Do You Even Logic?

When I was slightly in a cage for a year, I made a puzzle book. (I have to find it some day, in my infinite collection of clutter.) I tried out a couple of the logic puzzles on a few of the inmates, a couple of whom looked at them logically, and tried to solve them, with varying success.

But what surprised me, enough that I still remember it, is how many people really don’t seem to know the difference between thinking and guessing. For example, I might have some logic puzzle where you have to figure out which of nine boxes contains a certain thing, and the puzzle gives you enough clues to logically narrow it down to one. But most people would just point at one, based on nothing, and say, “That one?”

The concept of figuring something out seems to be genuinely foreign to a lot of people. You can call it a failure of education, failure of parents, failure of society, whatever. But it’s really damn creepy how many people don’t grasp the concept of deductive reasoning. It’s not just that they’re bad at logic; it’s that they don’t even know what it is.

Okay, that’s the end of my random, depressing rant for now.