Urbanagora » games http://www.urbanagora.com An exchange of ideas from thinkers spanning the spectrum Sat, 17 Apr 2010 15:03:15 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.2 en hourly 1 A Game of Twenty Questions with the Constitution http://www.urbanagora.com/2009/09/a-game-of-twenty-questions-with-the-constitution.html http://www.urbanagora.com/2009/09/a-game-of-twenty-questions-with-the-constitution.html#comments Fri, 04 Sep 2009 02:07:17 +0000 Joshua http://www.urbanagora.com/?p=2526 This post was also inspired by Professor Larry Klugman.   He picked up a digital “20 Questions” game at Walmart for a few dollars to play around with it.  He figured it would contain many commonly picked items, but thought its range would be somewhat limited.  Klugman reports that it successfully guessed what he was thinking of well within twenty questions, until he tried “The Constitution.”

This time he beat the machine by lasting more than 20 questions.  On the 24th attempt, the machine finally ventured a guess.  It didn’t get “Constitution” but the answer was still intriguing.

The item the machine guessed was “a receipt.”  Professor Klugman urged me to share this with the blog, noting he thought the answer was surprisingly intellectual.  In many ways the Constitution is a receipt for our democracy.

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