Random

[wispfox]

The trees are insufficiently green. Naked trees make it difficult to believe in Springtime!

Must remember to bring bags with me on walks, so instead of being annoyed by trash on the ground, I can pick it up and thow it away later.

Odyssey of the Mind - _that's_ what I was part of in junior high! Neat stuff.

Because now I'm curious, I offer you the example my mom gave me of a fluid reasoning-based qeustion. (it does require not already having run into it before, mind)

[Poll #1168310]

Ok, back to work.

[edit: There is no 'right answer'. Indeed, I suspect that this is part of a hallmark of a test of fluid reasoning, that there is not one]

Comments

[crouchback.livejournal.com]

I am curious as to what your answer to this would be.

I often get questions like this posed to me, and come up with an answer that is accurate but not what the person posing the question was thinking of.

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

Check the poll answers. :)

And yes: I don't think there _is_ a 'right' answer for these kinds of things, as long as it works.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

I have dozens of answers. None seem to uniquely require the fly and the tree, however, and so are unsatisfactory answers to a riddle.

Riddles are meant to be solved, and the creator knows they are meant to be solved -- this info is available to both riddler and riddlee. Hence, a riddle should contain elements that tell you you've found the right answer, not just "an" answer, and I can't find any answer that does that for this question. (Doesn't mean there isn't one.)

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

Uniquely requiring the two elements... notsomuch. Uniquely _including_ them, yes.

I think it's about finding the smallest grouping/category that also includes both. But... this is at an _absurdly_ non-verbal level for me. So I don't know. And I don't think it's a riddle, or not meant to be one.

Interestingly, I _did_ find my answer to be the only way I could answer. Indeed, I took a couple seconds before answering to verify that I hadn't missed something that felt more 'right'. So, for me at least, my answer is the only one that I could have given.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Why is a raven like a writing desk?

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

I cannot separate the surreality of the source of that question enough to manage to give a non-surreal answer.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

S'ok, I wasn't asking it as a question. More pointing to a similar (congruent?) situation, and letting Alice express my frustration.

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

Hmm.

And I'm struggling really, really hard to manage to make those similar.

(I am, incidentally, fascinated by my difficulty gut-level-comprehending the frustration, although sorry that I frustrated you)

I think I may have to agree to try to remain aware of this (unfortunately, some of the lack of understanding will make extrapolating to additional likely similar things difficult) as possibly frustrating, and leave it at that. I get the words being used. I get the results. My other-are-not-me imagination is failing spectacularly to allow me to understand the 'why' enough to remember and use it again later.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

You (unintentionally) asked a riddle with no answer, one which has caused me similar frustration.

Heh! This was itself a riddle! See, how you struggle with it. :) "How is "how is a raven like a writing desk" like "how is a tree like a fly"?"

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

the classic answer: poe wrote on both

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

I didn't see it as a riddle, right away, so much as a simple question. Maybe that's because I rarely am entertained by that sort of riddle.

Framing is so important

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

I got stuck looking at the context of it, and came up with 'riddle' from that.

If you're asking me a question, you want an answer. Maybe you're working on a crossword puzzle. Maybe you're trying to classify living things and need to determine the decision points. These are all 'work' contexts. But if you don't want the answer for something you're doing -- and this is the sort of question that rarely comes up in a work context -- then you are asking me to test me. Specifically, to test my intelligence. Most people think testing intelligence is best done by "tricks", so they can have that "aha!" moment, or feel superior to you when they know the trick answer and you don't. (Can you tell how I feel about such things?) Likewise, there was only a box for one answer. So clearly there is a "right" answer. Ergo, this must have been a trick.

This fought with the other contextual info "but wispfox hates such games", and made me _very_ confused why she was asking it, and so proudly...

Other answers:
"They are both tiny"
"They are both under five letters"
"No soap, radio"

Re: Framing is so important

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

I actually really dislike riddles, so managing to get to riddles confused me. :)

Also... if I'm asking a question, I want an answer, yes. But - especially with me - there is rarely going to be a 'the answer'. And as often as not, I will be curious about how you got there as the answer itself. Which a fair number of you gave me as a result of that accidental confusion, but which I should have made explicit. Because it actually _is_ the how you get there that seems to be what is attempting to be tested.

Also, would Never Ever have figured out that having a single box would imply that there must be a single right answer. But then... single right answer questions are not as interesting to ask, to answer, or to explore.

Mostly, though, I got tripped up really hardcore because I am having trouble seeing the question in question as confusing or frustrating. So I did not know to adjust for it. It seems to be one of those cases of something being just absurdly obvious (and largely non-verbal!) to me (which, well, rare enough and a likely clear indication of something that I'm really good at), so I'm having trouble seeing where things got weird.

I'm getting a better idea from your (and others') replies, mind. But...

Also, intelligence testing via 'tricks' confuses me. But, easily confused. :)

Also, your other answers make me happy. If sometimes perplexed (what are you comparing with, for the tiny answer?).

[vvvexation.livejournal.com]

I like that sort of riddle okay, but I failed to see it as one either.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

See, for me, the way I looked at the question was to try to find the narrowest definition which would fit both.

We start with the fact that they are both NOUNS. Then we find that they are CONCRETE NOUS. Then that they are CONCRETE EXISTENT NOUS, so we've already found a VAST degree of similarity -- they are both THINGS that EXIST.

Now, we find that they are both LIVING things, and further, that they are CARBON-BASED living things which evolved on Earth.

Then we find that they are both multicellular carbon-based living things that evolved on Earth and use DNA, which makes them both eucaryotes, and that's about the level of similarity to which I can reach on that.

We could also look at characteristics of them -- some forms of flies have brownish legs and greenish wingtips, which would give us a sense of color-similarity. Or placement-similarity -- they are both frequently found near where I am sitting.

We could also consider similarities between the pointers by which we refer to them, rather than the similarities of the things themselves: they are both refered to, in English, by words which have one syllable. Also, the names of both of them can be both nouns and verbs -- actually, both of them can be transitive verbs ("to tree a fox", "to fly a kite".)

I could go on . . . how many types of similarity do you want? The question is too open-ended. There is no single good answer.

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

There is no single good answer.

Yes. I believe that there is not _supposed_ to be.

I suspect that if there were, it could not be a test of fluid reasoning.

I clearly failed to get across that it was not about a 'right' answer. It may, however, be about one's confidence in one's answer.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Only if a person understands that the idea is to give a good, solid, defensible answer, one that *could* have been "the" answer.

I'll never have confidence in the answer "they both like a measure of shit at their feet, and lots of people are happy when they 'leave'," as "the" answer, but it works for a certain type of question.

[ian-gunn.livejournal.com]

Both my girls did Destination Imagination (http://www.nh-di.org/) this year. Apparently a few years ago Odyessy of the Mind had a split and Destination Imagination is the part of the split that is more prevalent in NH now. They are pretty much the same program. My 10 year old daughter Sarah's team made it to the State final which was a couple of weekends ago and came close to going to the "global" competition. What fun they had!

[kightp.livejournal.com]

I love the answers. Nifty window into how people think.

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's really cool!

[siderea]

OK, am I really the only person who answered the question by brute-forcing definitions?

[dancingwolfgrrl.livejournal.com]

I mean, I'm confident like "I'm sure these are things that trees and flies have in common!"

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

there are no right answers, but there are *satisfying* answers. sadly, i did not come up with one.