SMBC Comics Forum

Zeissmann wrote:That's very funny, only "never have I ever" is past tense and therefore doesn't cause any problems for the present state. They can just answer truthfully without any paradox.
Also, that was not a question.
Fuck you, Sally.

ALL RIGHT, KILL THE ANTS!

yes we're way past tense. We're living in bungalows now.

The whole thing is nonsense. The effect relies on the fact that these are human larvae, and have underdeveloped brains. Had they been a few years younger, even Koehlo could have blown their minds.

Not to mention the rules would need to be set up as a biconditional. There's no clause against hand-raising your hand in response to any question, so it's still paradox free.

Along with the past tense you could view the rules as having a hand-raising period of time where anything done then would still qualifying. So at instant 1 your hand is not raised in response to the question, then at instant 2 the statement is now true for you so you then must raise your hand and your hand can stay raised for the remainder of the turn since you had kept your hand down at instant one. If, instead, the moment of raising is instantaneous and no changes to the players' status can be made during the turn, then it's still past tense and won't apply. So, either way, no paradox there.

So that's, what, four ways the trick doesn't work. Just raise your hand and you'll be fine.


Also, does "this question" refer to the specific sentence being said, or only that instance of the sentence? Because player's could potentially have heard the question before.

^These

The question is ill-defined. The attempted definition is "never have I ever [...] this question", where "this question" is undefined. It's a self-referential definition.

Setting that aside, Sally has never heard the question before, or she's lying. If she didn't keep her hand down the first time she heard the question, that means she had already heard the question and kept her hand down.

Just what I came here to say.

That's very funny, only "never have I ever" is past tense and therefore doesn't cause any problems for the present state. They can just answer truthfully without any paradox.
Also, that was not a question.
Fuck you, Sally.