Re: When I'm arguing with a fool...

[papidave]

in reply to When I'm arguing with a fool...

Proverbs 26:4-5:

Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you will be like him yourself.

Answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes.

I'm not terribly good with implementing nondeterministic logic myself, but I think we could do it with the following snippet:

   my $folly = $fool->folly;
   if ( fork() )
   {
      # child process
      answer( $folly);
   }
   else
   {
      # parent process
      answer( not $folly );
   }

[papidave]

I had some time to think about it, and realized that my code isn't valid. My earlier example depends on a race condition to select one state or the other. What I _should_ have done is implement a solution that acts both ways without interference:

  my $folly = $fool->folly;
  my $tabby = new Cat( owner => 'Schroedinger' );

  answer( $folly ) if ( $tabby->alive );
  answer( not $folly ) unless ( $tabby->alive );

The problem I've been running into is that the first time I call Cat::alive(), the quantum decoherence collapses, and it only invokes answer() once. Does anyone have a method for measuring the "alive" state of $tabby without actually looking into the box? I think I need to modify the implementation of sub alive() ...

[jdporter]

use Quantum::Superpositions:

use Quantum::Superpositions;

sub You::answer_according_to_his_folly() {
    any( 0, 1 )
}

not $you->answer_according_to_folly($fool) or $you->be_like($fool);
    $you->answer_according_to_folly($fool) or $fool->be_wise_in_own_ey
+es();