“Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect: […] like a physician, who hath found out an infallible medicine, after the patient is dead.” —Jonathan Swift

  • 107 Posts
  • 963 Comments
Joined 2 年前
cake
Cake day: 2024年7月25日

help-circle
  • TheTechnician27@lemmy.worldMtoComic Strips@lemmy.worldThree wishes
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    5 分钟前

    It basically boils down to “do nothing”, right?

    Sort of due to a flaw in the syntax; it (almost) boils down to an infinite loop (we’ll fix the syntax to specificy “I wish for you to” and use the wish flags ‘!’ = opposite, ‘~’ = ignore/skip (we’ll assume this exhausts a wish still even though it shouldn’t since it doesn’t matter anyway), and for clarity, we’ll make ‘+’ mean no flags/execute normally; all 3 wishes are ‘+’ at the start of the first loop):

    • “I wish for you to do the opposite of my next wish.” (flag set to do !wish2)
    • “I wish for you not to fulfill my third wish.” (flag set for +wish3)
    • “I wish for you to [have ignored] my first wish.” (now ~wish1 was set before you made wish 2; notably, this needs to be retroactive for the loop to start, so the syntax in the OP is wrong).

    Now +wish2 was set. But then the flag for ~wish3 was set. But then +wish1 was set (i.e. it was never ignored; this is flawed, however, but author’s logic). Now !wish2 was set. Now ~wish3 was set. Etc.

    Every even loop (0-indexed) will be (+, !, +) while every odd one will be (~, +, ~).

    That said, a flaw in this logic is that it should actually stop after Loop 1, since wish3 is no longer an active wish; the genie doesn’t have to go back and change anything. You need the wish to be active, not ignored, to break the genie into an infinite loop.

    “I wish for you to do the opposite of my first wish.” as wish3 should break 'em.











  • Oh, you’re playing with fire trying to be pedantic like this. You’re using the astronomical definition which starts on the solstice (some astronomical definitions treat the solstice as the center of the season, but starting at the solstice is the predominant one). Multiple countries use the meteorological definition which includes every day within three months (June, July, August in the Northern Hemisphere). The US has no overarching legal definition, but for example, US maritime law gives a batshit definition of summer as “April 1 to October 31” and winter as all the rest. And culturally in the US, summer tends to start at Memorial Day (e.g. this is when outdoor public pools usually start opening).

    There’s no “technically” here, or if there is, you’re just as right as you are wrong. If anything, given a cultural holiday, it’s arguably most “correct” to assess it using the cultural definition.











  • Sanitation posts absolutely whatever here and never takes it down regardless of pushback. Like a week ago or so, they posted a Times of India article (absolute shit outlet that takes bribes for positive coverage) published this month about a story that happened c. March 2024 as if it’d just happened. This was called out in the comments. Their response when I DM’d them pointing out irrefutable evidence in the comments and politely asking them to take it down (they replied to me just today) was basically “Do I have to? Just let them downvote it lol”.

    Just knowingly flooding Lemmy with garbage. They shouldn’t be allowed to post in news comms with such shameless disregard for quality.