* * * * *
A plane flying 100 miles per hour and carrying 200 passengers and 5 crew
crashes on the border of the United States and Canada. Where do they bury the
survivors?
> Frederick is perhaps best known for creating the “Cognitive Reflection
> Test,” a simple measure for whether a person solves a problem “quickly with
> little conscious deliberation” or through reflective, slow thinking.
> Kahneman includes the test in his book.
>
> It has three questions:
>
> 1) A bat and a ball cost $1.10. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How
> much does the ball cost? ____cents
>
> 2) If it takes five machines five minutes to make five widgets, how long
> would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets? ____minutes
>
> 3) In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles
> in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how
> long would it take for the patch to cover half of the lake? ____days
>
Via Hacker News [1], “The power of slow thinking - Ideas - The Boston Globe
[2]”
I will say, I got the first one wrong initially—Oh! It's simple! It's 10¢!
But then I thought, Wait! This is a trick! Read that question slowly again …
and I was able to puzzle it out. The second one I had to puzzle it out a few
times to get it right, but because I program (I work with powers of two all
the time) the last one was trivial.
When I tried asking Bunny about these, we had the following conversation:
“I was never good at these type of problems. You know, a train leaves Detroit
going at 75 miles per hour, while at the same time, a train leaves Los
Angeles going at 80 miles per hour. Where do they meet?”
“Yeah, that's easy.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah, they meet head-on.”
“Ha ha ha. Where?
“D'uh! In the United States.”
“Ahhhhhhhhrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrg!”
[1]
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9952875
[2]
https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2015/07/25/the-power
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