Oh, come on, not that again… it doesn’t even try to mask the way it’s working, this version only has that symbol appearing on every multipe of 9. At least some version of this I’ve seen have stuck the symbol in a few other places so the pattern is harder to spot…
Yes, dear. But you could have let people play with it longer before pointing out how it works. The wrinkle that this one has, which is nice, is that the screen changes every time so that, unless you are paying close attention, every time you try it you get a different and “correct” symbol.
Apologies for being a killjoy, and I hadn’t noticed that (I ran through it twice but it must have chosen the same symbol both times). That does make it a touch cleverer. But only a touch.
These things tend to irk me, because a lot of people take this sort of stuff seriously – I happened to watch a program the other night about a “psychic” and watching her cold-read a vulnerable mother who’d lost a child was just vile. You could see how she got all the “information”, how she drip-fed and reacted, and yet the “victim” at the end was saying about how wonderful the psychic was… she was just too emotionally involved to assess the situation critically.
Of course. I can understand that. Your reaction surprised me because I saw this is just a game and the fun of it is figuring out how it’s done. Clearly, if computers could read our minds we would be welcoming our robot overlords already.
Any game that purports to read your mind and then sets parameters for what number you can chose and instructs you to manipulate the number in a certain way is just a math problem disguised. If it could frickin’ read my mind, it would say, “pick a number, ANY number,” and then guess it!
If you follow the instructions then it will always guess your number, because it’s rigged to do so. If the number you focus on isn’t a multiple of nine, then there’s a math error somewhere.
A lot of times the ones that make you do calculations has to do with the number 9. And a lot of times these things have to do with where your cursor is!
I think it says something about my sad, suspicious mind that I was aligning equations on a piece of papers instead of doing the calculations as properly instructed… (but I must say changing the symbols around is very nifty when you don’t know what’s going on).
So to be explicit about the equations Aliette mentions: you are picking a 2 digit number, which you can think of the first digit as X and the second as Y. Your number is 10X + Y. This thing is asking you to subtract the sum of the digits, so you are left with (10X + Y) – (X + Y) or 9X. It’s not even that subtle.
Oh, come on, not that again… it doesn’t even try to mask the way it’s working, this version only has that symbol appearing on every multipe of 9. At least some version of this I’ve seen have stuck the symbol in a few other places so the pattern is harder to spot…
Yes, dear. But you could have let people play with it longer before pointing out how it works. The wrinkle that this one has, which is nice, is that the screen changes every time so that, unless you are paying close attention, every time you try it you get a different and “correct” symbol.
Apologies for being a killjoy, and I hadn’t noticed that (I ran through it twice but it must have chosen the same symbol both times). That does make it a touch cleverer. But only a touch.
These things tend to irk me, because a lot of people take this sort of stuff seriously – I happened to watch a program the other night about a “psychic” and watching her cold-read a vulnerable mother who’d lost a child was just vile. You could see how she got all the “information”, how she drip-fed and reacted, and yet the “victim” at the end was saying about how wonderful the psychic was… she was just too emotionally involved to assess the situation critically.
Of course. I can understand that. Your reaction surprised me because I saw this is just a game and the fun of it is figuring out how it’s done. Clearly, if computers could read our minds we would be welcoming our robot overlords already.
Total fail. Twice. *g*
Any game that purports to read your mind and then sets parameters for what number you can chose and instructs you to manipulate the number in a certain way is just a math problem disguised. If it could frickin’ read my mind, it would say, “pick a number, ANY number,” and then guess it!
Hmmm…. maybe I didn’t follow the instructions correctly, but it didn’t guess my number.
If you follow the instructions then it will always guess your number, because it’s rigged to do so. If the number you focus on isn’t a multiple of nine, then there’s a math error somewhere.
I think I did it wrong too. It guessed wrong twice. Either that, or I have an impenetrable mind! 🙂
I figured out what I did wrong now. I read the directions too quickly. I always did the same thing in school.
A lot of times the ones that make you do calculations has to do with the number 9. And a lot of times these things have to do with where your cursor is!
I think it says something about my sad, suspicious mind that I was aligning equations on a piece of papers instead of doing the calculations as properly instructed… (but I must say changing the symbols around is very nifty when you don’t know what’s going on).
So to be explicit about the equations Aliette mentions: you are picking a 2 digit number, which you can think of the first digit as X and the second as Y. Your number is 10X + Y. This thing is asking you to subtract the sum of the digits, so you are left with (10X + Y) – (X + Y) or 9X. It’s not even that subtle.
Oh, I agree. Not subtle at all. I’ve seen much more mind-bending in my uni years.