by Leroy on May 3rd, 2023. Last updated May 5th, 2023.
I want to share a list of questions with you. A decade has passed since I have first seen these questions, so I've had a lot of time to think about them. The most striking thing to me is that my answers have changed over time. The striking part is not that I have changed as a person and thus my answers have changed, but that the answers could vary at all. These questions seem obvious and seem like they should have exact answers which require little explanation, but I now think differently.
The following twenty questions were asked in a Cicada 3301 questionnaire as part of some larger game. No one really knows about Cicada 3301 and the most interesting information about them, in my opinion, has been these questions.
I'm sharing all 20 questions now to give you a chance to familiarize yourself with them before I've had a chance to influence your opinion. Because most of the questions have a single answer, I encourage you to answer each of them now, especially the first 17 questions.
These questions have the following choices as an answer:
Here are the questions:
This question is multiple choice:
These questions are free response.
It is my opinion that your answer to the first question will reflect in all of your other answers, so I spend the majority of this article arguing about the first question.
Here are my answers, in order:
True
I'm going to make this argument in two separate ways. One is empirically and one is analytically.
"Observation changes the thing being observed" is true because I have seen it with my own eyes. When I observe people, they change. Have you ever had the feeling of being watched? People of course change their behavior when being observed by an authority, but that's not what I am talking about at all. When we think of change, we think of something we can observe. The question doesn't ask, "Can observation beget a reaction you can see with your eyes?" which many of you will have answered instead.
Being observed changes your thoughts, does it not? Of course they change when we drive by a police officer on the interstate. But they change in all circumstances too. Have you ever been home alone and were enjoying yourself but then someone came in? It didn't even matter if you enjoy the person who came in, you were disturbed. The observation changed your behavior, but it also changed how you thought.
The real trick of this is to realize that this can apply to your self. If you begin to observe your self, you will change. You will change because you have observed. You see, by observing something, you necessarily take the measure of it. If you have ever judged a movie and saw that the lighting was wrong, then you've taken a measure of it. If you've ever read a book and critiqued a word, then you've measured it. And, of course, if you've ever changed your mind on a particular topic, then you've observed it, found it lacking, and measured it.
The reason for this effect is that observation requires time. Literally, nothing can be observed except through time. When you read a book to be able to measure it, you must give time to that book and observe the words. The same goes with all of the examples I gave in the previous paragraph, including your own thoughts. The very act of measuring requires time and time allows actions to take place which cause change.
Now, for those who do not buy my empirically tested reality, there is also an analytical, or scientific, argument to be made here. Before I introduce the name of this problem, I want to make sure that you do not mistake this as a coincidence of names. The name of this problem in quantum mechanics is called the Measurement Problem. Quantum mechanics has ran into the problem of time, literally. It wants to see the values of what can be in the future, but the possibilities are literally infinite, and we do not have time-travel to see them before they are done. Because of this infinity, we encapsulate values into a state of possible values, operate on that state indepedently, and call that independent state superposition.
I want to re-state the Measurement Problem in plain words, using classical mechanics to assist:
Even if you are a non-physicist, even if you have only a high school education,
the classical mechanics should be obvious to you because you have seen it with
your eyes. One can explain classical mechanics by tossing a baseball back and
forth. We can explain the ball's trajectory, the arc it travels through the
air, as a sum of all of its inputs, its forces. These forces include ones we
cannot see, like gravity. Therefore, we can create a function, using simple
mathematics, to determine the height of the ball in time while being thrown
back-and-forth. We can call this function baseball(t) where baseball is the
name of the function and t is a parameter which stands for "time" and ranges
from 0.0 to 1.0, or from the start until the end. When I execute this
function like baseball(0.5), I will get the height of the ball halfway through
its arc. We have all seen the baseball arc through the air as we have thrown
it, so we can check our calculations which may look something like this:
baseball(0.0) = 10 ft
baseball(0.1) = 12 ft
baseball(0.5) = 25 ft
baseball(0.9) = 12 ft
baseball(1.0) = 10 ftAs one can see, if we graphed this out, the arc is apparent. The ball starts at
10, goes up to 25, and then goes back down to 10. We can make many
functions for this baseball to determine its position, its rotation, the forces
upon it, and much else. But, of course, these functions are all wrong.
All of these answers are completely wrong, because our functions will never be
exactly correct. These functions which we have created are mere estimations. In
reality, the output of the baseball(0.0) may be 10.0295150851 and the
baseball may have been thrown up a hill, so baseball(1.0) may be 15.4805125.
Many will say, "Well, of course, we simply need to account for these particular
forces or changes," but the number of forces we need to account for are
infinite. baseball(t) is just a model, an image, and not any sort of
function which can compute reality. If we account for air resistance, the forces
of wind, the forces of gravity, the temperature at that particular moment, and
how hard one threw ball -- each of these forces all are functions of time too.
This is why Sir Isaac Newton created the calculus. He saw all of these forces as
a sum of infinitesimals. He wanted to understand them and utilize them as one
singular value.
But one must realize that each of those forces have inputs which also depend on
time. The force of gravity on Earth depends on literal planets and other
celestial bodies, like the Moon, at particular points in time. The truth is that
baseball(t) is infinitely
recursive, based on time, if we
wanted its real value at time t. If we wanted a real, true value out of
baseball(t), we would have to measure the Universe at time t.
Knowing this impossibility, we can attempt to empirically measure the height of the baseball when thrown. To do so, we would have to setup measuring devices which inherently add a force to do so, subtly altering that baseball's trajectory. For example, we might setup measuring lasers which shine onto the ball's surface and those particles, which have mass, will be hitting that ball. Or, more practically, we can take some pictures next to a giant ruler, but the photographer may be blocking some wind which could affect the ball too. In each of these types of measurements, one direct and one indirect, measurement can only be so accurate.
Because our time is limited and we use our mathematics as a tool to help us, we choose to stop measuring at some point that is convenient. Because we have stopped measuring somewhere, mathematical models are purely estimates. We estimate the wind resistance at a particular time because it is mostly predictable. The same goes for gravity and other common forces. But our models don't always give us answers within the error-margin we expect, sometimes they are completely wrong, like weather models, economic models, cost-benefit models, profit models. But don't make the mistake of thinking models end with ones like these. The classical mechanics is one such model too.
These models, these estimates, exist without time. It exists without time
because we control the time. We control the time of these models because we
literally supply time as a value, as in baseball(0.5).
But for quantum mechanics, our mathematics doesn't let us control time. The
problem with quantum particles is that they do not obey classical mechanics. We
can define a function for the quantum particle similarly to the baseball and
call it particle(t). This function gives the position of a quantum particle at time
t. When we throw the baseball, we see the arc in real time and therefore can
verify that arc with our mathematics. But we cannot see quantum particles with
our eyes, so when we measure particle(t), we do not see any pattern we
recognize. We do not see a linear progression of values in the form of a curve,
like an arc, so we think of the position as teleporting!
The problem is that our mathematics and our tools for measuring are both
designed to collapse any state that would have existed before measuring. To
measure values of a quantum particle empirically, we shoot other particles at
that particle and measure the difference we have created. When we measure, we do
it destructively. By measuring, we literally alter the course of the particle we
measured. Again, by measuring it, we affect the values and cannot freely measure
at any value of t. This is because we do not control time for quantum
mechanics.
For example, when I previously ran the function baseball(0.5) and got the
value of 25, one would expect that if I ran that function again, I would get
25. Further, if I ran the function baseball(0.5) and then baseball(0.9)
immediately after, baseball(0.9) would yield the value 12, just like each
and every time I have called it before. This isn't true in quantum mechanics.
The very act of measuring, the very act of observation, affects the state of
that which is being measured. For example, the value of particle(0.5) might be
5, but the next time I did that measurement, I might get 11. As another
example, we just said that particle(0.5) might be 5, but it can be true that
if we run particle(0.1) before running particle(0.5) that particle(0.5)
could return 0.3 instead.
The empirical explanation for all of this is that, again, observation is
a process with time. Because quantum mechanics cannot observe something without
disturbing it, just as we cannot empirically measure the baseball without adding
another force, we cannot take time out of the equation. Quantum mechanics cannot
allow us to measure the particle at time equals 0.0, 0.1, 0.5, 0.9, 1.0,
successively, in that order, because the very act changes the trajectory of the
particle for the remaining measures. We cannot see it with our eyes, so we
cannot verify with our mathematics, so we are reduced to indirect, destructive
measurements of it. And the mathematics of quantum mechanics has been designed
around that destructive measure.
But, of course, shooting particles is only one manner of indirection. When I look into the eyes of another person, I can see their thoughts change simply by their eyes catching mine. I have changed their thoughts by observing.
I'll leave this question with one last observation: when I look at my plants,
I can choose to water them or not by measuring the wetness of the soil. The
plants then exist in a superposition of yielding good fruit, yielding bad fruit,
and all the range in between, from 1.0 to 0.0. Quantum mechanics cannot
measure whether I will water them before I have done it. And by pestering me to
water them, I may not do it at all!
False
Color blindness is a degradation in the quality of one's eyes, but this degradation exists on a scale. People's bodies are all different in very, very small ways which can lead to the perception of color being different because the eyes may be different. Because perception of color is on a scale, then "color blind" is merely a measurement on this scale. People exist above and below that measurement. This doesn't mean that everyone below the threshold of "color blind" sees the same color.
True
This is true because it is obvious. The tricky part is "your mind". Thoughts are clearly generated by the brain, but the mind is part of your entire being, including your body.
Self-Referential
What you are is what you do. So what you are cannot be more important than what you do, they are the same.
Game Rule
Heraclitus, who first made this statement 2500 years ago, could not have said it better.
In my entire life, I have never stepped into the same river twice. This is merely a koan, an illustration of an idea, and the river is our time here. With life itself as a river, I have never been in an exact situation more than exactly once.
True
The human brain is a category machine. We categorize as we go through life to make it easier for us to process things in the moment. If we were constantly processing the full-breadth of our inputs, we would exhaust ourselves. This is why we experience pain or pleasure, because it is convenient to have a very obvious signal.
The real trick of this is to realize that you can control your category machine. You can choose the categories you will create. You can also choose to rid yourself of a category when it stops being convenient, usually by it being wrong. Categories may be wrong because your environment for that category has now changed.
This is why people who play sports get good at sports and people who play chess get good at chess. But this is also why there is a spectrum of skill in sports and chess. Players which are on the lower-end of skill may have created categories, specific ways of seeing, which simply do not work in the context of a superior player.
False
The voice inside your head is your thoughts, which you control. You are not your thoughts because you control them. I discuss this in-depth in my article, aptly named, You Are Not Your Thoughts.
Meaningless
This is an argument about statements themselves, which is pure semantics. Arguing whether this is true or not is arguing whether our mathematics is an estimation or not. I know our mathematics is faulty and full of estimation, so this estimation above is true, by the rule of our current mathematics.
But I also know this this kind of semantic argument is meaningless because it is not being applied to anything. Our mathematics are designed to make statements and estimations about the world, but this is only a statement about itself which is meaningless.
False
This isn't meaningless because it is simply incorrect. Anytime there is a false statement, a truth must be to make it false.
False
This is not a leading question. This question isn't, "If A is not true, then it must be ..." leading you to answer "false". Nor is it the statement, "If A is false, then it must be true." This question is simply saying that if A isn't true, it must be, period.
This is false because false things cannot be, they can only be stated. For example, when I have a building which is 120 feet high, then it is true that it is 120 feet high. If you tell someone it is 90 feet high, that is false. If the blueprint said it is 100 feet high, the blueprint is false, because the building is 120 feet high. It doesn't matter if the blueprint came before the building, the building is here now and the building isn't 100 feet high, it is 120 feet high.
Statements about true things can be false, but things cannot be false, they can only be.
True
Nothing that exists is false, only statements made about it. That something exists is evidence it is true. Statements about something can either be true or false, but the thing itself is only ever true.
Meaningless
This is simply arguing semantics of the same kind in question 8.
True
This isn't a trick question at all. Many people will see the word "test" and see a test they took in the fourth grade, or see a test on a desk in some school. Many people will see the word "test" and assume a build-up of studying and homework and stress before finally the release of taking the test. But tests do not have to come this way at all. Many times in life you will be tested and you will not even know it while it is happening. But you can look into your mind's eye, observe your recent past, and see that the test happened. Those who study after the test will do better the next time the test occurs.
The person who sees the fish
The person who sees the "fish, plants, and rocks" is lying because they first say, "I see no reflection." If what you observe changes the thing being observed, then what you see is a reflection of you. The person who said "that's a lovely reflection" saw the fish, plants, and rocks, but understood that these things were a reflection.
The word "it" refers to all of the things in your sight. Referring to question 3, if things only have color due to a relationship between the thing, light, and your mind, then "it" refers to the things reflecting the lack of light.
Addition is most likely modeled after birth. Addition could have been modeled after what we see, like having 3 wooden sticks instead of 4. But I think the act of creation -- a mother creating a child, 1 becoming 2 -- is the most obvious because it is the only common symbol for all of ancestry. This ancestry goes all the way back to the singular cell which split 1 into 2.
Firstly, you choose the reality you see. Literally, you command what you see. Therefore, what you choose to put on your news feed to been seen by you may reflect you.
Secondly, no one can see or hear your thoughts, they can only see your actions, should they choose to observe them. Therefore, what you choose to share is a reflection of you for others.
This is where my expertise begins to wane, but I will answer anyway.
From what I understand, the mathematical principle behind Shamir's Secret
Sharing
scheme
is polynomial interpolation. Polynomials, like y = x^2 + 7x + 14, simply
define curves. So, polynomial interpolation is just figuring out a curve that
runs through a set of points. It is, again, estimation because there may be many
curves which run through the same set of points.
If I didn't have to provide a "mathematical" principle, I would say the scheme relies upon democracy.
Here's a whole program written in C:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
typedef int (*Func) (void);
int
b ()
{
return 3301;
}
Func
a ()
{
return b;
}
int
main ()
{
printf("%d\n", a()());
}Here's another whole program written in C. I interpreted this question as "write
a recursive function which computes the sum of all the digits in a given
integer."
I've updated this answer with the help of katiecharm which I now think reflects a truer interpretation of the question.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
int
sum (int num)
{
if (num < 10)
return num;
int a = 0;
while (num > 0) {
a += (num % 10);
num /= 10;
}
return sum(a);
}
int
main ()
{
printf("%d\n", sum(3301)); // 7
printf("%d\n", sum(12)); // 3
printf("%d\n", sum(75)); // 3
printf("%d\n", sum(1)); // 1
printf("%d\n", sum(12345)); // 6
printf("%d\n", sum(99999)); // 9
}