Captain Kirk was looking to buy a vacation house on the Planet of the Edo, an island in space where the natives always tell the truth and the resident visitors always lie. Kirk was looking at one house he particularly liked, but wasn't sure if he could believe the things the owners were telling him about it, so he decided to determine if they were natives or visitors. Kirk asked the man of the house if his wife was a visitor and he received a yes or no answer. Kirk then asked the lady of the house if her husband was a visitor and she also gave him a yes or no answer. Were the two answers necessarily the same, and why?

isn' t this a variation on the question asked in the 'never ending story film'??

The two answers are always the same.

 

Simple boolean logic can be applied to this, with the two people being not gates (visitors) or straight through couplings (residents), connected in series. The whole series will either work as a not gate or a straight through coupling and can be resolved down into one simple gate. Therefore, putting data into either end of the chain will give the same result, regardless of what end it is put in at.

Originally posted by Rich666

isn' t this a variation on the question asked in the 'never ending story film'??

 

 

Its also in Labrynth, where you ask one what the other one would say and then do the oposite.