The Parable of the Dagger

This is an animation of The Parable of the Dagger by Eliezer Yudkowsky. You can read the original here: www.readtheseq...
It's the beginning of a series of essays about language. We highly recommend them, and you can read them here: www.readtheseq...
You can read many more essays and stories by Eliezer Yudkowsky at readthesequenc...
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▀▀▀▀▀▀▀CREDITS▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀
Animation director: Evan Streb
Writer: Eliezer Yudkowsky
Producer: :3
Production Managers:
Grey Colson
Jay McMichen
Line Producer:
Kristy Steffens
Quality Assurance Lead:
Lara Robinowitz
Animation:
Grey Colson
Gabriel Diaz
Jay McMichen
Skylar O'Brien
Patrick O'Callaghan
Vaughn Oeth
Lara Robinowitz
Background Art:
Olivia Wang
Compositing:
Patrick O' Callaghan
Voices:
Robert Miles - Narrator
Krystle Futrell - The Jester
Lucas Schuneman - King
VO Editing:
Tony Di Piazza
Sound Design and Music:
Epic Mountain

[@RationalAnimations]

This is an animation of The Parable of the Dagger by Eliezer Yudkowsky. You can read the original here: www.readthesequences.com/The-Parable-Of-The-Dagger It's the beginning of a series of essays about language. We highly recommend them, and you can read them here: www.readthesequences.com/A-Humans-Guide-To-Words-Sequence You can read many more essays and stories by Eliezer Yudkowsky at readthesequences.com

[@pyeitme508]

Amazing 🤩

[@pyeitme508]

Wiw

[@anshumanmishra7711]

Amazing

[@imnotgivingyoumyname810]

That king kind of proved that he's a failure. The court jesters were supposed to be there to prove a king could take a joke. The king clearly could not handle the joke.

[@kayakMike1000]

@@imnotgivingyoumyname810 or we proved that Elizer writes shitty parables.

[@4dragons632]

The moral of this story is twofold: Moral number one is always check your priors and don't assume just because something is reasonable and elegant that its true. And the second moral is be careful who you piss off.

[@JaiWithani]

The moral of the story is never open boxes, they may contain knives or evil AIs or something.

[@4dragons632]

@@JaiWithani Or maybe a cat in a superposition of being alive and dead. Boxes have almost infinite potential! They're just so hard to resist.

[@therealquade]

The 3rd moral of the story is that A Dagger through your heart, is in fact still freedom from your chains.

[@imnimbusy2885]

@@4dragons632 There’s also a lot of drugs in here.

[@littlepuddin]

Id argue that the second one is dont piss off anyone

[@YoungGandalf2325]

The king probably already has plenty of gold. An angry frog might be pretty entertaining though. It's a win-win for him.

[@marcoasturias8520]

Now he has an angry frog and a traumatized jester

[@BrunoMaricFromZagreb]

Actual jesters could get away with a lot of insults.

[@Xmarkthings]

I don’t know where I am👹

[@potatopotato590]

​@@BrunoMaricFromZagrebto be fair they likey started as a way to ensure the royal advisors stay mentally alert and up to date, so of course they get quite special exclusions like how executioners were (but without being a social outcast)

[@plant9399]

@@potatopotato590 The jester was generally seen as a metaphorical reflection of the king and in a sense equal to him. They were both marked by divine attention, but in different ways.

[@maxwell6881]

The first one is actually very easy. You pick the box that is heavy, and not the one angrily croaking at you.

[@unkwonblue5517]

And this is what we call common sense.

[@__-cx6lg]

Note something crucial about the story: the jester said (truthfully) that one inscription was true and the other was false. The king never made any such promise. As the author said, "One of the morals of the parable is that the king didn't lie." EDIT: Elaborating: The point is that the king never made _any promise at all_ as to the truth-value of the inscriptions (unlike the jester did in the first puzzle). The first inscription is like the Liar's Paradox, in that it can't be either true or false - with the dagger in the second box, it's meaningless. The jester assumed that the sentence bore *some* relationship to reality (either true or false); this assumption was so automatic that he believed it without thinking, without even the word of the king as evidence. Because of that mistake (assuming that the sentence was meaningful), he concluded that a physically-possible situation was logically-impossible!

[@AleksoLaĈevalo999]

That's not the point. Jester even takes into account that both boxes could have truth inscribed on them, in which case secound box would contain the key. The moral is that the information on the boxes doesn't have to have anything to do with reality.

[@donaldhobson8873]

@@AleksoLaĈevalo999 The jester assumed the words were either true or false, not a "this statement is a lie" type contradiction.

[@__-cx6lg]

@@AleksoLaĈevalo999 I agree that that's the moral, and don't think that contradicts what I wrote. I still think it matters to the story that the king didn't do what the Jester did; he didn't give promises as to the truth-values of the inscriptions. As you say, the inscriptions bear no relation to reality at all. The second box's inscription is simply false, but the first box's inscription is like the Liar's Paradox in that it's neither true nor false; it's meaningless. They might as well be random scribbles; the jester had no reason to think they were anything else. And I think an important but easy-to-miss part of the story is that the king never claimed otherwise. The jester just automatically assumed it to be the case. I've updated my original comment to elaborate and clarify the relevance of the fact that the king didn't make any promises - the jester believed that the inscription must be meaningful, a belief that was so automatic that he believed it without pausing to consider if it was true, and without even hearing anyone claim it was true.

[@Silverizael]

Though the problem with this situation is that, in such a case, there is no way to find the key besides chance. And if your goal is to find the key, then what are you supposed to do?

[@deltamico]

Suppose malicious intent

[@sirnikkel6746]

The guard punching the jester caught me... *off guard*

[@Graphomite]

Jester should have been _engarde._

[@anidiot1122]

Lol

[@parasocialbondsmetaswvoits9078]

get out

[@anidiot1122]

@@Graphomite on guard

[@snappa_tv]

Leave. Now.

[@JH-cp8wf]

To join the "what's the moral here", I took away "you can't tell what's a good play until you know what game you're playing".

[@pwnmeisterage]

What's the moral here? Don't expect good things to happen to you after insulting and humiliating your king.

[@Nayo987]

​@@pwnmeisteragechill man the jester did not insult his king. He was a jester who dabbled in logic so I assume this wasn't his first time, but even if it was the fact that the king took it as insult doesn't mean it is.

[@pwnmeisterage]

@@Nayo987 Angry frog to the face isn't an insult? You might think it's funny but evidently the King didn't.

[@Nayo987]

@@pwnmeisterage look that's fair. But think about it, this is the king's personal bard he's job is to entertain the king so everytime he needs to think of something new, so first let's give him the benefit of the doubt, secondly the king is rich so gold is useless for him so I would argue an angry frog is much more entertaining than gold. And frankly if the bard isn't given some leeway on respect or whatever then how is he supposed to do his job. And my problem with ur first comment was less about if what the bard did was "respectful" or not and more about the fact that ur blaming the bard which is a victim instead of the king which is the abuser.

[@thomasfoster7387]

another moral: don't assume that all things that seem to present a logical quandary are, in fact, completely logical. man has both capacity for logic and illogic, so take care

[@elidoz7449]

the jester's fatal error was assuming that there was correlation between the inscriptions and what was in the boxes. it's very subtle by the king to make a trick like that

[@MegaMementoMori]

Fortunately not fatal in this animation but you are correct :)

[@prehistoricorchid3455]

personally i would have gone off vibes

[@ManBung]

​@@MegaMementoMorihe got killed right after the video with the real dagger

[@carpespasm]

@@prehistoricorchid3455 "this dude is mad as hell at me, and wants me embarrassed or dead, i should go with the screwball wrong answer because he wants to stab a smartass jester that got frog slobber on his crown."

[@prehistoricorchid3455]

@@carpespasm duh

[@AlekVoropova]

I like presenting my students with the following two statements: 1) Both statements are wrong. 2) You must give me a cookie. And then demanding cookies.

[@somefive]

statement one says that i dont need to give you cookies, but statement 1 also says that statement one is lying so i need to give you cookies, but I is now true (unless the first statement can be in a state of not being false and not being true) i dont need to give you cookies but i can resolve this paradox by giving you cookies, statement of number 3 - 2 is lyign since i gave you cookies, so it must be false, and it will stay false since statement 2 is true now unless statement number 2 is not true anymore tho... oh god, i wrote this all for nothing havent i?

[@charliedulol]

so either the first statement is in a quantic state tangled to itself being opposite or the second is true. right?

[@alexpotts6520]

@@charliedulol Essentially, statement 1 cannot be true, because that would lead to the contradiction that statement 1 is also false. Then statement 1 has to be false, and this implies that statement 2 has to be true because if both statements were false that would make statement 1 true.

[@charliedulol]

@@alexpotts6520 i don't follow

[@Rawi888]

@@charlieduloltell me this with cartoon references.

[@Blate1]

So the moral of the story is to beware of meta games? To not forget that when you’re playing chess, your opponent can win by shooting you in the face?

[@Winboloer2]

Pretty much. There's a reason why this was presented as a parable and not a reasoned argument. It's essentially a critique on people who rely heavily on argumentation and logic (hence why the logician was the fool). There's obviously a self-refuting problem with making a reasoned argument that reasoned argument itself has severe shortcomings, so instead it is delivered to the audience as a parable.

[@pavelgorokhov2976]

I see the moral "You can't get knowledge about the real world from pure reasoning." For example, there is so called "ontological argument of the existence of God" which is insane in its core because it doesn't use any fact about the real world at all.

[@SomeMrMindism]

The moral is whatever smart conclusion you can draw from the story, but I particularly like this one: words are just words. Just because they are written on something and you're reading it, it doesn't mean that they correlate in some way with the state of the world. Notice that the jester says, by finding the dagger, "it's impossible". But it would be impossible only if the words on the box forced somehow the reality contained on the box. Instead, the king just wrote the word and put a dagger in one of them, entirely within the realm of possibility. Also, the king never said that the sentences were true. They were just scribbles. The jester, trapped in his own logic and mindgames, just supposed that they were true, because it's what he would have done

[@dannylo5875]

It's like the game. Which is the lesser of two poisons. The answer. Don't take any.

[@EnriqueLaberintico]

Flashbacks to Ted-Ed's video on chess's history.

[@andrewphilos]

Spoilers for a 5-minute video: Aww, the dagger was a trick retracting dagger. That's cute! Also in keeping with the theme of the story of statements being misleading.

[@AleksoLaĈevalo999]

It seems like it is Rational Animations invention put in to make the story less sad as this detail is not present in Yudkovsky story.

[@Слышьты-ф4ю]

Iff he animates a story about God-emperor and scientist, -sauce will be poisoned and wolves will die before eating scientist whole- -he'll eat the wolves but nobody promised to make him free- -instead of wolves, there will be humgry doggos-

[@Low_commotion]

It ain't in the original 😅

[@andrewphilos]

@@Low_commotion I know! But Eliezer's a little more bloodthirsty in his stories, and Rational Animations prefers cuter aesthetics.

[@JaiWithani]

Eliezer also never explicitly said the jester was killed or that the knife was deadly, and he didn't make any rules saying dogs couldn't play the roles. This animation is 100% canon consistent.

[@anoninunen]

"Both boxes have daggers. I lied and I hate you" - Spy

[@BaxterAndLunala]

If both boxes contain daggers, then I assure you the one who put them in those boxes is nothing like me. And nothing, *nothing* like the man loose inside this building.

[@FifingFossil]

This animation is suprisingly just cute. Not cosmic horror, not mind shattering problem. I love you

[@PanzerschrekCN]

Plot twist: both boxes from the second set contain a dagger. Nothing prevents the king to do this.

[@pavelgorokhov2976]

In your case the king should lie. The most fun is that in the story he didn't.

[@HappyHater]

@@pavelgorokhov2976 Your statement is false. There is nothing in the story to indicate that the king did not lie.

[@somegremlin1596]

​@@HappyHater The king said that one of the boxes contains a key and the other contains a dagger. If they both contain a dagger then he would have lied

[@HappyHater]

@@somegremlin1596 Your statement is absolutely correct. Did you just want to state something quite obvious or did you mean to convey another message that I did not quite get? No offense intended, I genuinely just want to understand whether I have missed the meaning of your reply.

[@somegremlin1596]

@@HappyHater You said "There is nothing in the story to indicate that the king did not lie" which implies you think it's possible the king did lie. If you don't intend to be offensive then you shouldn't write in a condescending tone.

[@thiiink8877]

What I really love about this parable is its layers. On the surface, the king is just being a meanie. He is placing the dagger in the box where the key should be, as considered with classical logic. But under this facade of a tale of logic vs wisdom, there is some insightful discussion about non-classical logic. The jester presented a liar cycle to the king, a pair of sentences that behaves just like the liar sentence, "this sentence is false". To justify his prank to the king, the jester would resolve the apparent inconsistency in his riddle by resorting to some form of non-classical logic. The leading systems on this in philosophy would be something like paracomplete logic that reject the Law of Excluded middle (A proposition is either True or not True) with some gap (e.g "uhh maybe perhaps yes"), or paraconsistent logic that reject the principle of explosion (If a proposition is True and not True then anything goes) with a glut: let that proposition be both True and not True. What is striking about the king's response is that in the riddle of the key and dagger, the jester can draw the logical conclusion that one of the boxes must contain the key only in classical logic, but not in the non-classical logics used to resolve the problem of liar sentences. Notice how the jester starts his chain of reasoning by invoking the Law of Excluded Middle and supposing in turn that the inscriptions are true. This would not be a valid line of reasoning in paracomplete logics, where the inscriptions may be some gap value as well. With the first inscription being a gap value, the jester is wrong to conclude that the second inscription is true. If we instead suppose the jester is using a paraconsistent logic that preserves the Law of Excluded Middle but rejects the principle of explosion, then both inscriptions may have a glut value: they can be both true and not true. As the second box’s inscription that “This box contains the key” can be not true (due to being both true and not true), the king thus acted in a way consistent with the inscriptions on the boxes when he placed the dagger into the second box. The jester’s riddle was unreasonable unless interpreted in non-classical logic. Beautifully, the king beat the jester at his own game with a riddle with a reasonable solution in classical logic as the bait, punishing the jester with a “logically impossible” reality that is nonetheless reasonable in the very same non-classical logic.

[@BosonCollider]

This set of sentences actually has a consistent classical solution, the green box has the frog, and the animators solved it correctly. But classical logic does ban self-referential proposition (adding recursion makes it unsound), and the puzzle seems to be written as a perfect example of the kind of logic puzzles that people hate

[@sus_shark]

I like your funny words, magic man

[@Solarpunk_SciFi]

Instead of "a dagger for your heart" I was really hoping for "20 angry frogs". Would've been one cool way to go.

[@Woodledude]

It IS called "the Parable of the Dagger," and that is objectively a cool name for the story. Doesn't make much sense if there are only angry frogs, and no dagger. I mean, I LIKE the name "The Parable of the 20 Angry Frogs," but it doesn't quite get the idea across and isn't quite as catchy. Yes, this makes me sad, too.

[@DusBeforeDawn2008]

Honestly I think a prank dagger was better irony. I really winced and exepcted a real dagger

[@bowfuz]

I love the friggin voice actingggggg

[@Raramation]

This puts a whole new spin on 'thinking outside the box".

[@haskell6001]

Jester: Source? What's your evidence? King: None, I made it up.

[@BaxterAndLunala]

Imagine a world, Jester, free of cancel culture, where no one can call me out for my outlandish claims. A world where I can *SAY THE N WORD!*

[@alexpotts6520]

Moral of the story: don't be a smartass. And especially don't be a smartass to a tyrannical absolute monarch with a taste for ironic punishments.

[@SimonClarkstone]

I take it as being about misusing logic with subtle holes in, to come up with beliefs that you actually don't have enough information for. What the King said about there being one key and one dagger was (presumably) true so that's not a lie. For the things he wrote on the envelopes he openly invited the Jester to work out if they were true or false, which means they don't count as a lies either. The only "lie" was the implication that the puzzle was solvable, and that the statements on the envelopes had well-defined truth values.

[@alexpotts6520]

@@SimonClarkstone It's certainly true that you could "prove" any statement X with the same setup the king used: 1) These statements are either both true or both false. 2) [statement X]. If you want to prove the moon is made of cheese, well you just need to make statement X "the moon is made of cheese". Perhaps there is a distinction between the abstract world of formal logic, and the real world. Maybe we're in an equivalent of the is-ought problem - just as you can't deduce morals from only facts, maybe you can't make conclusions about the real world using only abstract reasoning. (Proofs of the existence of God generally fall down on this point.)

[@brookejon3695]

The moral i got was: kill kings

[@41-Haiku]

@@alexpotts6520 Nailed it. There is a gap between elegant abstract reasoning and base reality, unless you consider the full stack that leads up to the abstract reasoning. The Jester was focused on the logic problem, but failed to consider that the king was just messing with them.

[@serbo_maps]

Jester well the ones that could (mostly) get away with stuff like this

[@sentzeu]

Out of all Elizers parables you’ve animated this is the best. Short and witty.

[@GlitchYeen]

I love the subtle Morshu reference while the Jester is explaining the logic

[@jordan13589]

Rational Animations, thank you for showing everyone that rats can coordinate. The team behind this production gets stronger every episode ❤

[@Амин-т4х]

So the team consists of rats?

[@ure2grit931]

​@@Амин-т4хrat-ionals

[@saebelorn]

Realising that the channel is some kind of clandestine initiative by LessWrong actually increases my appreciation for it honestly

[@walterlyzohub8112]

This is similar to the prisoner’s dilemma. The king could be a liar and set it up so the jester always loses. The other box’s content was not revealed, this could also have a dagger as well. Liars have always existed and caused problems before.

[@purrpletiger352]

The trick is that the inscription on the King's first box didn't mention the other box at all, so it wouldn't apply to both boxes. Meanwhile the jester's boxes directly correlated to each other

[@egwenealvereiscool7726]

No, that's not the moral. The king never lied to the jester. The jester just assumed that both statements must be either true or false without being told, but was wrong to do so.

[@michaeltullis8636]

On a shelf in my house is a book called "The Princess Bride", in which it's written that there's a country called Florin, wherein dwells or dwelt giants, wisemen, and fantastic characters of all stripes. Not a word of it is true, the book's a work of fiction. You can hear or read or make an extremely convincing argument (for instance: "therefore the second box has the key", or "the Dread Pirate Roberts is Westley"), but if one of the assumptions that the logic rests on is wrong ("words on the boxes will tell you where the key is", "there's such a historical figure as the Dread Pirate Roberts, or as Westley"), it doesn't matter how ironclad your logic is, you live in the "logically impossible" world.

[@kayakMike1000]

Inconceivable, you might say.

[@danielcrafter9349]

Yes Which means I should drink from YOUR cup 😂

[@larrywitcher8283]

This is the cutest thing I've ever seen. And the fact that no true cruelty befell the jester gave me a sigh of relief as well.

[@falconeshield]

He needed to learn that lesson though. Don't bite the hand that feeds you

[@Z4RD4N34]

​@@falconeshield or head

[@andrewprahst2529]

I mean they did chain him up for a day

[@Warbek]

I'm loving these animated short stories.

[@SylvesterAshcroft88]

Why is the frog so angry after playing inscryption? XD This animation is also adorable!

[@NoriMori1992]

If I'm not mistaken, this parable is adapted from a series of riddles about a woman named Portia and her descendants (a reference to Portia and her three caskets in The Merchant of Venice) in a book by Raymond Smullyan. Eventually "Portia Nth" pulls something similar to the king, where she never specified the truth value of the inscriptions, and so her suitor made a natural assumption that the inscriptions must be either true or false and was led to a wrong conclusion, not considering the possibility that an inscription might be neither true nor false. In this parable, the moral is essentially the same, and also seems to hit a bit harder on related concepts, such as "words don't inherently have meaning", and "people can lie". (EY specifies the king didn't lie; but he could have, and the moral would have been well taken in that case. Because even if the king _had_ said "one of the inscriptions is true and the other is false", the jester wouldn't have particularly had any reason to _believe_ him, which is another thing he likely wouldn't have thought of.)

[@IAsimov]

I think I would've tossed a coin. On top of inscriptions contradicting eachother or being paradoxical, sometimes humans lie. At that point, you're probably better off leaving stuff to the fates.

[@rmeddy]

Moral of the story:chill with the sophistry, it ain't cute.

[@theallmemeingeye5927]

To pile onto the story moral sharing, my core takeaway was 'don't assume a semantical paradox is false' i.e. either the key is in the second box and everything makes sense, or the key is in the first box and the first inscription makes a semantical paradox of constantly switching between true and false, but that in itself doesn't prevent the physical situation from still being true.

[@revlarmilion9574]

It's more than that. It's about not forgetting that human values and expectations are map, not territory. What is possible is already possible. What humans think is true, false, possible or impossible doesn't dictate reality.

[@theallmemeingeye5927]

@@revlarmilion9574 I agree

[@tvuser9529]

This reminds me of the Discworld tale of the dwarf who invented dwarves-and-trolls chess, and presented it to the Low King of the Dwarves. For his reward, he wanted only 1 gold coin for the first square of the board, 2 for the next, then 4, 8, 16 etc, like in the original story about the invention of regular chess. Spoiler below: ... SPOILER: The Low King got angry when he found out that so much gold did not exist anywhere in the Discworld. He ordered the guards to break both the arms of the inventor, then allowing him as much gold as he could carry... (Thud! by Terry Pratchett)

[@GotMyTowel42]

Lol the king's a jester too, that fake dagger was neat

[@unlikelysuspect5491]

i think this story illustrates the difference between intelligence and wisdom. the king was not smart anuf to solve the fools puzzle, but the fool was not wise anuf to know they were being set up. another interpretation or an additional moral might be not to play games with tyrants, or that other people will not always play by your rules, essentially a warning about cheaters but not necessarily against cheating, in this context if the fool would have cheated we would have cheered him on as clever so maybe evn a lesson in there about subjective morals, if you kinda squint at it

[@EmperorZelos]

do you mean ENOUGH!?

[@SimonClarkstone]

I take it as being about misusing logic with subtle holes in, to come up with beliefs that you actually don't have enough information for. What the King said about there being one key and one dagger was (presumably) true so that's not a lie. For the things he wrote on the envelopes he openly invited the Jester to work out if they were true or false, which means they don't count as a lies either. The only "lie" was the implication that the puzzle was solvable, and that the statements on the envelopes had well-defined truth values.

[@AloisMahdal]

we don't have enough information to judge the fool's wisdom. he just could have decided to trust the king's ability to take it in light of previous experience. little did he know that the king has not sleep well that day.

[@wynnexed]

*enuf (/j)

[@Winboloer2]

The king justifies his own assassination at the end. If the rules don't matter, then the rule to not assassinate the king doesn't matter either. It's the type of problem that you see with stories like this that try to downplay logic--they are self-refuting, destructive, and ultimately anticivilization.

[@Dedjkeorrn42]

The Jester didn't seem too pleased when they didn't die.

[@Yeetus_amongus]

Bro this animation is smooth as butter, have a like!

[@fuzzytabletopfellow7249]

The Jester thought themselves clever, make two Boxes with inscriptions from which either both or neither can be true. The paradox is that both can be made either state by logic alone, if we reason long enough. Hence why the Jester was thrown to Jail, before having explained the logic. IF one box only mentions the frog and the false inscription having it, the other having the gold and the true one having it, we can create a circular logic where both can become equally true and equally false. Like the riddle with who speaks the truth: the only speaking truthful is the one who states the rules. Meaning the Jester had a flawed logic made sound. And hence the Parable of the Dagger made it simple: reason your logic too much, and neither is anything, and equally clouds judgement. The Paradox is really clever for it exploits logic and reasoning by overanalyzing and overreasoning something until the logic becomes muddied enough to have both equally true and false. Jester's one: Both say upfront what they have, but make you doubt and start a reasoning and logic loop, making it paradoxical the more you think about it. It tells outright which has what, but tricks the mind by saying something that is unclear setting both boxes into the same state. (Meaning you can only assume what both say is true, but one is clear about it. And may still be wrong.) King's one: One says its either or, the other just says something certain. Like with the one before, it is paradoxical in nature for similar reason. The mind is tricked to be unclear wether the choice mattered or not; thus making unclear which part of the first box's statements are true. (Meaning you must assume it is either or for both. And still grasp that you can't know that the other does have it as stated.) Both do the same thing: they make you believe something, question it, and divide your reason until both outcomes are possible if you do not stop yourself from doing it. The Jester tried to trick the King from the get-go with two empty gotcha inscriptions that circle the logic, the King just abused the Jesters overthinking and showed it with the inscription used.

[@Sorain1]

"The only speaking truthful is the one who states the rules." That is a foolish assumption to make. The wise know that, if the two speakers _are your opponent_ , the one who speaks the rules will be the liar, as they can tell you anything the two wish, except the truth. (Potentially, even 'lying by omission' to make it even worse.) Always consider the source of information.

[@frajerkoren9325]

What a beautiful animation and voices

[@dinojack5567]

The moral here is basically: "Here. Have two boxes, you must open one." (One box says "open me", the other says "don't open me") (You open the first box because that's the "right" box, and get punched by a joke spring boxing glove) "Lol lmao, I never said the stuff on the boxes was important!"

[@MrCreeper20k]

Symbolic Logic Solution for first problem: Let's define. Let our variables be B, ¬B, L, ¬L, for blue box, red box, liar box, and honest box, respectively. Let value of T mean the box has gold and F mean it has no gold (has frog). S_B will be the statement on the blue box and S_R will be the statement on the red box. Then we have S_B = ( ¬B ∧ L ) ∨ ( B ∧ ¬L ), S_R = ( ¬B ∧ ¬L ) ∨ ( B ∧ ¬L ), Note that S_R simplifies to S_R = ( ¬B ∨ B) ∧ ¬L = ¬L Case 1: Blue is lying. This implies 3 related things. ( B = L ), ( S_B = F ), and ( S_R = T ). S_R = T = ¬L => L = F with B = L => B = F So blue box has frog. Let us plug this into S_B under our assumptions and check for soundness. Substitute B=L S_B = F = ( ¬L ∧ L ) ∨ ( L ∧ ¬L ) = ( F ) ∨ ( F ) = F, So both statements are correctly satisfied by B=F, L=T, under assumption B=L. Case 2: Red is lying. This implies 3 related things. ( ¬B = L ), ( S_R = F ), and ( S_B = T ) S_R = F = ¬L => L = T So the liar box has gold. Since red (¬B) is liar here then ¬B = T or equivalently B = F. Checking for soundness, with ¬B = L S_B = T = ( L ∧ L ) ∨ ( ¬L ∧ ¬L ) = ( T ) ∨ ( T ) = T. So both statements are also correctly satisfied by B=F, L=T under assumption ( ¬B = L ). Since both cases yield B=F then blue must contain frog. Since this works whether B = L or ¬B = L, then one interpretation is we don't know which box is lying, another interpretation being that whichever box is lying is in a kind of 'indeterminate' state. Most likely this logic could be shortened significantly and I would like to see it if possible.

[@sus_shark]

So it really was just a 50/50 shot of guessing the right box?

[@Francesco-gf1sv]

If im correct both boxes have the frog then.

[@XzoahX]

​@@sus_sharknot quite. An easy, elegant, (but incorrect) solution suggests one answer but conceals a paradox. Being that the whole exercise is malicious, it would be reasonable to assume that the dagger is in the box without the elegant solution.

[@sus_shark]

@@XzoahX wait, you mean the frog?

[@XzoahX]

@@sus_shark no.

[@ehtresih9540]

In the wise words of Lord Vader "I lied. As i have from the very begining" -Darth Vader

[@pavelgorokhov2976]

But the king didn't lie!

[@danielcrafter9349]

​@@pavelgorokhov2976- and you know this because....?

[@keenan2561]

Perhaps because 2:41

[@andrewprahst2529]

​@@danielcrafter9349The uploader said in a comment that the king didn't lie

[@ralfkinkel9687]

As an explanation for the king's riddle. Recap: First box: Both inscriptions are true or both inscriptions are false. Second box: Key is in here. Given the first inscription is true, then either both inscriptions are true or both are false, as we know one is true the other must also be true, meaning the second box contains the key. Given the first inscription is false, then exactly one inscription must be true and exactly one must be false, as we know that the first is false, the second must be true, meaning the second box contains the key. We know that given the first inscription being true or false leads to the second box containing a key. It seems impossible that it should not contain one but we know that there is no physical force preventing the king from writing those inscriptions on boxes and tossing the dagger in the second box. Explanation: I think one can solve this by acknowledging additional logical states: An inscription can not only be true or false but also both or neither. Examples: "This sentence is false" is both true and false, there is no stable assignment to either of these 2 truth values. "At night it is colder than outside" is neither true nor false, there is no sensible assignment of either of the 2 truth values. It turns out if you spectate from the second box you can form: Given the second inscription is false (meaning it contains a dagger), the first inscription is both true and false, as no stable assignment is possible. The jester should have checked for the additional logical states.

[@4dragons632]

There doesnt need to be a logical explanation, the king was just being nasty. Remember: a theory that can explain both results is as good as a theory that can explain none of the results.

[@mr.chiken]

@@4dragons632but logically he should’ve been able to figure out he could have been lying

[@TomFranklinX]

@@4dragons632 That's not true. While a neutral prediction is not very useful, it's at least better than a falsified prediction. A theory consistent with either result is superior to a theory contradicted by the results.

[@OrdniformicRhetoric]

Im the context of AI alignment, which Yud almost always takes as his lense, the moral of the story is that we are unable to know the motives of the AI agent (the king) and therefore should not trust the information that it gives us, regardless of how logical it seems.

[@4dragons632]

@@mr.chiken You're right, I should say there doesnt need to be a logical explanation _within the boxes._ The position of the dagger was decided by another factor that the jester failed to take into account, but that doesnt mean the other factor was without logic.

[@lukemimnagh2594]

Love the voice acting! Brilliant vid!

[@anshumanmishra7711]

I think that at this quality of work, you could parallel giants like Kuarzgesagt in no time. And I hope that thime comes soon! ❤

[@adfaklsdjf]

thyme*

[@LunizIsGlacey]

In fact, this video uses the same composers for music as Kurzgesagt does! (Epic Mountain)

[@spirit123459]

Moral: better be sure that your premises are attached to reality, otherwise even if reasoning is valid, your conclusion will be junk. "Logic stays true, wherever you may go, So logic never tells you where you live."

[@thedragonthatlovesskittles7132]

That is not what a king would do, he'd be laughing his ass off when he get attacked by the frog.

[@thewelcomer5698]

Props to you, this is a great video!

[@littlepuddin]

I love this and all of your videos

[@Akranejames]

Y'know, I thought the king was going to stab a dagger through his choice of box to test for angry frogs X)

[@obrasilius6733]

Moral of the story: Don´t believe in everything you read

[@alexpotts6520]

To some extent - but the jester was correct to deduce that whether you believed (ie assigned "true") or disbelieved (ie assigned "false") the inscription on the first box, either way the second box had to contain the key. So whether he believed what was written on the boxes was immaterial. What's going on here is more subtle than "the king was lying". It's more like *logic itself* was lying, if that makes sense. I guess this is just a fancy version of the liar paradox (the classic and not all that interesting "this sentence is false" - the most basic paradox there is), but leveraged in such a way that real things about the physical world (such as the contents of boxes) could be deduced from it. Essentially, the jester was absolutely right to reach the conclusion with the premises he had. The problem was that the premises were just bullshit - if you start in a place that doesn't correspond to reality, you will never reach the truth no matter how good your reasoning. At least, I *think* that's what the story is trying to say. EY can be pretty cryptic at times (tbh too cryptic to be the public face of AI safety).

[@RationalAnimations]

The king didn't lie :P

[@marcobuncit7539]

​@@alexpotts6520 This makes me scared of brain & rational. Time, to drop it on junk.

[@unkind6070]

So should I believe what you said or not 🙃

[@EliasMheart]

I find the conclusion of "it's logically impossible" quite fascinating. First, it's not logically impossible, even from his point of view, since 'not("either both are true or both are false")' doesn't tell us anything about the other box, if I'm not mistaken. Secondly, the jester tried to solve a problem without realizing that it's scope was wider than the two inscriptions. The jester just assumed that he considered all the information, which clearly wasn't the case. Adjacent to that, he failed to model the king's mindset correctly, as in, didn't try at all and just used his own motives instead (-> "Clearly he must have given me all the information to the puzzle, since this kind of thing is important" or something) And lastly, the jester seems to have blamed the universe when something went wrong for him, instead of himself, as if life had to be fair, and as if his reasoning was somehow superseding reality. This may just be my read, though, the question "how?!" seemed more exasperated than intrigued to me. But then again, in the situation, it would be understandable ^^ I'm curious to know if you dis-/agree, should you have read this far, and why^^

[@Shatterverse]

This is a convoluted way of saying what Capt. Picard once told Data; it is possible to make no mistakes and still loose.

[@41-Haiku]

The jester did make a mistake, though, by isolating strands of logic from base reality. Situations can just be misleading, people can just lie, and assumptions can just be incorrect.

[@AleksoLaĈevalo999]

@@41-Haiku But the king didn't lie!

[@danielcrafter9349]

​@@AleksoLaĈevalo999- didn't he? Where's your proof?

[@AleksoLaĈevalo999]

@@danielcrafter9349 Oh well I guess that we do not see the key actually in the other box, but besides that there's no reason to think that the king did lie. He never said that anything written on boxes have to do with reality, just that one had a key and another one had a dagger and it seems like it was the case!

[@Vision-py9ji]

I love this channel already

[@kevkevplays5662]

“It’s impossible” “No it’s perfectly possible, I just lied”

[@GretgorPooper]

That Jester doggo has an ADORABLE voice!

[@Fayanora]

Technically, the knife would also set the jester free, just not the way he'd prefer...

[@anidiot1122]

WE NEED MORE STORYS

[@AleksoLaĈevalo999]

I did the logic before the jester said information about their boxes and figured out that both boxes cannot be true because then secound box says that this box contains gold AND the box with false inscription contains frog but there would be no boxes with false inscriptions so that would not be true and the alternative (OR) statement on the secound box was that this box contains frog and box with true inscription contains gold but that would be impossible because this box would have true inscription and would not contain gold. Also I took a moment to think up that both boxes could have had false inscriptions (before jester said their thing that is) but then we could not infer anything from them at all so that would be dud scenario. Also I logiced out that if only one of the boxes would have true inscription then the box with true inscription always contains gold and the one with false one frog. Kings riddle is interesting because if secound box would be false and first box would be false then first box would be true but then if it would be true then it would be false. A classical "Does a set containing all sets that does not contain themselves contains itself" problem. It's nice how even though it weren't really necessary at all for the point of the story Yudkovsky bothered to make both puzzles interesting.

[@MothFable]

The simple solution is to shake the boxes. One of them sounds like gold, the other an angry frog.

[@Sebastian-lf5ze]

Well this is just adorable!

[@MelonSeedOfficial]

Tldr; boxes won’t be so kind as to always tell you what’s in them

[@professionalsleeper6281]

Regardless of the logical nature of the inscriptions, the king has no obligation to be truthful. He can put the knife where-ever he wants. A return to the earth for those who have their heads in the clouds in logical thought exercises, real life can and does lie, and it does it often, logic by itself is usually not enough.

[@andrewprahst2529]

He has an obligation because it is dishonorable to be untruthful, and it is implied by making the rules of a game. In this case, we was truthful as far as we can tell. He just took advantage of the false conclusions the Jester's line of reasoning can lead to. The Jester's reasoning was not a sound logical argument. It assumed that statements must have a stable truth value.

[@professionalsleeper6281]

​@andrewprahst2529 ????? That is not the point at all, the king states it in a way that makes it obvious that he simply chose not to follow the rules he himself set. He didnt care about the labels at all when considering where to put the knife, he never mentions anything about "ah but actually a paradoxical statement isnt true nor false" or anything. That is never his point.

[@supersmily5811]

I wonder if the actual story ended with the Jester getting gotcha'd by a fake dagger. I doubt it.

[@joe_z]

No, but for a channel that tries to put a cute face on rationality, did you really think they were actually going to kill one of the dogs?

[@CombustableLemon]

Also, the king could just say "I never said I wouldn't lie about the inscriptions"

[@fullmetaltheorist]

Another certified classic.

[@summerlaverdure]

"don't dick around with the king" is actually the most logicial thing you can do

[@AlexanderVulpes]

The king didn't lie. The first box contains the key, and its inscription is indeterminate. The second box contains the dagger, and its inscription is false. Also, my head hurts from trying to sort out the angry frog one.

[@alanavalos6645]

Love the story that happaned, along with trolling the hell out of the jester, honestly thought it was about to become a live leak video

[@ataraxia7439]

Not that the previous videos were bad but I really think the level of animation has improved a lot! Poor jester doggo 🥲😭 happy for the end though

[@blightgrim8720]

It is illogical he does not think that pissing off the king will result with his head coming off

[@metrosaurusrex7012]

We need more of the Jester! Can't get enough of their design and voice. ^^

[@archysimpson2273]

I got heavy Hunter x Hunter vibes from this video, Especially with that voice and the threat of death over a minigame.

[@Vandelinderat]

I understand nothing In this video. Yet I love it so much

[@deltamudkip]

Oh my gosh all these dog folks are so CUTE, helps that the Jester almost sounds like Tails..

[@craftboy338]

Pretty sure you'd be able to tell which box had an angry frog just by the sounds emanating from it...

[@muwgrad1987]

Thought-provoking! An excellent video!

[@dayvancowboi9135]

voice actress for the jester, Krystle Futrel, crushed it

[@leonardsalt]

The key information is on what each of the characters say, more than what the boxes say. The jester did say one and only one of the inscriptions was true, the king did not. King only said one box had a dagger and one had a key. So what the boxes have written on them doesn't really give us any information, if we are to take the king's word. The jester falsley assumed that the premise of his game would hold true for the king's game. Had he known where the keys were, he could have said either "one and only one lf the boxes is correctl", or " the writings are non informative". Let us entertain that the jester could ask a single question to the king, and rhe king would answer honestly. The jester could ask: "Is one and only one of the statements true?" To which, had his initial hyptohesis been correct, the king would answer "yes". And had the "logically impossible" outcome beeb the case, the king would need to say "I don't know". After the king says he doesn't know, the jester opens the other box, but finds a dagger. "Impossible, you must have lied!" The jester would argue, to which the king would say "I placed the dagger blindly and randomly". Never let them know your next move.

[@Woodledude]

Heh. Of course, if the Jester could ask a question and get a straight answer, the more straightforward way to solve the problem would be "Does this box contain a dagger?" or "Does this box contain a key?" I do game design. Players will always try to make the game simpler than you want it to be.

[@funnygeeks8126]

The jesters puzzle was fair, because he added information by explaining: "one and only one of the inscriptions is true, the other is false" But the king made no such claims that his inscriptions meant anything to the contents of the boxes. He simply stated that one box had a dagger and one a key. It just so happened that the boxes had insciptions irrelevant to the puzzle. You'd think if the jester had made the first puzzle he would be smart enough to deduce that the king's puzzle was impossible. Or maybe the jester simply stole the puzzle from somewhere and didn't really understand it.

[@dadatheartist-pt4th]

Plot twist : they do things like every week and they are very good friends.

[@ThePiachu]

"But king, you didn't play by the genre conventions of our game! It would be like telling me I need to win a game of chess to get my freedom and then proceeding to box with me because nobody said it will be a game of chess we will be playing!"

[@Sorain1]

"Did I specify _when_ the game would be? No, I did not. We will meet for our game in sixty years, return the jester to their cell."

[@DusBeforeDawn2008]

"Moral of the story: im the fucking king I can do what I like, dont piss me off"

[@razi_man]

This is what makes the king's "it's just a prank, bro!" gag so funny. Thing is, in your example, he never lied but simply never stated when the chess match will take place, and the same is true for the video's king because the king has never once said that the inscriptions are true or lies.

[@andrewprahst2529]

I actually think the king is playing by genre conventions of the game, because the nature of the game is specifically to figure out which of the boxes are true or not using logic. And logic puzzles commonly involve thinking outside of how things usually work

[@bensoncheung2801]

Couldn’t see the jester struggle to hold the _HEAVY_ gold on one hand? (Being patient before choosing would probably make it even more obvious)

[@emmettbarley5721]

King: It’s just a prank bro

[@נירמנחמי]

logic on it's way to break once self refrences come into play.

[@dortuff]

This is awesome! I like.

[@ikoukas]

If I'm not mistaken, this is an example demonstrating Godel's incompleteness theorem? Two statements A and B may indicate that a third statement C is true, but you can never be sure it actually is true without proving that the statement D: Statement A and statement B cannot be logically violated, which is not possible because to prove it you must prove that A, B and D cannot be logically violated, and so on...?

[@VidkunQL]

No, that is not Gödel's incompleteness theorem, and the theorem has nothing to do with this story.

[@ikoukas]

@@VidkunQL what is the theory behind this story?

[@VidkunQL]

@@ikoukas I suppose that the moral of the story is not to assume that every real situation you encounter will follow the traditional patterns of logic puzzles. There is no physical law that requires that every set of statements you encounter must be logically consistent.

[@HikoNoMori]

Moral of the story: logic doesn’t apply to jokes

[@somefive]

the jesters voice is so cool

[@somerandomgal3915]

lesson here about logic: how truthful a statement on a box is, isn't an indicator for what is inside of it. Instead what is inside of the box is an indicator to the truthfulness of the statement. the first riddle has both statements referencing to both themselves and each other, making paradoxical truth values be possible. considering the case that statement a has gold and statement b has the frog. for a to be true here, b would have to be false. for b to be false it cannot have a be true, therefore we already have a paradox here. now the case that a has the frog and b the gold. for a to now be true, it cannot have b be false. but for b to be true, it cannot have a be true, therefore also a paradox! *the frog and the gold could literally be in either box and it wouldn't change the truth value, since having a box have both things has been ruled out as a possibility by the jester and ironically, even that one with only one condition being true is only met with a paradoxical truth value!* (no wonder the king imprisoned them) in the later riddle the key has just been put into a box that therefore has become paradoxical in the truthfulness of its statement, since it referred to itself. one could've figured out that it was there if one considered what both possibilities of where the key and dagger are and where someone who intends for you to pick the wrong option would put things into,

[@perverse_ince]

0:59 Was the jesters riddle animation part a Morshu reference?

[@LunizIsGlacey]

it certainly feels like it haha

[@Nightmarish_]

It must be lol

[@rose_no]

Sometimes, people just don't want to play along, I guess.

[@CraftyF0X]

Boy the story writer certeanly had a lot of fun with self referential statements xD

[@JohnJohnson-vq7ze]

Here's an informal explanation on the first riddle. Ignore the first box, and focus on the second. First, assume that the second box is true, so replace "the box with a false inscription" with "the other box", and "the box with a true inscription" with "this box". Then, the second box being true says the following: Either (1) this box has gold and the other box has a frog, or (2) this box has a frog and this box has gold. Statement (2) breaks the rules of the game, so statement (1) must be true if this box is true, so it contains gold. We still need to check what happens if this box has the false inscription instead. Now consider the case that the second box has the false inscription. Using De Morgan's laws and doing the same rewriting we did earlier, this box being false means that (1) this box does not have gold or this box does not have a frog, and (2) this box does not have a frog or the other box does not have gold. Statement (1) is immediate from the rules of the game. Statement (2) says in both cases that this box must contain gold (if this box doesn't have a frog, it must have gold, and if the other box does not have gold, then this box must). So if this box is false, we can also conclude that it must contain gold. The solution is that no matter the truth values of either box, you can conclude that the second box contains gold. By the way, if you apply the same logic to the first box, you'll see that whether it's true or false, the statement that you get from it follows immediately from the rules of the game, so the first box can be true or false as well without affecting the answer.

[@thatonething.73]

The voice actor for the Jester Krystle Futrell, sounds kind of like Colleen O'Shaughnessey who voices Tails in sonic boom. Neat :D

[@lolishocks8097]

When it showed the first inscription, I thought: "There's no reason there can't be cake in there." And then at the end I knew, that the dagger was fake.

[@IronVigilante451]

King probably wasnt mad at all, just wanted to mess with the jester

[@BulbasaurLeaves]

I couldn't resist trying to solve the first logic puzzle. I got that the second box contains gold and the first one contains an angry frog. Is that right?

[@AleksoLaĈevalo999]

If the first box is true and the secound one is false then the secound one has to have a frog in it because it is the false box and both boxes cannot contain frogs so first box cannot contain a frog so it gotta have gold and secound one has to have frog. BUT If the secound one is true and first one is false then secound box cannot contain frog becouse one of the OR statements is that this (secound box) contains frog AND truthful box contains gold so this alternative is ruled out because then secound box would contain both frog and gold. That leaves the statement that the previous one was alternative to namely this (that is secound) box contains gold and the first one contains frog. As such there is no solution. If first box is true and secound false then first contains gold and secound frog. If secound box is true and first one is false then secound contains gold and first one frog. There is no solution, which is why the animation cuts through jester explanation.

[@BulbasaurLeaves]

@@AleksoLaĈevalo999 The first box says "Either this box contains an angry frog or the box with the false inscription contains an angry frog but not both" I took that to mean: (Box 1 contains the angry frog) XOR (The box with the false inscription contains the angry frog). If box one's inscription is false then you can rewrite the statement as (Box 1 contains the angry frog) XOR (Box 1 contains the angry frog). This is consistent with our premise that the statement on Box 1 is false because (a XOR a) is always false, although that gives us no further information. Then, you can rewrite Box 2's inscription as (Box 2 contains gold and Box 1 contains an angry frog) or (Box 2 contains an angry frog and Box 2 contains gold). We know that from what the jester said that Box 2 can't contain both. Therefore, Box 2 contains gold and Box 1 contains an angry frog. So, box two still has the gold even if box 1 has the false inscription.

[@BulbasaurLeaves]

@@AleksoLaĈevalo999 Oh, I think I misread part of your statement. If you're talking about the case where the first box is true here is the logic I used: Suppose 1 is true and 2 is false 1. (Box 1 contains an angry frog) XOR (Box 2 contains an angry frog) 2. The following statement is false: (Box 2 contains gold and box 2 contains an angry frog) or (box 2 contains an angry frog and Box 1 contains gold.) 2a We know that from what the jester said that Box 2 can't contain both. 2b. Therefore this statement is false: Box 2 contains an angry frog and Box 1 contains gold. 2c. Therefore Box 2 contains gold and box 1 contains an angry frog

[@elizabethleach6346]

The lesson is the world doesn't have to be logical, and if you assume it always will be, you will be caught by surprise.

[@Loyal2Luna]

The moral to me is that those with power do not care for logic. Both boxes had daggers. The jester forgot the simple rule that those with power also do not care about truth, only power.