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From: brianp@shark.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.ai
Subject: Re: Commonsense Reasoning?
Message-ID: <836@shark.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 19-Jun-84 17:00:58 EDT
Article-I.D.: shark.836
Posted: Tue Jun 19 17:00:58 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 21-Jun-84 01:15:14 EDT
References: <953@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Organization: Tektronix, Wilsonville OR
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     About "if 3 is half of 5, what is a third of 10?"

It is interesting to note the assumptions that might be made here.
One could assume that all numbers retain their good-old standard meaning,
except 3, when compared to 5.  Then the chain of relationships
(3:5/2, 6:5, 12:10, 4:10/3) can be made.  What I first thought was
"so what's a '10'? "  I.e, let's toss out all the definitions of the
numbers along with 3.  'Half' could be redefined, but that says
nothing about what to do with 'third'.  One could redefine 'is',
in effect, making it mean the ':' relation of the previous article.


Anybody have hypotheses on which assumptions or definitions one would 
tend to drop first, when solving a puzzle of this sort?

				Brian Peterson
				...!ucbvax!tektronix!shark!brianp