How's your logic? (Interesting test)

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What was your score?

0-10%	1%	[ 1 ]
11-20%	1%	[ 1 ]
21-30%	0%	[ 0 ]
31-40%	3%	[ 2 ]
41-50%	5%	[ 4 ]
51-60%	12%	[ 9 ]
61-70%	9%	[ 7 ]
71-80%	30%	[ 23 ]
81-90%	12%	[ 9 ]
91-100%	26%	[ 20 ]

Total votes : 76

Michael_Stuart
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31 May 2010, 4:18 pm

I got 87%, which was somewhat in the range I was expecting. I don't usually study things like this, so it doesn't necessarily make me a very logical person.

I had to look up "up before the beak", though. Silly British people with their biscuits and lorries..... Apparently a/the "beak" is a slang term for a judge. I.e., they were in court.

Last edited by Michael_Stuart on 31 May 2010, 4:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

CockneyRebel
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31 May 2010, 4:19 pm

I didn't expect to get a very high score, so my score doesn't really bother me.

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Exclavius
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31 May 2010, 4:47 pm

katzefrau wrote:

anyway, once you read the test questions it becomes clear that the initial propositions can be fictitious- we all know birds aren't reptiles, for example. triangles don't have four sides.

Actually, an odd fact is... birds ARE reptiles... but many of the other premises in that one were false.
They used to have their own class "aves" but have been put into reptiles.

katzefrau
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31 May 2010, 5:02 pm

Exclavius wrote:

katzefrau wrote:

anyway, once you read the test questions it becomes clear that the initial propositions can be fictitious- we all know birds aren't reptiles, for example. triangles don't have four sides.

Actually, an odd fact is... birds ARE reptiles... but many of the other premises in that one were false.
They used to have their own class "aves" but have been put into reptiles.

i thought reptiles had to be cold blooded?

huh.
well, triangles don't have four sides, in any case. so i still think one could easily surmise that the premises need not be true.

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Mysty
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31 May 2010, 5:30 pm

HenryKrinkle wrote:

Mysty wrote:

HenryKrinkle wrote:

The test isn't very good. It implies that you should ignore the semantics of the words, or at least is ambiguous as to whether semantics matter or whether it's purely a formal/syntactic logic that should be used.

No, because at least one of the questions, it's required to pay attention to the sematics of the words (see my post just above).

Maybe I misunderstood you but, even if what you say is true, it doesn't contradict what I said. In fact it could be used to validate what I said.

How are "ignore the sematics" and "pay attention to the semantics" not opposites?

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Exclavius
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31 May 2010, 6:54 pm

Mysty wrote:

HenryKrinkle wrote:

Mysty wrote:

HenryKrinkle wrote:

No, because at least one of the questions, it's required to pay attention to the sematics of the words (see my post just above).

Maybe I misunderstood you but, even if what you say is true, it doesn't contradict what I said. In fact it could be used to validate what I said.

How are "ignore the sematics" and "pay attention to the semantics" not opposites?

Dang you two, stop taking each other so literal, and by doing so misunderstanding what the other is saying.

You'd think the two of you suffered from Aspergers or something like that!

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31 May 2010, 7:07 pm

Exclavius wrote:

Actually, an odd fact is... birds ARE reptiles... but many of the other premises in that one were false.
They used to have their own class "aves" but have been put into reptiles.

I'm not doubting you, since things have been shifted around so much in my lifetime. For example, when I was in school, there were only three kingdoms and no domains (kingdom was the highest the categorizations went. Nowadays there are three domains, two empires (according to some systems), and either five or six kingdoms, depending on who you ask. So I'm not doubting when you say that Aves has been merged with Reptilia (were Aves just put into Reptilia wholesale or are they a subclass of Reptilia?)

My question is when did this happen? My references (i.e. my biology textbook from three years ago) don't show the change so it must be very recent? I can't find reference to it online, either.

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clumsybee
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31 May 2010, 7:53 pm

60%. The wording of things in the test was sort of confusing for me.

Tollorin
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31 May 2010, 7:57 pm

Exclavius wrote:

katzefrau wrote:

anyway, once you read the test questions it becomes clear that the initial propositions can be fictitious- we all know birds aren't reptiles, for example. triangles don't have four sides.

Actually, an odd fact is... birds ARE reptiles... but many of the other premises in that one were false.
They used to have their own class "aves" but have been put into reptiles.

The birds are descendant of dinosaurs who descended of reptiles, true; But so are mammals. If birds are reptiles, then we are too.

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Exclavius
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31 May 2010, 8:07 pm

there is a LOT of conflict on the subject... But i do believe that the "new" standard consensus is that they are reptiles. Dawkins refers to them as such, and there are few biologists that I would trust more.

Link

zer0netgain
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31 May 2010, 8:26 pm

10 - 67%

I'm surprised I did that well. I've long since learned to reject strict logic, and to get some of those things right, you really have to take everything super literal.

Dots
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31 May 2010, 8:31 pm

I got 87%, which was higher than I expected.

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katzefrau
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31 May 2010, 9:08 pm

i think we are more logical than the logic test.

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Sparrowrose
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31 May 2010, 9:21 pm

Exclavius wrote:

Your link says:

Quote:

Yes, birds are reptiles. It is true the birds were previously placed in their own class, class Aves, however recent genetic evidence tells us that they are in fact reptiles. Modern birds most likely evolved from small two-legged dinosaurs called theropods.

Unlike other reptiles that are ectotherms (a term more accurate than cold-blooded), birds are endotherms, meaning they use their own metabolism to maintain a constant body temperature.

This may confuse many people, but cladistics has become the most widely used method in systematics as it clarifies evolutionary relationships that are not apparent in other taxonomic classifications.

I found another wikianswer that phrased it a little differently:

Quote:

Traditionally, the amniotes are classified in 3 distinct classes: birds are in Aves. turtles, crocodilians, lizards, snakes, and extinct reptiles like dinosaurs, ptersosaurs, therapsids, synapsids, etc. are in Reptilia, and the mammals in Mammalia. This arrangement works well and is accepted by most scientists world wide for over 150 years.

And then some paleontologists who subscribed to cladistic dogma came along in the 1980's and want to upset the apple cart. They want to divide the amniotes into 2 classes: Reptilia and Mammalia. They put all birds within Reptila, and transfer all synapsid and therapsid reptiles from Reptilia to Mammalia. According to these cladists, then, many reptiles which were not directly ancestral to mammals (nor did they ever evolve any mammalian features such as hair) are now part of their "Mammalia." That sort of classification is "impractical, destructive and scientifically untenable" according to Ernst Mayr, the Harvard evolutionary biologist.

Since the cladists ignore the wisdom of the great minds of the past, they therefore continue to use their classification, while most of the sane world continue the traditional Reptilia, Aves and Mammalia arrangement. Therefore there are today 2 different ways to classify birds: the sane traditional way (birds not included in Reptilia), and the cladistic paleontologist's impractical way (birds included in Reptilia).

Both mention "cladist" which is a word unfamiliar to me, so I had to look it up. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cladist

This isn't what's being taught in basic classes yet. Linnaean taxonomy is still the norm in high school and Bio 101 classes. So I'm going to stick with Linnaean for now because it's still considered to be the fundamental teaching and phylogenetic nomenclature is still very cutting-edge and theoretical and apparently has no more place in a classroom at present than intelligent design.

This, of course, may change. I was among the first group of schoolchildren to be taught about continental drift. Scientists were talking about it amongst themselves for at least a hundred years prior, but it was only in my childhood that it was considered fundamental enough to teach to us third-graders (at the same time, it was finally introduced into GEOL 101 classes in universities.) When phylogenetic nomenclature replaces Linnaean taxonomy in high schools and introductory biology classes in universities, then I'll bother learning the new system. Until then, it's something interesting but far too obscure to catch my interest.

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xdr5tgb
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01 Jun 2010, 2:13 am

I didn't look up "before the beak". It looked like a typo to me. My first guess was

***Up before the birds.***

Does up before the beak predate up before the birds?

Beak/birds

Sparrowrose
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01 Jun 2010, 3:51 am

xdr5tgb wrote:

I didn't look up "before the beak". It looked like a typo to me. My first guess was

***Up before the birds.***

Does up before the beak predate up before the birds?

Beak/birds

I had assumed it was a typo and was meant to say "up before the break of dawn."

It never even occured to me that "up before the beak" could have been exactly what was meant and some kind of slang. I don't expect slang on a test like that.

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