Jack is looking at Anne, but Anne is looking at George. Jack is married, but George is not. Is a married person looking at an unmarried person?

A) Yes.

B) No.

C) Cannot be determined.

 

no points since it's not really a riddle, but I got it wrong... apparently the more intelligent you are the more likely you are to get it wrong, so I don't feel so bad about it

C

A

Yes

Cannot be determined?!        George and Anne are the only people being looked at. George isn't married, but we don't know if Anne is or isn't.

Please explain your logic to answering "yes"

oh wait...

hahahahahahahaha. I got fooled. I see it now.

The answer is "yes". No need to explain. Let others work it out.

I got it right first time, but does that mean someone who gets it wrong is more intelligent than me?

No need to explain. Let others work it out.

That was my thinking.

turkey, of course not... the study just suggested that smart people tend to take a lot of mental short-cuts. though, by saying that in the riddle I probably canceled it out.

C, we don't know if Anne is married or not.

lol @ ^

C, we don't know if Anne is married or not.

Unfortunately you've fallen into the trap.

Don't worry though, it was a cunningly disguised trap. You can hardly be blamed for falling into it.

D'oh

But apparently I'm really smart, no?

A - Yes. Because if Anne is unmarried, then Jack is looking at an unmarried person, and he is married. If Anne is married, then she (a married person) is looking at George (an unmarried person).

Should I delete this?

The answer is C.  We assume that because Jack is married, he is a person, but that may not be true for the other two.  What if Anne is a cat?

... trlovens is a most excellent thinker, and has seen through the cunning ruse of packaging together "married/unmarried person" as if married/unmarried is the only thing we need consider. Anne may satisfy the terms of the question whether unmarried or married, but that is only worth even considering if Anne is a person.

Although, it is said that Anne is looking at George. This does at least limit Anne's identity to that set of things that are capable of looking. Anne could not, for example, be a bowl of petunias, or a module of the international space station. The question then is whether the ability to look is sufficient to establish personhood. Many people would consider their cats to be, to some degree, people. Or at least person-like enough to create a grey area.

But think further, and many things not generally considered to be people may also "look", things such as insects, lower animals, and even cameras might be able to look. Or does "look" imply a greater degree of understanding than mere perception? To look at another person implies intent, awareness, Anne hasn't just happened to sense George, Anne has made the conscious decision to look at George. Maybe that intent, awareness and conscious decision-making is enough to justify calling Anne a person, purely on the basis that she is looking at George.

Or maybe this is bullshit... I know I've found it creepy when a cow looked at me with an evil-face, and I don't consider a cow to be a person. But maybe I should do - after all, it's capable of looking with intent (intent to make me uncomfortable). But that in itself could be misleading - maybe the cow wasn't really looking at me, it just happened to have it's head pointed that way and I projected the anthropomorphic idea of "looking" onto that.

There is also the question of whether one has to be a person in order to be married. And what manner of thing George is - George is not married, and is not looking, and is thus free to be anything at all. Jack could be looking at a person Anne (marital status unknown) who is in turn looking at a desk lamp that she has named George.

um.... lol?

Yeah... I got bored of what I was doing, needed a distraction 

Well.. more power to you.

hahahahah

I'm with trlovens.... coz that way i was right

The cow watching me doesn't bother me much.  I get the creeps when the other barnyard animals watch me watching the cow.

Can you feel their eyes following you?

Well, here's the answer - the middle person (anne) can be married or not. If they're not then a married person (Jack) is looking at an unmarried person (Anne). If the middle person is married then they are looking at the third person (George) who is unmarried. So the answer A is right whatever happens.

Have you considered the possibility that George is a desk lamp?

There must be some legal definition somewhere that deals with names referring to desklamps... otherwise you could wreak havoc in court cases I'm guessing

Well My Car is the Dekmobile.... I coulda called it George I guess...

Anne could be looking at GEORGE...

hahahahah