I don't think that's what happens. One thing is sure: you can't propose the riddle in a language thet includes the gender in "surgeon" or "doctor".

My primary language is portuguese (i'm brazilian) and It have genders. A male surgeon we call "cirurgião" and a female surgeon we call "cirurgiã". When I heard the question, I didn't translate "surgeon" to "cirurgião" instead I visualized a male surgeon just because the cultural bias. What is odd for me is that capacity to visualize instead of translating languages happen before I can rationally think, so it is like the bias took place when I first associate "surgeon" with "cirurgião".

+Raphael Brandão Yeah, usually when we are fluent in a language we don't "translate to portuguese", we just know the language like its our mother tongue. But our brain grew with another language and sets of logical process that depend on this language so if I say "surgeon" you probably think of a male because it ends with "on". In portuguese we need to say "a pessoa que fará a cirurgia" wich makes it a lot harder to fool people :P

Or you can say "When the surgery is about to begin: "I can't do it, it's my son", if you purposely omit the keywords you can make it neutral and still biased. (Quando a cirurgia está para começar: "eu não posso operar este é meu filho").

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+James Butler (Jim) Same here. I paused the video briefly (2 secs maybe) when the whole problem was stated, then gave the right answer. And I'm sure reading was what made it possible. In the first one, I got the numbers right but almost said $1.05. At the last moment, so to speak, I checked which item was the most expensive. If I had heard it only, I'd get it wrong.

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That would be great!! :D

Oh hello

I would like to have logicbusters..

the 3rd was intuitively easy though.

I still struggled on that one, even though it was so obvious. What I did was: First day = Initial Area (A) Day 2 = 2A Day 3 = 2*2A or (2^2)A Day 4 = (2^3)A So I figured out that the number with which 2 is raised by corresponded to the day minus one, so Day 48 would be 2^47 times the initial area. Since we wanted half the area, I divided this by two and got 2^46, which corresponds to the 47th day. That problem took me a lot longer than it should have.

***** Intuition is "fast thinking" that she references in the video. It's prone to biases and logical fallacies. The psychologist who contributed the bulk of the research on the topics of fast vs slow thinking have a few books you can reference. These problems won't be intuitively answered by the majority of people. (They conceded that experts can sometimes form intuitive responses that are accurate despite the disposition to bias) www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0374533555

***** We are not in disagreement about WHAT intuition is. I did not say anything in any of my comments which dissents from the dictionary definition of intuition. I stated: *"These aren't riddles, they're simply, unintuitive math question"* as to say, they these question won't be accurately responded to by means of intuition for most people, ie., for most people *"it's just that your intuitions are wrong."* Which is word for word what you said. I think the reason you think you are saying something different from what I said is because you are misunderstanding the word "intuitive", whose definition is far less explicit: *in·tu·i·tive: using or based on what one feels to be true even without conscious reasoning; instinctive.* Subjectivity is directly built into the word's definition. What is intuitive for one person will not be for another. My original comment just means that the answers to the questions will not be ascertained by most people's intuition, ie. they questions are "unintuitive".

Erd Tird Mans That's an interesting idea. Are you suggesting that that is how people interpret the statements, or that is how the statements ought be interpreted?

Most people get it wrong. I remember when I was 9 my class of 31 kids were asked this question and not a single one of us got it correct. If the question is so obvious then you'd expect at least 1 person to get it right especially with the high levels of creative and imaginative thinking children have. Ask people this question and I guarantee the majority who haven't heard it will be incorrect

Young ReeZy But what's confusing about it? I really feel like i'm missing something.

Hero✩Lydragius Nothing is, that's the point. I personally believe the emphasis on male pronouns in the context makes people forget the obvious idea of every human on this planet having mother as well as a father. Gender bias also plays a role but I reckon if you were to tell a kid with genders reversed then they probably will still get it wrong

Young ReeZy I didn't notice a real problem with the pronouns. All surgeons are called surgeons in english. Are people expecting to hear surgeonette or something? I'm actually legit confused.

Hero✩Lydragius All pronouns that come in the passage of the riddle are male. I think this subconsciously makes us think only of the male parent hence why many people assume the boy has 2 dads before remembering the fact that everybody has a male and female parent

No you are just over complicating it.

Ashley Teece Yea, why bother work it out when you can just guess.

+Ashley Teece this isn't overcomplicating. It's right to ask whether two or more machines can work simultaneously on their own or if they work together on one stamp (I dont remember what it was exactly)

So you thought it was some sort of assembly line

The Spark Usually machines are set up in series and not in parallel. i.e. On machines unloads a a dozen bottles 15 seconds. Next machine does prewash dozen at a time 20 seconds Next washes each bottle one a time for 40 seconds each. next rinse one at a time in 10 seconds each last one loads by dozen 15 seconds. So 5 bottles in 5 minutes. Now do it for 100 machines and you'll see the time it takes depends on the proportions of machines and how things are set up. What got me in this is, unlike Momma Surgeon where a woman is way more likely then two dad things. machines setup in series is the norm and the question specifically misleads and doesn't give any information needed for the normal situation that they are specifically asking for. Unfair.