I just came across this weird fun little mind puzzler:
Besides the many things I love about this website, made by coder / hacker / weird guy Nolan Royalty (see the footnote thing he does), I’m also just very drawn to trying to solve this. So before I look for the answer, I’m gonna try to solve it myself.
If you wanna try, don’t read below.
my answer
I think the move is to ask Bob if Alice is lying. He’ll tell you the truth 80% of the time. You can then ask Alice if Bob is lying or not and she’ll tell you the truth 80% of the time.
I’m too lazy to prove this with math, but I feel like her revealing whether or not Bob is lying will increase the total odds above 80%?
the real answer
Ok, I’m gonna scroll to the real answer now…
FUCK I WAS WAY WRONG!!!!
The answer is that it’s the same 80%!
I think this means I need to apply to the Recurse Center’s coding retreat which it describes as a writer’s retreat for programmers.
Note to self: apply, but don’t lie.