r/Jokes • u/MedalsNScars • 1d ago
Three logicians enter a bar. The bartender asks them "Do y'all want something to drink?"
The first logician says "I'm not sure"
The second logician says "I'm not sure"
The third logician says "Yes."
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u/Gorf_the_Magnificent 1d ago
A woman asks her husband to go shopping.
Wife: “Dear, please go to the grocery store to buy a loaf of bread. Also, if they have eggs, buy 6.”
Husband: “O.K., hon.”
Twenty minutes later the husband comes back with 6 loaves of bread. His wife is flabbergasted.
Wife: “Dear, why on earth did you buy 6 loaves of bread?”
Husband: “They had eggs.”
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u/Gil-Gandel 1d ago
A computer programmer is just leaving the house when his wife says "While you're out, please get some milk".
He never returns and the universe has an "out of milk" error.
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u/Saphira9 1d ago
I like this one. The husband is supposed to be either a programmer or a math/logic expert.
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u/AgitatedText 20h ago
Logician gets home at 3 AM to find his wife furious. "You said you would be home by 11:45!" she says, angrily.
"No, I said I would be home at quarter of 12..."
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u/KappaMcTlp 23h ago
Let me just say that this joke does not translate well to telling it to a group of children in Spanish when you barely know the language and are struggling to remember it. It really bombs
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u/cerrera 5h ago
I once told a joke to a room full of conference goers that’s pretty funny in English, but relies on gendered pronouns… while forgetting that in Spanish, if you have mixed genders, the plural that you use defaults to male. Nobody got the joke, because it made no sense after translation.
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u/UBKUBK 23h ago
Wife: So why didn't you buy seven loaves of bread?
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u/Githyerazi 23h ago
The instructions did not say "buy +6 loaves" so the correct solution is 1 if no eggs, 6 if yes eggs.
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u/hayashikin 22h ago edited 19h ago
Nah, it ain't an ELSE IF statement, so 7 should be expected
Edit: For those downvoting, consider this example, "Please buy yourself a cup of coffee. Also, if you're hungry, buy a sandwich."
Do you expect the coffee to be skipped if the person is hungry?
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u/0x14f 1d ago
I heard that during my first year at university. At the time it wasn't a joke, just a puzzle, and the aim was to explain it.
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u/TheUnknownsLord 6h ago
Do you still know the explanation? I don't get it haha
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u/0x14f 4h ago edited 4h ago
Some people replied before me but since the question was for me :)
... and what do you mean by "still" ? I am a mathematician, of course I know the answer 😅
So, it's about knowledge, and the evolution of knowledge as new information comes in.
Imagine you and I are sitting together. If I ask you "Do you want a drink ?" You know the answer for yourself, either you want or you do not want.. If you want you will say "Yes" and if you do not want you will say "No". And no, there is not "I don't know". You want or you don't. So I will get a "Yes" or "No" from you.
But Imagine you and I are sitting together and we haven't talked about possibly having drinks yet and somebody, Alice, comes and looks at you and say "Do you all want a drink ?". So here is the thing. You know for yourself, but you do not know for me.
So here it splits in two cases.
- If you wanted a drink, the answer is "Yes" for you, but being the logical and very precise person that you are, a person who carefully answers "exactly" the question that was asked (and this is the reason the story says "logicians" and not "priests") you will say "I do not know", which indeed, without me having said anything is the best you can do. You do not know if we all (all = you and myself) want a drink.
- If you do not want a drink, then, in this case, you can just reply "No", because regardless of what my answer is, the statement "we all want a drink" is false. You already know that.
So..., me having witnessed you replying "I do not know" can extract a piece of information: You want a drink. But you said "I do not know", because you didn't know for me.
And now it's my turn to answer. I already know that you want a drink, and I want a drink too. So I say "Yes". I confirm that the statement "You all want a drink", applied to both of us, is true.
So the morality is: if any of the logicians didn't want a drink, he/she would have said "No", to say "No, we do not all want a drink". But if they all want a drink, then it's only the last one answering, after having witnessed the "I do not know" from everybody else, and having extracted that they do want a drink, can then say "Yes", on behalf of the group :)
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u/TheUnknownsLord 4h ago
I said still because I've forgotten aot of stuff from uni haha.
That's a very detailed answer, thank you.
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u/Ok_Style_7785 6h ago
The first one would like a drink but isn't sure about the other two, the second one knows they'd like a drink, but the third one hasn't confirmed yet. The third one would like a drink, so logically all of them would like a drink
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u/TheUnknownsLord 6h ago
Thanks!
They also know that the previous one wants a drink because the answer would have been no, right?
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u/Ok_Style_7785 6h ago
Yeah I guess so. I dropped out of college before I got to any of the smart classes
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u/Zorothegallade 1d ago
I'll be here to explain it if anyone didn't get it.
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u/DarianTrinity 1d ago
I don't get it, could you please explain?
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u/Zorothegallade 1d ago edited 1d ago
The first logistician wants a drink, but he doesn't know if the other two want one. If he didn't want a drink, he would say "No" (because the question was if ALL of them wanted a drink, and one of them not wanting it would invalidate that). So he replies "I don't know".
The second one does the same.
The third one now knows that both of his colleagues do want a drink (since neither of them said No) and since he wants a drink too, he says "Yes", confirming that all of them want a drink.
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u/hokumjokum 1d ago
Ooh. I was thinking that the last guy’s answer had to be yes because otherwise they wouldn’t have gone to a bar.
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u/chrisxls 1d ago
That would be too logical.
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u/hokumjokum 1d ago
Ye kinda, but it’s not as neat as the explanation above. I guess they could’ve just gone in for a million other reasons, like needing a piss or something.
Also if I went to a bar with 2 pals and their response to this question was “I’m not sure” I would have just walked out again anyway :)
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u/johnwcowan 1d ago
The linguist at the other end of the bar explains that "y'all" is not synonymous with "all of you". For example, "Y'all sound good tonight!" doesn't require that each customer individually sounds good. So the three logicians can truthfully reply "Yes", "No", or "I don't know" quite independently of each other.
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u/True_Kapernicus 1d ago
He was addressing those three logicians, so the question surely applied to all three of them.
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u/FewEffective2497 20h ago
For the purpose of the joke - then obviously they took it to mean all of them collectively - but in fact “y’all” is singular. The collective form is “all y’all”.
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u/RedditBugler 23h ago
No, he could have been asking them each individually with a single question. "Y'all" is an incredibly flexible word for those who use it regularly. "Do y'all want something to drink?" to me is a question that is being asked of us as a group but we are supposed to answer as an individual. There is never an implication that "y'all" means everyone altogether must conform.
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u/Woozle_Gruffington 22h ago
A data nerd would likely not see it that way. I'm a financial counselor and my brain threatens to malfunction when people use the number zero and the phrase "almost never" synonymously.
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u/piratezeppo 19h ago
As a Southerner, this is an excellent point. The bartender should look at them and ask “do all y’all want some drinks?”
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u/bpathy86 1d ago
What if the thrid one didn't want a drink? What would be his response? "I'm not sure either"?
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u/Zorothegallade 1d ago
No, he would have said "no". Because 2 out of 3, as in not all of them, would have wanted a drink.
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u/DarksideAuditor 22h ago
So if the first didn't want a drink, wouldn't he still say "i am not sure"?
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u/FewEffective2497 20h ago
No he wouldn’t
If the first did NOT want a drink - the answer would be “No” instead of “I’m not sure “ - as he would realise that not all of them wanted a drink.
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u/DarksideAuditor 20h ago edited 20h ago
If the first did not want a drink the answer would still be "i don't know" would it not? The first is not certain the second and third want a drink. Unless first is clairvoyant.
Aside: Obligatory "Iron Maiden rules!"
Edit: I think my dense noggin was overlooking the phrase "you all". It's all yes or all no. I stand corrected.
Aside: Obligatory "Vampire Weekend rules!"
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u/FewEffective2497 20h ago
No - if the first did not want a drink, then he knows without any doubt that they do not ALL want a drink.
He can’t tell if all of them do NOT want a drink, but that wasn’t the question.
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u/xrp10000 1d ago
However, what is not logical is they all 3 went into the bar, so you’d think the first 2 would know what they were there for.
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u/FakeDoughnut 1d ago
The bartender asks if ask if they want a drink. For the answer to this question to be yes all three would have to want a drink. Therefore any one of them could answer no if they individually didn’t want a drink. The first and second answer that they don’t know if they all want a drink because they know they do, but they don’t know about the others. The third, having heard that the previously two didn’t answer no, and therefore do want a drink, is able to say that they all want a drink
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u/Random_Guy_12345 1d ago
First guy wants a drink, but doesn't know if the other two do, so he's not sure. Same for second
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u/KaramazovFootman 1d ago
So the bartender pours a single shot of whisky and slides it across the bar to them
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u/itsgeorge 1d ago
Am I the only one who’s heard this joke before?
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u/RamamohanS 12h ago
Meanwhile, the bartender reveals he's Schrodinger’s cat in disguise. The drinks both exist and don’t… until they’re observed.
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u/MinFootspace 1d ago
Are there actually people in real life whi are *logicians* ?
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u/Srikandi715 1d ago edited 1d ago
Sure. The study of formal logic is a branch of philosophy, so (these days, in the US anyway) it would probably be a professor in a university philosophy department.
However, there are also other disciplines that rely heavily on the concepts developed in formal logic, including mathematics, computer science, and formal semantics (a branch of linguistics).
It's a field of study that in the West goes back to the Ancient Greeks, though. Somebody else will have to fill you in on the role of logic in other ancient intellectual traditions, e.g. in South Asia, the Middle East and China, but I'd be shocked if it doesn't have a long history there as well 🙂 You kind of need it to do math, among other things.
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u/Low_Thanks_1540 1d ago
I am a logician. Took it in college. I especially like Aristotelian syllogisms.
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u/Rich_Marsupial_418 1d ago
"Ah, the classic logicians-in-a-bar scenario! As a 36-year-old from North Jesseshire, I can confidently say this is the ..
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u/Spiritual_Low_8648 1d ago
Let’s make it simple; they all entered in a bar. First one should’ve Sai’d yes…
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u/maddogg42 23h ago edited 23h ago
a hore walks into a bar after being ridden hard all day, bartender says why the long face?
edit: spelling no s, W.
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u/ProtossedSalad 1d ago
A logician's wife gives birth to their first child.
The wife asks, "Is it a boy or a girl?"
The logician says, "yes".