Test your skills of deduction with the October 2022 edition of Riddle Me This: Secret of Monk Island
There is a small island full of perfectly intelligent monks where everyone has either brown or blue eyes. The monks that have blue eyes are believed to be cursed and are required to commit suicide at midnight. However, the monks have all taken a vow and no one is allowed to tell anyone what color eyes they have. The island has no reflective surfaces and there is absolutely no way for any of the monks to know the color of their own eyes; they are only able to see the eyes of everyone else on the island. Because of this, life on the island goes on uninterrupted and no one ever commits suicide.
One day a man who was lost at sea arrives on the shore of the island in a boat. All of the monks run to the shore to see who the man is, and the man says to them, “At least one of you has blue eyes!” After hearing this new information the monks all panic and look around at each other.
What happens that night at midnight?
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I enjoy the quizzes and ethical cases and even these riddles, but this answer I disagree with. The curse is bogus because even those with ” blue eyes are believed to be cursed and are required to commit suicide at midnight,” yet none with blue eyes actually have committed suicide prior to the arrival of the newcomer. Further, the monks already knew they color of their fellow monks, and knew which ones had blue eyes, yet they knew those monks never committed suicide. So the curse was bogus. Since they were intelligent monks, they understood this and the revelation of the newcomer should not have made a difference.
I disagree. They are required to commit suicide only if they believe they have blue eyes, but if no one has told them they have blue eyes, they have no reason to believe they do. Thus they do not have to commit suicide.
On the same note, if a brown eyed monk for some reason believed he had blue eyes, he would need to commit suicide.
This would require the Monks to be able to do the analytic reasoning behind the analysis, and given that I didn’t get it right away. I don’t think they would realize how that analytical reasoning works.
Phil is absolutely right.