That's really cool. Your original post actually had me thinking lunch with my mom the other day, where I ate fish - a greasy floppy thing- with my fingers because it was breaded.
But yeah I'd rather just slurp down a delicious noodle-soup~ A single chopstick helps but is not necessary.
Each philosopher must alternately think and eat. However, a philosopher can only eat spaghetti when they have both left and right forks.
Okay, stuff like this is why people both love and hate philosophy so much.
Jokes aside it's a cool problem, albeit with a strange fun metaphor.
Here's a classic that always bothers me: The problem of two commanders trying to coordinate a simultaneous attack on an enemy force. They must attack at the same time to win, and if they attack separately they lose. They can send messengers to each other, but those messengers might be intercepted. They can send as many messengers as they want and yet they cannot both be certain that the other will join the assault.
A: "Tell commander B to attack at 11."
Messenger goes, delivers the message, that same messenger returns.
"Commander B will attack at 11!"
Commander B does not know whether the messenger returns safely. So B doesn't know whether A will actually attack or not.
It's a metaphor, or illustration, for the TCP/IP communication we rely on. All communication really. TCP/IP protocol involves a lot of acknowledgement compared to UDP which is much more "shouting in a direction". But no amount of acknowledgement or back-and-forth ever grants perfect certainty.
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Topic: Philosophical Panic thread (Read 3867 times)