News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:A liar who always lies says "All my hats are green." by FabHK on Monday December 09, 2024 @11:41AM (#42367757)
SPOILER

The statement translates to:

   ∀x  ( IsAHatOfMine(x) => Green(x))
That's just equivalent to

   ∀x  (~IsAHatOfMine(x) ∨  Green(x))
by the definition of implication (it's only false if the antecedent is true, and the conclusion false).

The negation of that is (by repeated application of De Morgan's):

  ~∀x  (~IsAHatOfMine(x) ∨  Green(x))
   ∃x ~(~IsAHatOfMine(x) ∨  Green(x))
   ∃x    IsAHatOfMine(x) ∧ ~Green(x))
Thus, the liar has at least one hat, that, furthermore, is not green, so A) [EDIT: but not D - I misread it].

In ordinary English, the meaning of the original phrase, thus the answer to the puzzle, is different.

Re:A liar who always lies says "All my hats are green." by gliptic on Monday December 09, 2024 @11:46AM (#42367796)
Not D), because it says "The liar has at least one green hat." which isn't implied.
Re:A liar who always lies says "All my hats are green." by jp57 on Monday December 09, 2024 @12:10PM (#42368014)
Wait a second.

If the liar says, "All ten-foot tall men have brown hair," we cannot conclude that there must exist a ten-foot tall man.

Re:A liar who always lies says "All my hats are green." by JaumeGreen on Monday December 09, 2024 @12:28PM (#42368176)
In the solution they explain why they have to conclude that there should be at least one. Let me try again with a bit more explanation.

1. The liar stating something must mean that the phrase is not true. They cannot state anything that is not false.

2. "All X are Y" is the phrase.

Now, if we assume there is no X the phrases "All X are Y" and "Not all X are Y" are both true and false.

All X are Y - True. Yes, there is no X that is not Y.

All X are Y - False. Yes, there is no X that is Y.

Not all X are Y - True. Yes, there are no X, so none is not Y.

Not all X are Y - False. Yes, there are no X, so none is Y.

All these statements are (according to the article) vacuous if there is no X. A liar then cannot make them, as they are not false.

So from here you can deduce that either the phrase "All X are Y" stated by a liar indicates the existence of X or that I'm a liar :)

Re:A liar who always lies says "All my hats are green." by JaumeGreen on Monday December 09, 2024 @01:22PM (#42368865)
By the way, if the phrase is "X exists and all X are Y" then we wouldn't know if X really existed.

We only would know that either X doesn't exists or, if it exists, not all X are Y.

Re:A liar who always lies says "All my hats are green." by aidenn0 on Monday December 09, 2024 @12:35PM (#42368265)
Yes we can because if there are no ten-foot tall men, then it is indeed true that "All ten-foot tall men have brown hair"
Re:A liar who always lies says "All my hats are green." by aftbit on Monday December 09, 2024 @01:57PM (#42369250)
It seems intuitively wrong that you can say "All X are Y" and yet that doesn't imply "At least one X exists".
Re:A liar who always lies says "All my hats are green." by titzer on Monday December 09, 2024 @02:10PM (#42369378)
It also seems intuitively wrong that there are different sizes of infinity, yet Cantor discovered exactly that.
Re:A liar who always lies says "All my hats are green." by scotty79 on Monday December 09, 2024 @02:13PM (#42369415)
That's how math defined what "all" means. You can be talking about all elements of empty set without implying it must have some.

Basically it disentangled two unrelated concepts, that English language unduly mixes. Concept of every item having some quality and concepts of at least one item existing.

Re:A liar who always lies says "All my hats are green." by njtransit on Monday December 09, 2024 @02:38PM (#42369671)
That how we define "all" logically but not linguistically. For instance, linguistically we would consider this inconsistent: "all 10-foot men have black hair AND all 10-foot men have blonde hair" yet it is true, logically, if there are no 10-foot tall men. The translation of the English word "all" should be something something like: |Q| > 0 ∧ ∀x∈Q, x is ...
Re:A liar who always lies says "All my hats are green." by spencerflem on Monday December 09, 2024 @02:31PM (#42369596)
In formal logic, but in regular English that would not be true
Re:A liar who always lies says "All my hats are green." by out_of_protocol on Monday December 09, 2024 @01:04PM (#42368641)
If that is true then liar said truth.
Re:A liar who always lies says "All my hats are green." by cafeinux on Monday December 09, 2024 @03:56PM (#42370478)
And that's why we must conclude that there must be a ten-foot tall man, so it can have non-brown hair, so that the liar indeed lied.
Re:A liar who always lies says "All my hats are green." by out_of_protocol on Monday December 09, 2024 @04:46PM (#42370865)
Why liar can't lie about ten-foot tall man? Liar could mean two-inch hamster but lied and said ten-foot tall man
Re:A liar who always lies says "All my hats are green." by mr_mitm on Monday December 09, 2024 @01:36PM (#42369011)
Indeed, which is why the premise is false. So if a liar who always lies says that thing about ten foot men, ten foot men must exist, and at least one does not have brown hair.
Re:A liar who always lies says "All my hats are green." by twnettytwo on Monday December 09, 2024 @12:39PM (#42368305)
Then the liar isn't lying, as the statement is true.
Re:A liar who always lies says "All my hats are green." by elil17 on Monday December 09, 2024 @12:41PM (#42368348)
In these types of puzzles, a "liar" is meant to be someone who makes only statements which evaluate to false. They are meant to be riddles about formal logic.
Re:A liar who always lies says "All my hats are green." by 8note on Monday December 09, 2024 @02:37PM (#42369656)
> A liar is someone who only says false statements.

we're using a made up definition of liar, who can only say things that are false. it's not part of the question for the liar to be able to tell a statement they arent certain is false

Re:A liar who always lies says "All my hats are green." by samatman on Monday December 09, 2024 @03:00PM (#42369925)
There are normal-discourse statements in which vacuous truth plays a role, example: "I've never met a Frenchman I didn't like, but then again, I've never met a Frenchman". This is, of course, a joke: and it relies on the fact that we assume the set "met a Frenchman" will have contents, but we recognize that, due to the negation, the empty set is actually valid.

But it doesn't work the other way around: "Every Frenchman I've ever met has become a good friend, but then again, I've never met a Frenchman". This isn't funny, because the second clause makes the first clause into a lie, as truth is normally understood. This is not a place where we colloquially accept an empty set.

So the puzzle posed translates the English sentence into logic badly. It isn't the conclusion which is counterintuitive, it is the logical analysis which is flawed.

Re:A liar who always lies says "All my hats are green." by jblezo on Monday December 09, 2024 @11:47AM (#42367810)
I agree for A), by why D) ?
Re:A liar who always lies says "All my hats are green." by chias on Monday December 09, 2024 @11:51AM (#42367858)
I suspect a misreading of D) as "The liar has at least one non-green hat" which, in fairness, feels weird that wasn't included in the list.
Re:A liar who always lies says "All my hats are green." by autokad on Monday December 09, 2024 @12:10PM (#42368012)
I did that myself, not sure whats wrong with my eyes >.<
Re:A liar who always lies says "All my hats are green." by jblezo on Monday December 09, 2024 @11:53AM (#42367868)
Also, I'm not sure that those two affirmations are equivalent:

  ~∀x  (~IsAHatOfMine(x) ∨  Green(x))

   ∃x ~(~IsAHatOfMine(x) ∨  Green(x))
Re:A liar who always lies says "All my hats are green." by FabHK on Monday December 09, 2024 @12:02PM (#42367945)
Re:A liar who always lies says "All my hats are green." by bhelkey on Monday December 09, 2024 @01:30PM (#42368954)
I think this is how the puzzle author intended the puzzle to be read.

That being said, I would argue that, "All my hats are green." has different meaning than "I may or may not own a hat. Any hat that I own is green".

The use of 'all' and the plural of 'hat' implies that the author has multiple hats.

Re:A liar who always lies says "All my hats are green." by gorfian_robot on Monday December 09, 2024 @02:44PM (#42369739)
All my unicorns are green.