Two Brain Teasers

by sophlightning305 on Sunday, February 21, 2010 comments (11)

I think they're hard and haven't read the answers so please think about it with me:


Brain Teaser #1: The King and His Coins (Difficulty Level: Easy)

The king of the land has 12 districts that he rules over. At the end of each month, each district is responsible for paying taxes. Taxes are 100 gold pieces - each weighing one once. Lately, there has been rumblings in the kingdom and the King thinks that one of his districts could be short changing him but he is not sure which one. Specifically, the king suspects that one district is turning in coins that look like the one ounce coins but in fact only way .9 of one ounce. The King has a digital scale (gives you the weight of whatever is on it instead of telling you which side is heavier) that gives the weight of objects in ounces but it can only be used for one measurement and then it breaks. As a result, the King is stumped and doesn’t know how to find the culprit – that’s when he requests your services. You are the town wiseman. He thinks that you will be able to tell him which district is cheating him. However the scale can be used for only one measuring. How would you do it?

Brain Teaser #2: The Oldest Child (Difficulty Level: Difficult)

Two men that haven’t seen each other in many year ran into each other in the street. The first man says to the second that it’s great to see him after so many years and asks weather he has a family or not. The second man replies that he does have a family and that it consists of a wife and three children. The first man then inquires about the ages of the three children. The second man answers this question in the form of a riddle. He says that the product of his three children’s ages is equal to 36 and that the sum of the their three ages is equal to the number of the blue house on the corner of the road. Further, all of the ages are exact unit numbers and no fractional equivalents should be used. The first man walks up to the blue house on the corner, looks at the number, and returns to the second man. The first man then states that the second did not give him enough information to solve the riddle. The second man replies that the first man is correct and that one additional clue is needed to solve the riddle. The second man smiles and says that his oldest child’s eyes are blue. The candidates task is to tell you the ages of the three children and correctly identify the number on the house.


The typos are not mine...they were like this in the packet lol.

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Thrasymachus's Argument

by eohcnrk on Tuesday, February 02, 2010 comments (7)

I've been taking an intro to philosophy course, so I admittedly I'm a complete knoob when it comes this stuff. However, we've been learning about Socrates's quest for defining what justice is. For Socrates, the truth was out there but it is something that could not be found. With that said, it is better to know that you do not know rather than to be ignorant that you do not know.

In the Republic, Plato tries to define what justice is and how a just society should operate. However, to me, his society and so called justice system sucks.

Thus, we come to Thrasymachus's argument that:
Justice is nothing more than the advantage of the stronger.

Granted Socrates refutes this definition, Thrasymachus still raises an interesting point. There is no such thing as universal justice, and so we cannot define it.

My question to you guys is, is there such thing as a universal justice that we can define? If so, what is it?

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