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Articles

Dancing with Absurdity

Fred Leavitt argues that our most cherished beliefs are probably wrong.

Imagine that you’ve developed a new lie detector test and recruit a thousand people to try to beat it. You give them a series of questions and ask them to tell one or more lies among their answers. Your device detects every lie and never calls an honest response a lie.

Then comes subject 1001. Asked a question, he answers “yes” and your device indicates that he’s telling the truth.

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