The “perfectly logical being” (PLB) is both the title of my blog and one of my favorite concepts. Since they are found primarily in logic puzzles, they are never sitting around watching TV or enjoying a cookout. Instead, they spend their time dividing up cakes that are too small at parties that are too large, narrowly avoiding executions by picking the right colored hat, and trying to weigh ten friends at once without a scale.
What are the attributes of a PLB? The book How Would You Move Mount Fuji lists them as follows:
- One-dimensional motivations
- Quick-thinking, never mistaken
- Confident that other PLBs follow the same thought process
Personally, I think perfectly logical beings also tend to fall into two distinct groups: the cutthroats and the altruists.
The cutthroats are found in puzzles where a cake will be divided up and you want the biggest piece, or some of you will die and you want to be a survivor, or you’re vying for first place in a contest. In these puzzles, the assumption is that every participant has the same goal, the same lack of scruples, and (most importantly) the ability to make deductions about what each other participant will do.
The altruists are the opposite. They pursue any option that reduces the total suffering of the group, even if it ends with them falling off a bridge or being executed by an insane king. The altruists are a little like a colony of Vulcans.
Neither type of PLB ever considers cheating or bending the rules. They never change their answers to help a friend, or lie to hurt an enemy. In fact, they behave nothing like human beings whatsoever. In my mind, that’s one of the things that makes logic puzzles so interesting.