You stand before two doors.
In front of each door, there stands a guard.
One door leads to Good.
One door leads to Bad.
One Guard always tells the truth.
One Guard always lies.
Each Guard knows which door leads to Good and which door leads to Bad, knows which Guard always lies and which Guard always tells the truth, and knows that both Guards know the same things about this entire situation.
You are allowed to ask the Guards one question.
Both Guards must be asked the same question.
What one question, when asked to either Guard, will lead you towards going through the door with Good behind it?
I always loved this puzzle. Something about it really intrigued me. I guess something about it still does. There are some versions of this puzzle where the doors lead to Heaven and Hell. I don't care for those. There's another version where one door leads to the sexiest woman I've ever imagined, and the other door leads to a ravenous tiger who will eat me. I don't like that one either because who's to say I'm not interested in seeing what the Guards would do when faced with a ravenous tiger being released from behind a door? A sexy girl is just sexy with no guarantee of sex, and seriously, isn't that why she's "sexy" to begin with? It's not like she's "intellectually stimulating" or "the most perfect person to spend the rest of your life with". No. She is "sexy" to make you think, "A sexy woman, huh? Yes, I would love to have sex with a sexy woman!" Except she's just a sexy woman, she's not necessarily a sexy, Willing To Have Sex With You woman. She's just sexy. You might as well give me a blow-up doll for all the good an Unwilling Sexually sexy woman does me. But a ravenous tiger and three humans scampering to save their lives?? Now that's entertainment! Plus you get a really good story out of it! "My dearest Blow-Up Doll, You'll never believe what happened to me today in front of the two doors. I let the tiger out, and he ate the Guards. Then I opened the other door while he was digesting the two Guards and... well, you know the rest. Sincerely, the Unsexy Yet Willing Man On Top Of You."
If you're still trying to figure out the answer to the puzzle/riddle, then don't read any further. I'm going to write the answer in the next paragraph. So if you're still reading and you want to figure it out on your own, you should have stopped when I told you to stop reading. Okay, you've been warned.
The one question that will lead you to knowing which door reveals Good is, "What door would the other Guard tell me to go through to get to Good?"
The Guard who always tells the truth knows that the lying Guard will tell you the incorrect door, so the truthful Guard will tell you the lying Guard will tell you the wrong door.
The Guard who always lies knows that the truthful Guard will tell you the correct door, so the lying Guard will lie and tell you the truthful Guard will tell you the wrong door.
Whether you ask both or just one, the answer from either Guard will be the same: the wrong door. Therefore, you hear their answer, and then choose the other door-- the door the Guards didn't mention-- and you've found the door leading to Good!
I think this riddle is always kinda floating around in my head, sorta like a childhood memory that never really leaves you, but you're not really aware of it always.
I've been wanting to make movies for a long time.
But I don't have the motivation.
Or the motivation.
Or the energy or motivation.
But some days, I fool myself into thinking I'm going to make a movie.
Because I really want to.
And I fool myself into thinking it's going to be important.
Or entertaining.
Or fun.
Or... a completed movie.
And in those moments, I get to thinking about what I could make a movie about.
I don't really have access to actors, or sets, or costumes, or lights, or scripts, or special effects of any huge range.
I kinda just have me and cameras.
Sounds like I have the set-up to make a documentary, doesn't it?
So, of course, one needs to find a subject for the documentary.
What is your documentary going to be about?
Well, the least amount of work would be to pick a person, any person, and make the documentary about them.
Turn the camera on them and start shooting.
But, honestly, I don't really know a lot of people who would agree to me making a documentary about them.
And I don't know a lot of people I would be interested in watching in documentary form.
"Beverly got up. He shaved. He went to work. He sniffed his fingers. He wished he hadn't agreed to having me narrate his life out loud and is now running across the parking lot trying to escape me. Beverly has fallen and is bleeding. Beverly is asking me why I'm not calling an ambulance. Beverly is crying deeply."
Bo. Ring.
So I gotta come up with something for them, my people, to do.
Some story.
Some gimmick.
Some something.
Okay, how about if I put people in a room and then ask them questions.
Great, I love it.
What if they were exciting, taboo, oft-unasked questions? Questions about sex, politics, religion, love, conservative ideas, homosexual agendas, things we don't really have solid answers for. Answers that would change from person to person.
Okay, I'm still listening...
But how do you string together a bunch of people talking about politics, sex, and things we don't have solid answers for?
That's not a documentary, that's called The Evening News.
Or A Current Affair.
(I'm dating myself now... I guess the kids are calling it TMZ... or Vlogging...)
And I'm not interested.
Okay, wait a minute.
I get the feeling, just listening to the general discourse, that people aren't listening.
Politicians aren't listening to the people they represent.
The people they represent aren't listening to each other.
Nobody is listening to anybody else.
For example, prior to the 2008 presidential election, my father told my 8-year-old brother and 7-year-old sister that he was not going to vote for Barack Obama because, "...he's pro-abortion." I stopped my father, saying that he wasn't pro-abortion, as that made it sound like my father was saying that Barack Obama wanted to force everyone to get an abortion. My father said that's exactly what he meant: Barack Obama wanted to force everyone to have an abortion. At which point I circumvented the lunacy standing next to me in the shape of my father and addressed my brother and sister. "Abortions are currently legal, and nobody wants to get one. There's a big difference between saying you have the freedom to treat your body in the best way you know how, no matter how difficult the choice may be, and saying you don't have that choice. Nobody wants abortions. And nobody wants to force you to get an abortion. And saying that they do is irresponsible, especially when you know it's a lie, and if you don't know it's a lie, you are being willfully ignorant and belligerent to the detriment of a difficult national issue."
That was not the last time I saw my father, but it was close. But I digress...
So people aren't really listening to each other.
Is there a way that I could get them to listen to each other?
What if I made a documentary like the puzzle/riddle. Sorta.
You have to know what the other guy is going to say.
So you get a group of willing participants together.
And you ask them questions about themselves.
How do you identify yourself politically? Sexually? Gender?
How do you get your information? How many different sources do you check before making up your mind about things/life?
What is your educational background?
How did you pay for your education?
How do you make a living?
How many times have you been married?
And when you know where people stand, you make them answer like they're the other people.
So you make the Conservative debate the Liberal on gun control or abortion or immigration, you know, subjects that are typically divisive based solely on political affiliation, but you make them debate the other side's views. The Conservative, then, must debate why gun control is a good thing, based solely on what he or she knows about the liberal gun control argument. And the Liberal must debate the gun control issue based solely on what the conservative argument is.
You ask all the straight people when they chose to be straight.
You ask all the people making $60,000 a year or less why they aren't working harder to become wealthier and, ultimately, become part of the 1%. Why are they too lazy to achieve the American Dream?
And maybe, now that I'm thinking about it, maybe that's a stupid idea.
Because nobody is listening.
So you'll get a whole bunch of Fox News watchers saying that Barack Obama is wanting to force people into getting abortions.
And you'll get a whole bunch of MSNBC watchers saying that the NRA wants to kill babies by putting large-capacity magazines in their breast milk.
And it won't go anywhere.
Maybe if I got high school debaters together...
but that's not exciting.
That's a debate.
Do you remember who won the third presidential debate in 2012?
No.
Or if you do, you will remember it differently depending on who you wanted to win.
If you liked Barack Obama, he won.
If you hated Barack Obama, Mitt won.
Nobody actually liked Mitt, by the way.
Mitt was just the guy who wasn't Barack.
You "liked" Mitt because you hated Barack, not because you liked Mitt.
In the election of 2008 and 2012, you either voted for or against Barack Obama.
You see how that turned out.
The reason I'm so confident about that is not because every single political commentator has said this, but because I saw this happen in 2004. You either voted for G.W. Bush, or you voted against him. It's difficult-- nee, impossible-- to cast a vote against somebody. Strangely, they want to you cast a vote for somebody. You don't win if you're casting votes against. Only the "for" votes get counted.
I guess my documentary idea is dumb.
Plus I'm tired and I'm being forced into a mandatory background check at work. I just got an email. Meeting is tomorrow. And that just makes me even more tired than I already am.
So fatigued and exhausted and tired.
Just done. Supremely done.
I'm really, really, really, really, really ready for some relief.
Sometime really, really soon.
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