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In Chinese, there is a term called 矛盾. Individually, the word 矛 means spear and the word 盾 means shield. The story goes - once upon a time there was a merchant selling spears and shield. "This spear can pierce through any shield!" he says, "This shield can block any spear!" he says. An astute member of the audience asks "What happens if you hit your shield with your spear?". 矛盾 is the term for "contradiction".

So let me ask now, what happens if you get the robot hand to play with another robot hand?



Interesting. I speak Japanese and know the word 矛盾, but I had never paid attention to the meaning of its constituent kanjis (I don't think I've ever studied those characters separately).


they will draw with rock every time, because both will wait each other to change their hands. they could draw with paper too, that will depend on how the robot was programmed.


Nopes, I think they'll go into a loop...

First the robots both spot the other one appearing to go with rock and make a last millisecond change to paper. Then they both notice the other one making the change to paper, so they both go scissors... then they both go with rock again.

Loop!


I think they are allowed to make their choices just once, so they will both see rock and make their change to paper. After that the loop will stop.


While that would be hilarious to watch, I'm assuming that there is some sort of basic 'while loop' protection that they programmed in!


Eh, I don't know... Have you ever seen some of the code that comes out of academia? Interesting stuff, not usually very robust.




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