18/9/23, 16:16 Logical Fallacies: The Fallacy Files

www.fallacyfiles.org 1/13
18/9/23, 16:16 Logical Fallacies: The Fallacy Files

Previous Month | RSS/XML | Current

Main Menu
What are The
WEBLOG
Fallacy Files?
Main Page September 14th, 2023 (Permalink)
Weblog (RSS/XML)
What is a fallacy? Headline
How to use The
Fallacy Files EPISODIOS DE TUS S
Quote…Unquote
Examples: Fallacies,
Nasa jet travels 850 miles in 10 FAVORITAS ¡GRAT

seconds1
DESC
Arguments
Book Shelf © 2023 WarnerMedia Direct Latin America, LLC. Todos los derechos reservados. HBO Max se u

Sources & Resources

Familiar That seems fast, but how fast is it? Does it seem credible that a jet
Misquotations could travel that fast? Last year, I posted a short series on
Misquoting Orwell credibility checking2, and this headline is a good candidate for such Check the list of recommended
How to be a Prophet a check. online casinos for Japanese
How to Read a Poll players at the website
Funny Fallacies The headline expresses the jet's speed in a way that's difficult to OnlineCasinoOsusume.
Humorous Headlines evaluate, since we're used to speeds expressed in miles per hour
Glossary (MPH) or kilometers per hour, and I've never before seen a speed Gamble safely with the top online
Taxonomy expressed in miles per ten seconds. So, how fast would that be in casinos in UK checked and
How to Use the miles per hour? Take ten seconds if you're fast, or a minute or two reviewed by CasinoHEX.
Taxonomy if you're more my speed, to convert the headline into MPH.
About the Author Find the best online casinos in the
So that you can check your work, here are my calculations. Since UK with Casivo, which has
there are sixty seconds in a minute, there are six ten-second periods conducted thorough tests on all
Alphabetical List of per minute. So, the jet was going 6 × 850 = 5,100 miles per minute, licensed UK casinos.
Fallacies: and given that there are sixty minutes in an hour, it was travelling at
Lifting the lid on strategies and
60 × 5,100 = 306,000 MPH. That is fast!
maths models - check out the
Select a Fallacy: gambling guide at
At this point, if not before, your skeptical sense should start
tingling. Is that speed plausible? To find out, let's read down in the https://www.allslotsites.com.
Lessons in Logic: article beneath the headline:

Select a Lesson:
An aircraft that can fly at ten times the speed of sound Advertise in The Fallacy
Lesson 1
will be tested over the Pacific Ocean today—possibly Files
Lesson 2 leading to “hypersonic” cruise missiles that could
Lesson 3 travel from Los Angeles to Pyongyang in less than an The Fallacy Files does not
Lesson 4 hour. The aircraft was designed by Nasa to travel 850 endorse products or services
Lesson 5 miles in just ten seconds, or 7,000mph.3 advertised here. Ads makes it
Lesson 6 possible to continue as a free site.
Lesson 7 Hold on! 7K MPH is a lot less than 306K MPH; in fact, the latter is You may help keep it free by
Lesson 8 almost 44 times faster. Obviously, the two claims about the jet's supporting its advertisers. Thank
Lesson 9 speed are inconsistent: either it doesn't go 850 miles in ten seconds you!
Lesson 10 or it's much faster than 7K MPH.

It seems to me that 306K MPH is highly implausible, but let's do Support The Fallacy Files
Rules of Argument: some research to find out for sure. According to NASA itself4, the
jet in question, which was known as the X-43A, reached the speed
Select a Rule:
of 7K MPH or almost ten times the speed of sound, which is a little
Introduction Email the Fallacist
Rule 1 over 760 MPH5.
Rule 2
So, where did the author of the article get the notion that the jet © Copyright 2001-2023: Gary N.
Rule 3
Curtis
Rule 4 travelled 850 miles in ten seconds? I'm not sure, but a NASA press
Rule 5 release6 states that during a later flight the jet would travel 850
Rule 6 miles and its engine would fire for eleven seconds. If you assume
Rule 7 that the engine was firing the entire time of the 850 mile flight, then Permission is granted for non-commercial use
Rule 8 and replication of this material for educational
you would conclude that the jet flew 850 miles in a little over ten purposes, provided that appropriate notice is
Rule 9
seconds. However, given that its speed was only a little over 7K included of both its authorship and
Rule 10 copyrighted status.
MPH, the engine must have fired only for the first eleven seconds
Rule 11
www.fallacyfiles.org 2/13
18/9/23, 16:16 Logical Fallacies: The Fallacy Files
Rule 11
of that flight,
Rule and
12 the entire flight must have lasted over seven
minutes. Rule 13

As I pointed out in a previous entry:

Weblog Archives:
When it comes to high speeds, we quickly run out of
landmarks
Select by which to judge claims for plausibility.
a Year/Month:
Our
2023 experience with speeds is very limited, and
anything over around a hundred MPH is just "really
June
fast".7
May
April
How could
Marchthe author or editor of the article have avoided such an
egregious error? Someone should have taken the minute or two to
February
convertJanuary
the headline claim from the unfamiliar units of miles-per-
2022 into the familiar MPH, as we did above. Such unusual
ten-minutes
December
units should be avoided because they are both unintuitive and
November
difficult to compare with the usual ones. If that had been done, the
October
implausibility of the headline would have been obvious, as well as
September
the difference with the later claim that the jet's speed was 7K MPH.

Surprisingly, the article has never been corrected, despite the fact
Search The Fallacy Files:
that it will be two decades old next year.

Notes:

1. ChrisWeb
Ayres, www.fallacyfiles.or
"Nasa jet travels 850 miles in 10 seconds", The
Times, 11/16/2004. Via: Brian W. Kernighan, Millions
BillionsSearch
Google Zillions: Defending Yourself in a World of Too Many
Numbers (2018), p. 43.
2. See:
I. Compare & Contrast, 1/7/2022
II. Divide & Conquer, 2/4/2022
III. Ratios, Rates & Percentages, 3/27/2022
IV. Ballpark Estimation, 4/21/2022
3. Paragraphing suppressed.
4. "NASA's X-43A Scramjet Breaks Speed Record", NASA,
11/16/2004.
5. "what is the speed of sound", Wolfram Alpha, accessed:
9/14/2023.
6. "NASA X-43A 'Scramjet' Readied For Mach 10 Flight",
NASA, 11/9/2004.
7. Faster Than a Speeding Bullet, 1/12/2019.

September 11th, 2023 (Permalink)

How to Solve a Problem: Divide and Conquer1

Try solving the following problem.

Problem 1: A Puzzle in Woodpecker Woods

An ornithologist studying the birds in Woodpecker Woods made the

following observations:

1. All the yellowbellies are sapsuckers.

2. Some of the blackbacks are redheads.
3. None of the sapsuckers are redheads.

What could the ornithologist conclude is the relation between

yellowbellies and blackbacks in Woodpecker Woods?

Note: This is a logic puzzle and not necessarily ornithologically

correct, so knowledge about birds will not help solve it and may
www.fallacyfiles.org 3/13
18/9/23, 16:16 Logical Fallacies: The Fallacy Files
even mislead you. Base your answer entirely on the above clues.

If you try to solve this problem directly, you may find it difficult
because there are three clues and four classes: yellowbellies,
sapsuckers, blackbacks, and redheads2. What you'll probably need
to do is take the problem two clues at a time. Which two clues
should you use? Look for two clues that have a class in common:
clues 1 and 3, which share "sapsuckers", and clues 2 and 3, which
share "redheads". Since these pairs of clues have only three classes
among them, you can use a Venn diagram or whatever technique
you please; you may even be able to do them in your head. You
could pick either of these duos to solve the puzzle, but I'll show
how using 1 and 3:

1. Clues 1 & 3: From these two clues we can conclude that no

yellowbellies are redheads.
2. Step 1 & Clue 2: Using the conclusion of the previous step
together with clue 2, we can conclude that some blackbacks
are not yellowbellies, which is the solution to the puzzle.

This was an inferential problem, that is, it asked you to infer

something from a group of premisses. While there are advanced
methods to solve such a problem directly from all the premisses, it's
usually easier to break it down into two or more simpler problems.
This is what I mean by "divide and conquer": solving a complex
and difficult problem by breaking it down into simpler ones,
because simpler is easier.

In a previous entry3, I mentioned how the primary technique for

solving jigsaw puzzles is hill-climbing, that is, adding pieces to the
puzzle until there are no longer any left to add. As anyone who has
ever worked a jigsaw will have noticed, they tend to get easier as
you go along, and the hardest part of the puzzle is getting started.
The reason is that the problem space4 of the puzzle is largest at the
beginning and decreases with every added piece; for instance, if the
puzzle has a thousand pieces, then you have to start looking
through that many pieces to find two that fit together. To do so
systematically, you'd need to make almost a million
comparisons―more precisely, 1,000 × 999 = 999,000―so a
systematic search is impractical. What can you do?

The usual strategy for solving a jigsaw puzzle is to start out by

sorting the pieces into at least two piles: border pieces and interior
pieces. It's easy to tell border pieces and interior ones apart because
those on the border have one straight edge. Once the pieces have
been sorted into two piles, put the interior pieces aside and work on
the border of the puzzle first. Assuming that a thousand piece
puzzle has a hundred edge pieces, assembling the border of the
puzzle first reduces the problem space by a factor of a hundred5.

In effect, this procedure turns one big puzzle into two smaller ones:
the border puzzle and the interior puzzle. In this way, the problem
space is reduced to more manageable sizes. In other words, you
"divide and conquer" it.

As with the other problem-solving techniques we've looked at in

this series, it's not always possible to divide a problem into smaller
ones, but it is a possibility to consider, especially when confronted
by a large and difficult problem.

Now, here's a chance for you to practice using your new tool.

Problem 2: The Three Stooges Gang

www.fallacyfiles.org 4/13
18/9/23, 16:16 Logical Fallacies: The Fallacy Files
A major bank robbery is being investigated by the police, who
suspect that a gang known as "the three stooges" committed it. The
stooges are three thieves who rob banks and jewelry stores wearing
masks representing the members of the famous comedy team they
were named after. The original members of the gang were three
crooks who had met in prison and started working together on their
release. The three were always fighting with each other, and the
police had heard rumors that two of them were on the outs. So, it
was always possible that one or more of the original stooges might
not have participated in the robbery.

The police interviewed their confidential informants (CIs) to find

out what the word in the underworld was on the robbery and the
gang. I will refer to the usual members of the gang as "Moe",
"Larry", and "Curly" to protect the innocent. The police gathered
the following clues from the CIs:

1. If Moe didn't plan the robbery, then Larry participated but not
Curly.
2. Either Curly was involved in the crime or Larry wasn't.
3. Larry didn't participate in the robbery if and only if both Moe
planned it and Curly was included.

Assuming that what the CIs said is correct, who if any among the
original three stooges was involved in the robbery?

Hint

Answer

Notes:

1. For previous entries in this series, see:

i. Contraction, 4/6/2023
ii. Think Backwards, 5/5/2023
iii. Solving a Problem by Elimination, 6/20/2023
iv. Climbing Up that Hill, 7/5/2023
v. Backtracking, 8/14/2023
2. If you're familiar with traditional logic, you might notice that
the three clues are each categorical statements. If there were
only two clues and three classes, you could treat it as a
categorical syllogism, for which there are established
techniques. As it is, there are three statements with four class
terms among them, so it's impossible to make a single
syllogism out of them. Similarly, if you know how to use
Venn diagrams, you might think to represent the logical
relations between the four classes in a diagram, but the
standard "pretzel" diagram only relates three classes. There
are diagrams for more than three classes, but they tend to be
less intuitive and harder to use. See Martin Gardner's Logic
Machines and Diagrams (2nd edition, 1982), chapter 2.
3. Climbing Up that Hill, 7/5/2023.
4. By the "problem space" of a puzzle I mean the class of all
possible solutions to it.
5. The number of comparisons is 100 × 99 = 9,900, which is
one-hundredth of that for the full puzzle.

September 4th, 2023 (Permalink)

Famously Infamous

www.fallacyfiles.org 5/13
18/9/23, 16:16 Logical Fallacies: The Fallacy Files
This year is the eightieth anniversary of Operation Chastise, the so-
called dambusters bombing raids of World War Two1. The raids,
conducted by Britain's Royal Air Force, took place on May 16th
and 17th of 1943 and aimed at destroying three dams along the
Ruhr river where Germany's war industry was concentrated. The
operation was largely successful as two of the dams were
sufficiently damaged to flood the river valley2. However, as
interesting as this true story is, this is not a history lesson; rather,
it's prompted by a BBC television presenter named Sally Nugent
who, in commenting on the anniversary, called the raids
"infamous"3.

If you only knew the word "famous" and the prefix "in-", you
would probably think that "infamous" means "not famous" since
"in-" is a negative prefix, but there's another way to be negative.
Instead of "non-famous", "infamous" means famous for something
negative4, so that calling the dambusters raids "infamous" means
they are famous in some bad way. While the raids are no doubt
famous in England, the fact that the BBC found it necessary to
apologize for its presenter's remark shows that they are not
infamous.

My guess is that either Nugent or whoever wrote the script she was
reading simply didn't know the meaning of "infamous", rather than
intending to suggest that the raids were well-known for being bad.
Some words with negative meanings, such as "bad" and "sick", are
sometimes used in the opposite sense, and I've previously come
across "infamous" used in this way.

I don't know how well the dambusters raids are known in the
United States nowadays, but I was aware of them from having seen
the 1955 movie The Dam Busters5 on television as a boy. As you
can tell from the title, this was a fictionalized film version of the
famous raids. I was not the only one to see and love the movie: so
did a young George Lucas, who based the final scenes of a famous
1977 movie on it6.

Substituting "infamous" for "famous" is the sort of error that

neither a spelling nor even grammar checking program can be
expected to catch, since both are English adjectives. To notice the
substitution of one for the other requires understanding the
difference in meaning between the two, and not just spelling or
even grammar. I tried the full sentence spoken by Nugent in several
online copyediting programs and, unsurprisingly, not a one caught
it. So, if you don't want to become as infamous as Nugent, add this
distinction to your mental copyeditor.

Notes:

1. David McKenna, "Events mark 80th anniversary of

Dambusters raids", BBC News, 5/13/2023.
2. "The Incredible Story Of The Dambusters Raid", Imperial
War Museum, accessed: 9/3/2023.
3. Charlie Parker, "BBC apologises for Sally Nugent’s
‘infamous’ Dambusters comment", The Sunday Times,
8/3/2023.
4. "Infamous", Cambridge Dictionary, accessed: 9/3/2023.
5. Alex von Tunzelmann, "The Dam Busters: hits its targets–
and doesn't dumb down", The Grauniad, 8/7/2015.
6. Bryan Young, "How The World War II Drama 'The Dam
Busters' Influenced The Space Battles Of 'Star Wars: A New
Hope'", Slash Film, 5/2/2018.

www.fallacyfiles.org 6/13
18/9/23, 16:16 Logical Fallacies: The Fallacy Files
Previous Month

Casino Bonuses are not easy to find on the internet.

There are simply too many and their terms and
conditions makes them difficult to compare. You can
find the best bonuses at casinopilot.

You can find the best casinos at MrCasinova.com as

this website update online casinos and compare them
on daily basis.

August 31st, 2023 (Permalink)

The Old Newspeak & the New Newspeak

Pamela Paul, "What It Means to Call Prostitution ‘Sex

Work’", The New York Times, 8/17/2023. It's interesting to
see this article in the NYT.

Last week at the National Organization for Women’s

New York office, women’s rights advocates, anti-
trafficking groups and former prostitutes convened to
galvanize New Yorkers to take action against the city’s
booming sex trade. In addition to arguing for
enforcement of existing laws…they wanted to send an
important message about the language used around the
problem.

“The media uses terms like ‘sex work’ and ‘sex worker’
in their reporting, treating prostitution as a job like any
other,” said Melanie Thompson…. The language of “sex
work,” Thompson argued, implies falsely that engaging
in the sex trade is a choice most often made willingly; it
also absolves sex buyers of responsibility. … “I urge the

www.fallacyfiles.org 7/13
18/9/23, 16:16 Logical Fallacies: The Fallacy Files
media to remove the terms ‘sex work’ and ‘sex worker’
from your style handbooks,” she said.

In reporting the event afterward, The New York Post

used the term “sex workers.”1 The Post is hardly alone.
In what at first glance might seem like a positive…
move, the term “sex work” suddenly appears to be
everywhere. Even outside academic, activist and
progressive strongholds, “sex work” is becoming a
widespread euphemism for “prostitution.” It can also
refer to stripping, erotic massage and other means of
engaging in the sex trade. It’s now commonly used by
politicians, the media, Hollywood and government
agencies. …

It should be noted that the NYT itself used the phrase "sex
work" as a euphemism for "prostitution" as recently as last
month2, so just because this article appeared in its opinion
pages doesn't mean that it will drop the doublespeak.

"Sex worker" as a euphemism for "prostitute" has been

around for a long time, and I discussed an example of it in a
headline fifteen years ago3. As I explained then, William
Lutz documented the phrase "sex industry worker" from as
long ago as 1988. A book entitled Sex Work: Writings by
Women in the Sex Industry4 was first published in 1987 and
was popular enough to spawn a second edition in 1998. A
search for "sex work" and "sex worker" in Google's Ngram
Viewer shows that the phrases were practically non-existent
before the late-1980s5, so the book may have actually started
their spread.

So, given that "sex worker" is an old euphemism, and

euphemisms lose their power over time, we should be getting
a new one soon. Given the current fad for "person-first
language"6, I expect that "sex worker" will soon be Oldspeak
and the new euphemism will be "person who works in the
sex industry", which has the advantage of being five words
longer with over twice as many letters.

Why, you might wonder, does exchanging money for

sex need a rebrand? Derogatory terms like “hooker” and
“whore” were long ago replaced by the more neutral
“prostitute.”

"Hooker" is slang and always has been. More importantly,

whatever negative charge attaches to the word "prostitute"
and even "whore" comes from what they mean. As with
words such as "murder" and "rape", "prostitution" has a
negative charge because of what it refers to. The negative
charge flows from the activity to the word, not from the word
to the activity. Changing the word for "prostitution" will
work only until people figure out what it means, then a new
euphemism will become necessary.

But “sex worker” goes one step further, couching it as a

conventional job title…. Its most grotesque variant is
the phrase “child sex worker,” which has appeared in a
wide range of publications, including BuzzFeed, The
Decider and The Independent. (Sometimes the phrase
has been edited out after publication.)

If you can't write "child prostitute" because it's politically

incorrect to write "prostitute", what can you write?

www.fallacyfiles.org 8/13
18/9/23, 16:16 Logical Fallacies: The Fallacy Files
The term “sex work” emerged several decades ago
among radical advocates of prostitution. People like
Carol Leigh and Margo St. James, who helped convene
the first World Whores' Congress in 1985, used “sex
work” in an effort to destigmatize, legitimize and
decriminalize their trade.

After they had convened a "whores' congress"?

Not surprisingly, this shift toward acceptability has been

welcomed by many men, who make up a vast majority
of customers. The term subsequently gained traction in
academic circles and among other progressive advocacy
groups, such as some focused on labor or abortion
rights. …

No advocacy worker wants to stigmatize the women or

children who are trafficked or who resort to prostitution.
Survivors of the sex trade should never be blamed or
criminalized. Nor should the humanity of individuals
working in the sex trade be reduced to what they do for
money. Both opponents and advocates of the term “sex
worker” share these goals. …

Throat-clearing omitted.

The term “sex work” whitewashes the economic

constraints, family ruptures and often sordid
circumstances that drive many women to sell
themselves. It flips the nature of the transaction in
question: It enables sex buyers to justify their own role,
allowing the purchase of women’s bodies for their own
sexual pleasure and violent urges to feel as lightly
transactional as the purchase of packaged meat from the
supermarket. Instead of women being bought and sold
by men, it creates the impression that women are the
ones in power. …

In recent years, language has undergone drastic shifts in

an effort to reduce harm. Sometimes these shifts result
in contorted language that obscures meaning.
Sometimes these shifts make people feel better without
changing anything of substance. And sometimes they do
move the needle toward positive change, which is
always welcome. But the use of “sex work,” however
lofty the intention, effectively increases the likelihood of
harm for a population that has already suffered so much.
To help people hurt by the sex trade, we need to call it
like it is.

The only thing I disagree with in this last paragraph is the

claim that doublespeak sometimes does "move the needle
toward positive change"; I've seen no evidence of this and
Paul offers none. Does she really believe this or did she just
write it in a futile attempt to mollify critics? To deal with any
problem, we must understand it, and how can we do that if
we refuse to speak honestly about it?

Matt Taibbi, "Tracking Orwellian Change: The Aristocratic

Takeover of 'Transparency'", Racket News, 8/21/2023.

“Transparency” was one of America’s great postwar

reforms. In 1955, a Democratic congressman named
John Moss from California…introduced legislation that
would become one of the great triumphs of late-stage
American democracy.
www.fallacyfiles.org 9/13
18/9/23, 16:16 Logical Fallacies: The Fallacy Files
The Freedom of Information Act [FOIA] took a tortuous
path to becoming law, opposed from the start by nearly
every major government agency and for years struggling
to gain co-sponsors despite broad public support. …
After a series of final tweaks it eventually passed the
House 307-0 in 1966, when it landed on the desk of
Lyndon Johnson, who didn’t like the bill, either.
Johnson signed it….

The Freedom of Information Act gave reporters and

citizens alike extraordinary power to investigate once-
impenetrable executive agencies that conduct the
business of government. … Transparency for decades
was understood to mean a pro-democratic concept
giving ordinary citizens the power to see how their
government operates, how taxes are spent, and whether
or not public officials are complying with laws. …

By 2023, the transformation of the term “transparency”

has advanced to a stage where the word is now
commonly understood by politicians to mean the
mathematical opposite of what someone like John Moss
would have thought. When elite politicians and media
figures speak of “transparency” now, they mean giving
government power to obtain “transparency” into the
activities of private citizens. … Transparency is what
authorities…want to have into your every action,
transaction, and thought. It’s a terrifying idea, and…
something Hitler or Stalin would have been reluctant to
say out loud, though of course this exact idea was
foundational to both totalitarian societies. …

The easiest way to understand the language of contemporary

politics is to assume that words mean the opposite of what
they purport to mean; for instance, "diversity" is "celebrated"
by holding racially-segregated ceremonies, and people are
excluded from events in the name of "inclusion"7. "War is
peace. Freedom is slavery.8"

One last note. The extraordinary pro-democratic ideal of

FOIA was underscored by the fact that the tool was
available to every citizen. Not just New York Times
journalists, but every private digger, potential
whistleblower, even crackpots were granted the power
of “transparency.”

The chief way you know the new version of

transparency is a fraud is that it’s limited to “qualified”
researchers. We’re even seeing lately news stories
sourced to some of these same “researchers”
complaining about having to comply with FOIA
requests…. Ideologically, these self-appointed
intellectual vanguards do not believe information is for
everyone, nor do they believe they should have to
answer to the people funding their “research,” while
simultaneously believing that private companies and
individuals should get used to the principle of endless
inquiry.

When the meanings of noble words are turned inside

out, we have to pay attention, and this example is about
as infamous as this sort of thing gets. Don’t let anyone
tell you transparency means surrendering your privacy
to the state. It’s supposed to be the other way around.

www.fallacyfiles.org 10/13
18/9/23, 16:16 Logical Fallacies: The Fallacy Files
Notes:

1. Jared Downing, Priscilla DeGregory & Jorge Fitz-Gibbon,

"Politicians, prosecutors dropping the ball on booming NYC
sex trade: advocates", The New York Post, 8/8/2023.
2. See, for instance: Teo Bugbee, "‘Kokomo City’ Review:
Dispatches From the Down Low", The New York Times,
7/27/2023.
3. Doublespeak Headline, 8/3/2008.
4. Frédérique Delacoste & Priscilla Alexander, editors, Sex
Work: Writings by Women in the Sex Industry (2nd Edition,
1998).
5. "Sex Work, Sex Worker", Google Books Ngram Viewer,
accessed: 8/31/2023.
6. Close Encounters with Doublespeak of the Third Kind,
9/8/2019.
7. Anemona Hartocollis, "Colleges Celebrate Diversity With
Separate Commencements", The New York Times, 6/2/2017.
8. George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), Part I, Chapter
1.

Disclaimer: I don't necessarily agree with everything in these

articles, but I think they're worth reading as a whole. In abridging
them, I have sometimes changed the paragraphing of the excerpts.

August 14th, 2023 (Permalink)

How to Solve a Problem: Backtracking1

As usual in these entries on problem-solving, let's start out with a

puzzle.

Puzzle: A Delivery Dilemma

If you work delivering packages nowadays, you are expected to

deliver a diverse assortment of items to the same address. For
instance, suppose that you are tasked with delivering to a house on
top of a high hill. Unfortunately, no one is home so that you'll have
to leave the packages on the porch of the house. The road ends at
the bottom of the hill, and the only way to get to the porch is a
steep and narrow footpath up the side of the hill. Suppose, further,
that you are to deliver a live goat, a hungry dog, and a pizza.
Because of the steepness of the hill, you can only take up one item
at a time, so it will require at least three trips to deliver all three to
the porch. That's a lot of climbing! However, you can't leave the
goat and the pizza alone together in the delivery van or on the
porch, because the goat would eat the pizza. Similarly, you can't
leave the hungry dog alone with the goat, since the dog would
attack the goat. Luckily, you can leave the dog alone with the pizza,
since everyone knows that dogs don't like pizza.

How can you get all three items alive and intact to the porch? What
is the minimum number of trips up and down the steep hill that you
will have to make?2

This puzzle looks like a prime candidate for hill-climbing3, and

indeed that will play a role in solving it. Since your problem is to
get all three items from the base of the hill up to the house on top,
you have a clear measure of progress, namely, how many objects
are on the porch. So, let's work our way through it.

www.fallacyfiles.org 11/13
18/9/23, 16:16 Logical Fallacies: The Fallacy Files
The first step, of course, is to carry one of the objects up to the
house and leave it on the porch, but which one? You can't take the
pizza up first, since that would leave the dog and goat alone
together in the delivery van. Also, you can't take the dog up first,
since that would leave the goat and pizza alone. So, the only
alternative left is to take the goat up first, leaving the dog and the
pizza in the van4. So far, so good.

However, now you're stuck. You can't take the dog up and leave it
on the porch alone with the goat since the dog will attack the goat,
and you can't take the pizza up and leave it on the porch because
the goat will eat it. The puzzle appears to be insoluble! In fact, it is
impossible to solve if you stick to hill-climbing.

To solve the puzzle, you must backtrack, which is the topic of this
entry. Here's how to do it: take the dog or the pizza―it doesn't
matter which―up to the porch and leave it, then take the goat back
down to the van! This step goes against common sense, which is
what makes the puzzle hard. It also violates the hill-climbing
algorithm, since all you've done is switch one object on the porch
for another. The hill-climbing algorithm tells you to always take an
action that increases the number of items delivered, but you can't
do so and solve the puzzle.

To continue the solution: you return to the van with the goat, leave
it in the van, and take the pizza or dog, as the case may be, up the
hill. You can safely leave the dog and pizza together on the porch as
you return to the van for the goat. Finally, you take the goat back up
and place it on the porch. It took four trips up and down the hill to
deliver the three items!5

Hill-climbing alone is usually not enough to solve a problem.

Instead, you need to combine it with backtracking, that is, when
you get stuck and can't seem to make further progress towards the
goal, backtrack to an earlier stage and take a different route. For
instance, in trip-planning, we often use hill-climbing by choosing
among routes that lead in the general direction of where we want to
go. However, sometimes the shortest route to a destination may
require that you backtrack to gain access to it, or it may take a road
that sometimes heads in the wrong direction.

In the above puzzle, you must backtrack because you have two
different goals that sometimes conflict: one goal is to get all three
items on the porch―and if this was your only goal you could
accomplish it with hill-climbing alone―but your other goal is to
deliver the items undamaged, and for that you have to backtrack.

In the previous entry, I mentioned three different obstacles faced by

hill-climbing: plateaus, ridges, and multiple peaks. If, in the course
of hill-climbing, you get stuck on any of these obstacles, then
backtracking will be necessary in order to get off. The above puzzle
is a different type of obstacle―namely, a detour6―which comes
about when you have more than just the goal of getting to the top of
the hill. When you have more than one goal, you will often need to
backtrack in order to accomplish all of them.

Now that you have another problem-solving tool in your kit, try the
following puzzle for practice. Note that this puzzle takes place in a
world of wizards and little people where magic is real, but you
won't need magic to solve it.

Puzzle: To the Far Shore

The Great Gray Mage and his two traveling companions, both
halflings, needed to cross a bottomless and nameless river. They
www.fallacyfiles.org 12/13
18/9/23, 16:16 Logical Fallacies: The Fallacy Files
dared not swim it for fear of monsters rising from its murky depths.
The mage's magic was losing its power, and the three were on a
quest to discover why. Luckily, there was a small rowboat pulled up
on the bank that the three could borrow to make the crossing.
However, the boat was of a size that could not hold all three
travelers at the same time since it could carry only the weight of the
mage without sinking. Of course, the halflings each weighed half as
much as the mage so the boat could carry both across. If the mage
rowed the boat across the river, the halflings would be left behind;
and if the halflings rowed across, then the mage would be left. The
mage's powers were so weak that he could not use them to draw the
empty boat back across the river, and it appeared that only one
crossing could be made. How did the Great Gray Mage get himself
and the two halflings across the river without using magic?7

Hint

Answer

Notes:

1. For previous entries in this series, see:

i. Contraction, 4/6/2023
ii. Think Backwards, 5/5/2023
iii. Solving a Problem by Elimination, 6/20/2023
iv. Climbing Up that Hill, 7/5/2023
2. This is a version of a puzzle that goes all the way back to
Alcuin in the eighth century. It's usually presented as the
story of a farmer who buys a cabbage, goat, and wolf (?) at a
market, and has to cross a river in a small boat that holds
only one of the three items at a time. See: Marcel Danesi, The
Puzzle Instinct: The Meaning of Puzzles in Human Life
(2002), pp. 153-155.
3. See: Climbing Up that Hill, 7/5/2023.
4. Notice that we solved the sub-problem of which object to
deliver first by elimination; see: Solving a Problem by
Elimination, 6/20/2023.
5. You might wonder what happens to the three items after you
leave them on the porch, but that's not your problem!
6. Wayne A. Wickelgren, How to Solve Problems: Elements of a
Theory of Problems and Problem Solving (1974), pp. 85-88.
7. This is a simplified version of another classic puzzle from
Alcuin: as it's usually presented there are two adults and two
children, but the solution simply repeats twice the process for
getting one adult across the river. See: William Harston, A
Brief History of Puzzles: Baffling Brainteasers from the
Sphinx to Sudoku (2019), Puzzle 2.

Previous Entry

www.fallacyfiles.org 13/13