Really?
Is the number, the guru says, some secret code which allows them to skip days?
Itâs a âsecret codeâ in that itâs able to give extra information to the blue-eyed islanders under special key circumstances in the deductive process, even though at other points it just seems obvious to anyone.
And yes, the amount of islanders she refers to makes a difference that could skip days. Consider:
If she said she saw 100 blue eyed islanders, each blue would see 99 and deduce the 100th must be themselves. They all leave at the first opportunity. Each brown would already see 100 blues and think that no more information was added to what they could already see AND deduce.
If she said she saw 99 blues, and there were only 99 blues, they would leave by the same logic.
If she said she saw 99 blues, and there were 100 blues, each blue would be waiting for the 99 that they see to leave on the first day. They donât because theyâre all expecting others to leave and not themselves. They would each have deduced that there were either the 99 blues that they could see, or that there were 100 and each of them were the 100th after the 99 they each counted. Therefore since itâs not the former, known and tested after the first day, they all leave on the 2nd.
If she said 98 and there were 100, the same logic continues in the way we should be used to by now. She can say any number and make it solvable, just as long as the number is less than or equal to the actual total amount of islanders with the eye colour mentioned by the Guru, and as long as the number is 1 or more. The same logic goes, it just makes the process either faster or slower.
The critical things to note are that the Guruâs information conflicts with what is known just from looking at some point in the deductive process, and that the process MUST only consider what is definitely known for sure, and deductively exploring SOLELY within those confines in order to avoid risky assumptions like the alternative attempts mentioned so far, and that no information is taken out of context, such as the information known by 100 blues being used to deduce about what would happen if there were 1 blue knowing only what 1 blue would know. Once you get all these things, you should be home free to accepting the correct solution. Well done if you can, this is apparently very hard to do for some.
Really?
Then you should be able to give such an example (as requested pages ago).
Please tell us one number between 0 and 99 such that âeven if everyone picked that same numberâ, it would still not work to allow them to discover their actual eye color.
James, I gave you an example (pages ago): any number between 0 and 99. Take 98 because itâs easy to work with: if every islander magicallyhad 98 in their head, they would be able to conclude exactly nothing about their eye color from it, no matter how many days elapsed.
There is no deductive process between âI have number 98 in my headâ and âI have blue eyesâ. The only way any deduction happens is if the number means something, and they know it means something.
So just like Eugene, you are going to continue to feign ignorance, avoid questions, deny the obvious, and play every kind of semantic and rhetoric game you can come up with in order to sell your story. You couldnât care less what is or isnât true. You are just hell bound to sell that story at all cost. And all under the guise of philosophy and in this case even âlogicâ.
And just what is your story? Well, âthe truth is that 200 master logicians cannot know anything of truth until a guru, a woman no less, tells them what she thinksâ.
It reminds me of the Catholic priest telling me how Jesus actually had very little to do with early Christianity until the first millennium when they, the Vatican, decided to prop up a male figure so as to gain more acceptance of Maryâs dominion. Before that Mary was the only significant figure. That is what they are teaching the nuns too (as reported by some nuns).
Yeah, you logical men are hopeless without the guidance of a woman and a guru.
Well, that is your story, like TEW is Eugeneâs. But the truth is that the truth is greater than your stories. And Iâm not buying your stories. As you discovered on that relativity thread, I let the logic of the lack of alternatives dictate the story of truth, not guruâs, wishful thinking, or women.
I see that saying she saw 100 blues would give them some useful information. But the idea that they would start counting from 10 (if she said she saw 10) seems even more weird than the original. 
James, I am arguing in good faith. When I believe that I am wrong, I admit it. I donât believe that I am wrong here, and I have offered 10+ pages of argument in attempt to prove it.
Arenât you sometimes wrong, James?
And now itâs women. In case anyoneâs in doubt, the correct solution works just as well with a male Guru.
Are you contrasting the âweirdnessâ of starting counting from 10 with the âusefulnessâ of the Guru saying she saw 100 blues - as though the two must be incompatible?
Hopefully you are appreciating and enjoying the superficial âweirdnessâ as well as seeing the sense in it. If not, would you like me to extend the logic a bit further, that I initially began with only 100 and 99 as example numbers of blues that the Guru could say that she (or he!) sees in order to shorten the time period between her words and the exodus?
Carleas, did you forget to whom you are claiming that you admit when youâre wrong?
Am I supposed to compare your 3 post argument 5 years ago with your 800 post argument with me just 2 years ago, wherein, using these same tactics, you never once admitted that you were wrong about anything, but merely bailed out once nailed such that even you couldnât wriggle out of it. You arenât identical to FJ, but close⌠over focused on your own pitch.
âŚcompared to me admitting that I was mistaken (even better than saying that the other guy is right) only a few posts and pages ago (which of course FJ took to the predicted false extreme).
I donât believe your âgood faithâ story⌠either.
The weirdness is in the number of blues identified and how it seems to allow them to skip ahead. What is that information?
It seems possible for the guru to say that she sees no blues and they would start counting from zero.
If the not so perfect logicians are focused on and only know of that one canonized solution, what the guru would be providing is the escape from their mental blindness by letting them complete the syllogism. The guru could pick any number and that is where the syllogism would begin the count⌠except âzeroâ. 
Why not zero? Canât they figure out that she is lying?
Like I said, ânot so perfect logiciansâ.
Because if itâs zero, they donât learn anything when no one leaves. Take the example where there is 1 islander with blue eyes. Guru says âI see 0 islanders with blue eyesâ. He doesnât learn anything, and doesnât leave. Now take the case of 2 islanders with blue eyes. Each sees the other, knows that the guru is lying, but doesnât know that the blue eyed islander they can see knows that sheâs lying. It is possible that they have brown eyes, and thus that the blue eyed islander they see sees no blue eyes and believes the guru. Even though they know the guru is lying, it doesnât create the kind of common knowledge necessary to induce their own eye color.
The reason the guru can say any number greater than zero and it will work from that number is that, if there were only that number islanders with blue eyes, they would leave on the first day. If she said 10, 10 blue eyed islanders would leave the first day. 11 would learn when 10 didnât leave that they too have blue eyes, and would leave on the second day. 12 would learn when 11 didnât leave, etc.
Itâs not just a matter of all agreeing on the same number and counting, but that the guru tells them something about the number: if there were only this many of you, they would leave on the first day, i.e. that they would know their eye color on the first day. That allows for the nested hypothetical of what the others know that the others know that the others know ⌠to bottom out at the number the guru says. If it didnât bottom out, it would get to zero and no one would leave. But it can bottom out at any number. If the guru says âI see 10 with blue eyesâ, they know on day 1 what they wouldnât learn until day 10 in the case where the guru says âI see 1 with blue eyesâ: that there are at least 10 islanders with blue eyes.
The argument in which I defended the accepted understanding of special relativity against your attempt to disprove it? Of course the only explanation for why I refused to admit that I (and Einstein) were wrong about special relativity was that my fragile ego. What other explanation could there beâŚ
That is exactly what it is.
The issue was that you were misusing the math and it was proven that you were (several times). It had nothing to do with Einstein. So yeah, that âfragile egoâ thing is highly suspect⌠and even now still seems to be.
And btw, believe or not, this puzzle is directly related to all of the false flag terrorism (take over) going on throughout America.
Itâs all about what any one person can do by expecting behavior from others⌠ânothingâ.
And if he guesses wrong, he gets taken/voted off the âislandâ.
I contend that you do not understand the canonical solution.
And I contend that you understand nothing else.
OK, let me return to the course, and try to explain why the number by itself is not enough.
Iâll include the guru, but instead of her saying âI see X blue eyesâ, sheâll say âXâ. That way, thereâs no uncertainty about what number everyone is using, nor debate about whether a group of perfect logicians can know which of 100 numbers itâs the most logical to start with.
For whatever number X is, suppose there are X+1 people with a certain eye color. Now, if they knew, âthere are at least X people with blue eyes,â they would leave on day 2 because they would see that the X people with blues eyes that they see havenât left, and would reason that theirs must be the other set of blue eyes.
But in this case, they donât. They know that the guru said âXâ and that everyone else heard her say âXâ, but they donât have any knowledge attached to X. There is no chain of reasoning that gets them anywhere on day 2. They might notice that X happens to be the number of blue eyes that they see, but is that because there are exactly X blue eyes? Thereâs no inconsistency in assuming that X is just the number that came up on the dice she rolled; coincidence is insufficient to support a logical inference. They might even assume that she meant that there were at least X blue eyes, but they wouldnât arrive at knowledge simpliciter, but knowledge assuming A. The conclusion of any syllogism would be burdened with that assumption.
Since X+1 wouldnât work, X+2 wouldnât either. If X is given as the number of blue eyes, the blue eyed islanders would expect the X+1 islanders they can see with blue eyes to leave on day 2. Since they donât know anything about X, only that it is the number the guru said for no stated reason, they canât start the logical process that gets them to their eye color. So no one else can found any other logical process on the fact that they failed to deduce their eye color: thereâs nothing to be deduced from what they can see and the number X, so thereâs nothing to be deduced from what they can see, the number X, and the failure of others to deduce anything from what they can see and the number X.
The same is true for any Y, X+Y: nothing can be deduced from X that will lead X+Y people to their eye color.
Make a syllogism if you disagree. Label each given with a letter, add some number as a given, and show a deductive logical process that leads to a conclusion like âmy eyes are [some color]â.
This all seems to be a pointless exercise, primarily because I canât make sense out of what you have written and in addition to the fact that you seem to fear anything being right other than the canonical solution.
And why donât you just state a specific number that wouldnât work for them and show how it would fail??
Already a losing proposition, butâŚ
The the guru is going to say an actual number, right? Not literally âXâ?
Okay. So for example if there had been 100 and the guru said âI see 99â. After the 1st day the 100th would realize that he must be the 100th.
Thatâs where you lost me. âThey donâtâ - what??
And in what case??
What âknowledge attached to Xâ??
???
How can X be an actual number and them not be able to deduce from it in the same way as always?
Again, not seeming to make sense.
If X happens to be the total number of blues on the island, all of the blues instantly know it.
Each of the blues would see 1 less than the guru said and deduce themselves to be the last.
They leave the 1st day. The rest stay.
The rest seems to be contingent on the prior reasoning, so isnât making any sense either.