Wednesday, November 04, 2015

Edwin and logic

Three vignettes of Edwin and logic from on the way home today.  The second also involves Theodore...

M: Suppose I have a statement, and name the statement "A".  That statement says "Statement A is false".  Is statement A false?
E: Yes!
M: But the statement says it's false, and that's a true statement!
E: (giggles) Then it's true!
M: But...  is it also false
E: (laughing) it's neither! (more laughing!)
M: It's a logic joke; do you like it?
E: (uncontrolled laughing) Yes!

(later)

E: Daddy, what if statement A says "Statement B is true" and statement B says "Statement C is true" and ...  statement E says "Statement A is FALSE"?   Did I trick you with that logic joke?
M: That's how you make your relay oscillators
E: Oh, so when the electricity is on, does that mean the statement is true?  What if I had statement A say "Statement B is true" and statement B says "Statement A is true"?  Would that be a relay latch?  I could make my rover make statement A true by generating electricity when I push it to start the relay latch and then it would drive away!

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M: What if you had a magic box that you could put anything you wanted into.  Could you put that box into itself?
E: No...  You could put anything ELSE in the box, but not itself!
M: But, what if I put that box in another box.  Then it wouldn't be the same box, could I put THAT into the box?
E: You can't make a box that contains itself!
T: .... but does it contain CARS?

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We were talking about computer storage; bits, bytes, megabytes, gigabytes.  We got to the subject of storing pictures.  I told Edwin about image compression.

M: Instead of telling the computer "this pixel is red, and this next pixel is red, etc.", you could just say "these 100 pixels are all red" and that would take less storage
E: What would happen if you took a picture where every pixel was different?  Would that make a really big file?

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