Doublethink Horror

[Cognisant]

At a dinner party talking to a man that you know murdered his wife, he knows you know but he doesn't know you know he knows you know, he offers you offered one of two cups of tea, almost certainly one of which has been poisoned, do you take the cup he offers you or the other from the tray?

 

[Ex-User (5841)]

The one he gives me. Even if it is poisoned it can't harm me.

 

[Trebuchet]

Insufficient information. Does he have a motive to murder me? Did he use poison to kill his wife? Why would I be accepting tea from him in the first place? Why would I even be at a dinner party where I am pretty sure some of the drinks are poisoned?

If someone has been released from prison after a crime of passion, I don't think he'd be likely to poison me, even if I knew about it.

If he is trying to hide from arrest under an assumed name, then if I am alone in a room with him and he is serving tea, I expect I have other problems. At that point I try very hard to look like his ally and search for exits.

As for the original question, unless we are playing "Man in Black vs. Vizzini" then he would have poisoned the cup he offered, not his own.

 

[Seed-Wad]

How would you know he doesn't know you know he knows you know?

"he doesn't know you know he knows you know"
If noone knows: take the offered cup
If you know: take the other
If he knows you know: you will take the other cup, poison the other cup
If you know the above: then you could know he would poison the other cup, so you take the offered one.

But, what's going on in his head? He knows you know he's a murderer, whether or not you know in turn that he knows that you know, so there is a chance you take the other cup (if you wouldn't know anything you would just take the offered cup). He can't know which cup you'll take because your reasoning or counting could be flawed for all he knows. Thus, it would not be logical for him to poison any cup.
Alternatively, he could just poison the offered cup, and if you choose the other, he could stumble and throw the tea on ground per 'mistake'.

 

[Ex-User (5841)]

Classic overthinking Ti-doms. Just pick a cup and chug, will ya!?!?

 

[Seed-Wad]

Yes! Life sucks and then you die!

 

[nanook]

He is afraid that i might take immediate violent action against him, if i find out that i am in danger, because he knows i know. I am afraid that he will be so afraid of me, that he will take immediate violent action, when his plan fails and he knows that i know how immediate the danger is. We both don't know if we have weapons or who is stronger in a fight.

That's as far as my thinking takes me.

I should take his fear away.

I would take the cup of tea, not drink from it, talk about wanting to murder my wife or demonstrate somehow that i don't give a fuck about who murders who. That's just a thought, it might not be possible, but it would be how i typically deal with dangerous people. I don't let them know my true values, let them believe their values are also mine.

Alternatively I would just take the cup and not drink it and wait whether he attacks me with his left shoe or something.

I can't think something like this through completely, logically, not enough of a thinker. My response is purely intuitive or instinktive.

 

[Jennywocky]

Well, I've spent the last few years immunizing myself against poisoned tea, just in case this situation ever arose.

But just to be safe, I'd blast him with my pepper spray and then signal the police I had waiting out on the porch.

 

[TheScornedReflex]

Would you fuckers just take the cup I offered already?! The tea is getting bloody cold.

Oh and make sure to sip it. Just one sip...

 

[Latte]

I will assume this riddle meant to be a binary choice of drink 1 or the other cup and one cup is death, other is not, and will not dodge that question.

I take the cup he offers.

His problem is as follows: If I do know he knows I know, then I am a potential threat to him purely from seeing him as having a huge incentive to silence me.

If I drink the cup he offers, it indicates I do not see him as a potential threat to myself, which again indicates I don't think that he knows that I know. He has less reason to kill me in such a scenario and will thus make the unpoisoned cup be the one I would pick up if I didn't know he knew I knew.

If I would take the cup he doesn't offer, it would indicate I am afraid of him, which indicates I think he knows that I know. If I am that fearful of him, it means I might pre-emptively strike him at some point, which makes it logical to poison the cup I would take if I did indeed know he knew about me knowing.

He would through this action think he was eliminating the potential survival of the highest threat scenario towards himself.

A game akin to flooding 1 of 2 rooms with lava, where in both rooms there is a 50% chance of there being a beast (with minimum 1 and maximum 1 beast total across the two rooms), but one assumes the beast that could exist in one of the rooms would be more dangerous than the beast that could exist in the other.

Of course, he could have thought 1 doublethink order higher in the typical rock paper scissor fashion and thus reversed which cup was poisoned, but if this riddle is supposed to have a definite A/B cup choice answer at all I think it must be this.

 

[Trebuchet]

This puts me in mind of a scene from I, Claudius.

Livia, Claudius's grandmother and wife of Caesar Augustus, is well known in her family to be an expert poisoner, and willing to kill absolutely anyone who might make it harder for her older son Tiberius to become Emperor (which he did). In one scene, she hands Claudius a large mug of wine, which he downs in one go, and holds the cup out for more. She comments that it is a touching display of trust.

Livia is the best poisoner character ever, played by Sîan Phillips. She spends most of her scenes ruthlessly poisoning various people, and the rest scheming to become a goddess.

 

[Hadoblado]

Wait... let's clear some stuff up.

We are at a dinner party but there are only two cups of tea? Is this a two person party? (actually very relevant).

You say he doesn't know we know he knows we know. Is that an assumption, or do we know that he doesn't know that we know he knows we know he did it? In one case we know that he considers us a naive threat, the other we only know that he thinks us a threat.

Finally, from what information is the poison in the cups inferred? You say almost certainly, but this presumes that he is already trying to kill us. If we know he is trying to kill us then taking the closer one as an act of trust is a display wasted. Are we in the dark as to his motive or not?

Finally v.2.0 Interesting tidbit: The reason that 'we know he knows we know' sentences are so difficult to decipher is because it is contralogical. The way people normally think about this stuff is starting at the happenstance (the murder), and working our way through subsequent knowledge 'layers' from there. The way that it is represented lingually however is you start at what you know and work towards the event. Therefore your sentence stem doesn't follow your comprehension and you get lost half way. Or that's what I figure o_0

 

[nexion]

I don't see why it is necessary to take either cup.

However, I would take the cup he did not offer me, for if he does not know that I know that he knows that I know he murdered his wife, then why would he offer the cup which is not poisoned? He expects that I take the cup which has been offered to me, leaving himself the other, and he most certainly would not poison his own cup.

One could analyze this further but it would, by me reckoning, be frivolous. To suspect he would put poison in his cup is bias stemming from paranoia; knowledge which you have but he does not.

Another reason I would take the cup he offered (assuming it was imperative that I take either) is that I really have no idea how he thinks, what his motivations and intentions are, etc., and thus taking the cup offered to me would merely be the simpler choice.

Wait a minute. Do I know that he doesn't know that I know that he knows?

 

[Grayman]

At a dinner party talking to a man that you know murdered his wife, he knows you know but he doesn't know you know he knows you know, he offers you offered one of two cups of tea, almost certainly one of which has been poisoned, do you take the cup he offers you or the other from the tray?

You take it and then swap it later. Drink from neighther cup but make sure he drinks from both.

 

[Hawkeye]

Who drinks tea at a dinner party?

I'd kill him for the insult.

 

[Grayman]

I forgot to add that if he does not drink the cup before you swap them, you make sure he sees you swap them the first time but then swap it again.