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A Puzzle

This has been up for over a week and no one has solved?

I'll give a hint. This is a puzzle about 5th dimensional thinking. And for many that clue itself is a puzzle. Which is in and of itself another clue.

if you ask questions about the puzzle, I'll answer them, I just won't give the actual answer for a while
 
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Almost a year now, and still no one has solved this puzzle (on this forum, 3 have solved it elsewhere)

I'll answer a few FAQ about this to see if that helps.

1. The physics are in fact accurate, the balls are falling and bouncing exactly as they would in real life.

2. The balls are not being manipulated in flight in any way.

3. The colors of thee balls are not being changed at the bottom right before they drop into the cup.
 
OK. Do you think slowing it down, half this speed or more, would help? I can't keep up, lol.

And, by the way, very cool looking vid :)
 
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Thanks!

You should see the new stuff, lol.

I think part of the issue is that this video came out too dark, and it's a bit difficult to see what's going on.

I'll put this riddle in text format, and see if that helps anyone.

A number of colored balls start pouring out of containers at the top.

They fall and bounce off of a number of platforms, mixing randomly in mid air.

Once at the bottom, all of the same colored balls end up falling neatly into the same cups.

There is only one way that this can happen.
 
Thanks!

You should see the new stuff, lol.

I think part of the issue is that this video came out too dark, and it's a bit difficult to see what's going on.

I'll put this riddle in text format, and see if that helps anyone.

A number of colored balls start pouring out of containers at the top.

They fall and bounce off of a number of platforms, mixing randomly in mid air.

Once at the bottom, all of the same colored balls end up falling neatly into the same cups.

There is only one way that this can happen.
You could start at the end, look at all the balls that end up in each cup, and then alter their color to match.
then restart the puzzle with the exact same starting positions and all those balls will end up in the right cup
 
ok, time for the bonus round.

Now that you can clearly see the answer to the puzzle, what process that most of us here are involved in can directly benefit from the application of the technique used here?
 
we got a riddler over here.


Plotting Jim Carrey GIF
 
I've got commissioner Gordon suspended over a vat of acid in a nondescript warehouse, in case anyone gets the bonus question wrong. We're lowering him by one notch every time someone posts a youtube link in the "what music are you listening to right now" thread.
 
Seems like this is directly related to the question of reverse engineering screenplays.
and now you know why I originally posted this. I was looking for writers that were capable of understanding how an unlimited number of seemingly random events can be intertwined in any way you wish, and still resolve at the end in a way that creates the illusion that you were in complete control of all the chaos the entire time. Write the whole book (or read it, in the case of reverse engineering), and then go back and rewrite it, already knowing where everything is headed. Using this method can make story events flow very naturally, represented here by the use of physics. No contrivance is necessary to have this plot resolve as desired. I think all authors do this to some degree already, but you can break it down into algebra, and push the technique to extremes if you wanted to.

For whoever comes along to read this, and is curious, I'll explain what I'm calling 5d logic. We live in the 4th dimension right? So you pick up a plate, and that's 3 dimensional. We can see the beginning, and end of the plate's diameter at one time. If you try to think about things from a 5d perspective, imagine that same process with a timeline containing 3d objects. The timeline becomes an object, like we perceive the plate. If you wanted a painting on the plate to look symmetrical for example, you could see a mark on the right edge, make a similar mark on the left edge. This can easily be done with timelines.

Anyway, probably preaching to the choir.
 
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an unlimited number of seemingly random events can be intertwined in any way you wish, and still resolve at the end in a way that creates the illusion that you were in complete control of all the chaos the entire time.
I know a lot of excellent writers who write the ending of the story/screenplay before they write the beginning so they know what the destination is. I definitely try to do it this way but sometimes find that I need to tweak my destination because the damn characters refuse to do what I want :)
And by that I mean that as I write a character over 90-120 pages, they become real to me, with things that they will or won't do. So sometimes I need to accommodate that because I am in many ways a character-driven writer.

But yes, I definitely DO often change the path in order to reach the desired goal.
 
and now you know why I originally posted this. I was looking for writers that were capable of understanding how an unlimited number of seemingly random events can be intertwined in any way you wish, and still resolve at the end in a way that creates the illusion that you were in complete control of all the chaos the entire time. Write the whole book (or read it, in the case of reverse engineering), and then go back and rewrite it, already knowing where everything is headed. Using this method can make story events flow very naturally, represented here by the use of physics. No contrivance is necessary to have this plot resolve as desired. I think all authors do this to some degree already, but you can break it down into algebra, and push the technique to extremes if you wanted to.

For whoever comes along to read this, and is curious, I'll explain what I'm calling 5d logic. We live in the 4th dimension right? So you pick up a plate, and that's 3 dimensional. We can see the beginning, and end of the plate's diameter at one time. If you try to think about things from a 5d perspective, imagine that same process with a timeline containing 3d objects. The timeline becomes an object, like we perceive the plate. If you wanted a painting on the plate to look symmetrical for example, you could see a mark on the right edge, make a similar mark on the left edge. This can easily be done with timelines.

Anyway, probably preaching to the choir.
Argghh! I prefer my universe to have three dimensions, thank you very much. I want to be able to build an accurate little model of the solar system, turn a little crank, and watch the planets go round the sun, the cute little moon go round the earth. To prove Mr. Einstein, you need to measure stellar parallax during a solar eclipse (or something). For Mr. Newton, you need to roll out of bed. Just sayin' ... :)
 
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This, to me, is an interesting discussion. Sometimes, while re-writing, I find myself going back and planting, making things happen twice in two different contexts, and this seems to add significance. Sometimes, maybe, it does. But building puzzles, where everything fits together, is not necessarily, in itself, art, although it certainly can be found there. But it also exists in stuff that is mediocre. And I find its absence in stuff that transcends.

There is model where you may not actually know, or be able to articulate, what the point is, stuff where "this then that" may have, really, no place. Like James Joyce, Thomas Pynchon, maybe David Lynch.

Mr. Lynch talks about fishing for ideas from something he calls the unified field, which lies beneath consciousness and which has its own logic (or, maybe, is immune to logic--I don't know).

David Foster Wallace talks about a kind of epiphany he had, after watching David Lynch's Blue Velvet, about having, I think, some kind of seemingly super-human confidence, in ... I don't know. In something.

Personally, by the way, I have experimented, intellectually, with this kind of mysticism, this unified field kind of stuff, and have concluded that it is not for me. I don't buy any of it. I, now--arrogantly--dismiss, say, Carl Jung as a table-rapper (and, incidentally, as a horrible human being, lol. )

Anyway. Just, I guess, rambling a little :)
 
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And since were talking physics (god help me), do you think there is any way this experiment would actually work? Certainly, I think, not in the real world. I can't imagine any way to interact with the balls, after the first pass, that wouldn't somehow change something other than their color. And even virtually. If you numbered every ball, then ran the thing multiple times, do they always end up in the same place? I assume they always would, but ... for some reason, I'm not sure, lol.
 
This, to me, is an interesting discussion. Sometimes, while re-writing, I find myself going back and planting, making things happen twice in two different contexts, and this seems to add significance. Sometimes, maybe, it does. But building puzzles, where everything fits together, is not necessarily, in itself, art, although it certainly can be found there. But it also exists in stuff that is mediocre. And I find its absence in stuff that transcends.

There is model where you may not actually know, or be able to articulate, what the point is, stuff where "this then that" may have, really, no place. Like James Joyce, Thomas Pynchon, maybe David Lynch.

Mr. Lynch talks about fishing for ideas from something he calls the unified field, which lies beneath consciousness and which has its own logic (or, maybe, is immune to logic--I don't know).

David Foster Wallace talks about a kind of epiphany he had, after watching David Lynch's Blue Velvet, about having, I think, some kind of seemingly super-human confidence, in ... I don't know. In something.

Personally, by the way, I have experimented, intellectually, with this kind of mysticism, this unified field kind of stuff, and have concluded that it is not for me. I don't buy any of it. I, now--arrogantly--dismiss, say, Carl Jung as a table-rapper (and, incidentally, as a horrible human being, lol. )

Anyway. Just, I guess, rambling a little :)
Well, I just woke up, so it's a bit early for me to write an essay on the unified field theory, lol. I can however tell you that David Lynch is using this terminology very, very loosely. It's like if I went around telling people that Arby's big beef and cheddar sandwich was an "extrapolation of the dynamic bonds between particles in a system driven by gravitational forces" It's not entirely untrue, but If I did say that, which I'm not likely to, it would be a sign to the reader to look elsewhere for descriptions of both sandwiches and particle physics. lol. Saying you got ideas from the unified field is like saying that air pressure told you how to paint a painting. Anyway, it's weird. Of course weird is really on brand for Lynch.

I like David Lynch's work, especially Twin Peaks, but I'm not sure he's 100% sane.

 
And since were talking physics (god help me), do you think there is any way this experiment would actually work? Certainly, I think, not in the real world. I can't imagine any way to interact with the balls, after the first pass, that wouldn't somehow change something other than their color. And even virtually. If you numbered every ball, then ran the thing multiple times, do they always end up in the same place? I assume they always would, but ... for some reason, I'm not sure, lol.
Technically it could, if every ball started in the exact same spot. However, this is set up as a visual analogy of a writing process, which does allow you that level of control IRL. Basically, if you can see the entire flowchart from day one, you can trace the lines and foreshadow any conclusion perfectly. Ultimately, a fiction is a static system, and entirely under your control.
 
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