General / Off-Topic A puzzle ... a question. Do you have the answer?
- Thread starter Jaiotu
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is it a whale with a bowl of petunias?
Overflow (assuming 3 bit rep)
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42 is the answer to everything. I did work it out first though:
7 x 6 = 42 is the last line.
Or should I say:
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7 x 6 = 42 is the last line.
Or should I say:
[ | | | ] | | [ | | - ] [ ] [ | - | - | - ]
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Appropriate!
[-|-] assuming 3-bit representation...
Great job!
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Appropriate!
[-|-] assuming 3-bit representation...
I wasn't sure if this was a legitimate reference to the answer, hence the A for effort.
Too easy?
Yes, it was a Hitchhikers reference. Could it be anything else? I think you have a divide by zero issue in there anyway.
Yes, it was a Hitchhikers reference. Could it be anything else? I think you have a divide by zero issue in there anyway.
Indeed. I know someone who would actually agree with the statement you are picking out in the OP though... he also goes on to claim it makes him "smarter than maths"
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Yes, it was a Hitchhikers reference. Could it be anything else? I think you have a divide by zero issue in there anyway.
There's only one division problem in there, and not by zero (unless I really screwed up, which I don't think I did). I did work up a longer version of this puzzle which DOES include a division by zero problem where the answer is 'FALSE' (explaining the meaning of false was easier than I thought it would be).
The idea came to me while thinking of the Unknown Probe signal and some of our own efforts to send messages to aliens (such as the Arecibo Message).
What gets me about the whole Unknown Probe / Unknown Artifact mystery is that we are dealing with an intelligence that already KNOWS how to communicate with us. They know Morse Code for Pete's sake! Why embed a graphic in an audio signal when they can just 'dot dash' us a text message?
This puzzle came from my own reflections on what kind of message I would send to try to start a dialog with aliens. Math seemed like the answer.
Yep, I read it right first time around then, but after reading metallurgist's post I reread it incorrectly for some reason....
Ah. I see! I should have included a few more addition/subtraction/multiplication/division questions to make the operators more clear.
Just because they have cracked the code doesn't mean they understand our language. They know the numbers and letters can be seen as having numerical values, but they probably still don't know how to use the letters to produce words in context, only our names for systems.
Perhaps. But there knowledge of even the basics of Morse Code is bothersome and makes me wonder if we are dealing with a machine intelligence that has its origin in Human history.
I still think they learned morse from our nav beacons. Because most systems are procedurally generated, they have proc gen names from which the knowledge they have already demonstrated could have been derived. I have posted this hypothesis in an earlier Canonn thread in the past, but it a very long time ago. It wasn't completely ignored at the time, but I think it's largely forgotten.
Great point! I've never paid close attention to the noise from the Nav Beacons. Are they Morse?