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        riddles >> what happened >> Same Room
        
(Message started by: maryl on Sep 1^st, 2003, 9:26am)

Title: Same Room
Post by maryl on Sep 1^st, 2003, 9:26am

A man walks into a room, turns around and walks out the same door he went in. When he gets out he is in a different room than when he started. How is this possible?

Title: Re: Same Room
Post by wowbagger on Sep 1^st, 2003, 9:44am

Solving riddles can be such an uplifting experience.

Title: Re: Same Room
Post by BNC on Sep 1^st, 2003, 12:55pm

I can't (and don't want to) argue with Wowbagger's solution (I, too, think it's the intended one), but it could also mean the guy is in the "cube" (seen the movie?)

Title: Re: Same Room
Post by wowbagger on Sep 1^st, 2003, 1:23pm

on 09/01/03 at 12:55:32, BNC wrote:

it could also mean the guy is in the "cube" (seen the movie?)

Why haven't I thought of that?
That's a really great movie! :)

Title: Re: Same Room
Post by Jack Z. on Nov 1^st, 2003, 5:57am

A man walks into a room, turns around and walks out the same door he went in. When he gets out he is in a different room than when he started. How is this possible?

solved by J.Z ;D

Title: Re: Same Room
Post by Jack Z. on Nov 1^st, 2003, 5:59am

A. The man gets in side an elevator and gets out on the next floor.

Title: Re: Same Room
Post by Sir Col on Nov 1^st, 2003, 6:05am

on 09/01/03 at 09:26:25, maryl wrote:

A man walks into a room, turns around and walks out the same door he went in. When he gets out he is in a different room than when he started. How is this possible?

This is bordering the philosophical. In a different time frame, are two places ever the same? If he walked from one room into another a 3:00pm and returns at 3:01pm, is it the same or a different room now? What would it take to make it the same/different? ???

Title: Re: Same Room
Post by towr on Nov 1^st, 2003, 10:16am

There's several kinds of 'same'. It really depends on what you want.
For instance you have token identity, and type-identity, in the first case you're talking about the same object (f.i. two people watching the same football-game), and in the second case two object of the same 'type' (f.i. two people wearing 'the same' jacket').
And then there's a much stricter case of identity where everything, including 'time-stamp' has to stay the same, and in that sense nothing is ever the same (but it's a usefull concept in some reasonings).
This features heavily in the discussion about the mind-brain problem, are mental states identical to brain states. Since the brain is never quite the same simple token-identity fails, type-identity brings up other problems.

Title: Re: Same Room
Post by wowbagger on Nov 7^th, 2003, 11:00am

on 11/01/03 at 10:16:02, towr wrote:

I'm so glad we have different words for these different samenesses in German: die selbe Jacke - die gleiche Jacke. Do you have that in Dutch too?

Title: Re: Same Room
Post by Jess_13 on Feb 21^st, 2004, 9:37am

SOOOOOOOOO EASY!!!!

AN ELEVATOR!!! He gets in and it goes up or down then he gets off at the next floor!!! 8) :) ;) :D ;D

Title: Re: Same Room
Post by grimbal on May 23^rd, 2004, 12:13pm

on 11/01/03 at 06:05:55, Sir Col wrote:

He might have spent 20 years in a prison cell and the prison went through many renovations...

Title: Re: Same Room
Post by Three Hands on May 23^rd, 2004, 5:21pm

on 11/01/03 at 06:05:55, Sir Col wrote:

Returning to the Heraclitus' suggestion that the world is in constant change, and that you can never cross the same river, etc. Of course, if you use that suggestion, surely you are no longer the same person who left the room previously, so it would be a different person entering a different room, and so the individual man is lost (it is no longer the same man that walks out of the room).

Of course, if you take the other perspective - that the world does not change, and so you can cross the same river, etc., then the suggestion that it is not the same room by virtue of it having changed through time, then even a prison cell argument wouldn't work, since the room you walk out to is the same as the one you walked in from, just certain details of the room may be different

Title: Re: Same Room
Post by grimbal on May 24^th, 2004, 8:11am

If you have an apple and you eat a small bite from it, is it still an apple?

Title: Re: Same Room
Post by Three Hands on May 24^th, 2004, 8:55am

on 05/24/04 at 08:11:10, grimbal wrote:

If you have an apple and you eat a small bite from it, is it still an apple?

No, it's an apple with a small bite taken from it. However, most people would say it still counts as being an apple, given that it is made of the substance apples are made from (or "apple stuff" to put it more crudely), even though it is not a complete apple

Title: Re: Same Room
Post by towr on May 24^th, 2004, 9:50am

Why would someone take a bite from a computer anyway ;)

'An apple with a bite taken from it' implies in the first place it's an apple. Otherwise it would be 'not-an-apple' with a bite taken from it ;D

Title: Re: Same Room
Post by Three Hands on May 24^th, 2004, 5:55pm

Well, it acknowledges a prior state, but not necessarily the state it is currently in. It's also the easiest description I could think of off the top of my head, since I don't really go with the "everything is in constant change, nothing remains as it is" theory, since I feel objects maintain some continuity. Of course, this leads to the "Great-grandfather's spade" problem (has it's blade replaced by Grandfather, then the handle replaced by Father, but it's still Great-grandfather's spade!!) of at what point an object has been altered too much to keep the same name, or if the object maintains its identity after all the parts have been changed.

Title: Re: Same Room
Post by Cathos on May 24^th, 2004, 9:11pm

Perhaps it's an Apple with a byte taken from it. Take the right one, and you'll be in for some trouble.