Comments on: Annotated 34-19

By: Zalocin

Zalocin — Sun, 04 Jul 2021 11:21:24 +0000

Woops, not Mendy meant to be a reply to this comment, apologies.

By: Zalocin

Zalocin — Sun, 04 Jul 2021 11:18:42 +0000

With regards to the annotation I am reminded of a Discworld quote:
“Racism was not a problem on the Discworld, because—what with trolls and dwarfs and so on—speciesism was more interesting. Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green.”

By: Beroli

Beroli — Sat, 15 May 2021 03:21:11 +0000

What are you getting at?

By: Weatherbeard

Weatherbeard — Fri, 14 May 2021 22:55:55 +0000

I don't think it's hard to imagine that our world would be more like this if there were some other sapient or near-sapient creatures on the planet that we co-existed amongst and with which we interacted. I mean, the more we learn, the closer we could place some non-human apes into that category, along with certain birds and a few oceanic mammals. And look how we treat them.

By: Zak McKracken

Zak McKracken — Fri, 14 May 2021 21:58:13 +0000

Someone should have told them about binary search algorithms.

You divide all villagers into two groups of equal size, then ask each group collectively if they did it (and they all need to answer). If the lamp lights up, you divide that group into two equal groups and repeat the exercise.
That should lead you to the murderer very quickly.

Of course, asking a large group of people becomes impractical once you approach a few hundred people because you won’t notice if one person does not answer. But you could still do it with 10 people or so in one batch. Bonus of this method: If the lamp lights up, you pick the most suspicious person based on their reaction to the lamp, ask that person again individually, and have a good chance of being done already.