What is the answer to this question?

Forty-two.

It's the ultimate answer to Life, the Universe, and EVERYTHING!

Including this question. ;)


missy-ga

---

Request for Answer Clarification by cm476-ga on 08 May 2002 20:19 PDT

Your answer is correct in the right limited-case context, but it
commits the logical fallacy of presupposing the existence of a
universe.  It's AN answer, but it's not THE answer, nor is it
internally logically consistent with the question.  I know the
monetary amount is low, but the answer is really quite simple: you
might not be able to find it with a Google search, but it's easy to
extrapolate it.  Trendy geek-culture references aside, what is the
answer to this question?

---

Clarification of Answer by missy-ga on 08 May 2002 21:20 PDT

Actually, yes, that is the answer.

Why?

When I click the "Answer Question" button, what I write appears in a
box that says "Answer".

So the Answer to this Question is whatever I write in the Answer box.

---

Request for Answer Clarification by cm476-ga on 08 May 2002 22:31 PDT

When I first read your clarification, I thought, "Hmm, you have me
there."  I realized I'd worded the question incorrectly; I should have
asked "What is the CORRECT answer to this question?" instead of "What
is the answer to this question?", to specify that I was looking for
the CORRECT answer, and not just AN answer.

But then I realized that you hadn't backed me into a corner after all:
your statements are internally inconsistent.  By the logic of your
clarification, whatever answer you give to the question is the answer
to the question.  That's true!  However, the answer that you gave to
the question wasn't what you claimed the answer was!  The answer that
you gave to the question was "Fourty-two.   It's the ultimate answer
to Life, the Universe, and EVERYTHING! Including this question. ;)
missy-ga", HOWEVER, that very same answer claimed that the answer was
"Fourty-two."  Now, those are obviously two different answers: one of
them is two words long, and the other is about sixteen words
(depending on what you count as a word).  Thus, the answer was
self-contradictory and wrong.  A wrong answer isn't an answer.

In your clarification, you came close to hitting the truth: a
self-referential question can only be answered by a self-referential
answer.  As it is now, this answer would probably get 3 stars (maybe
one more or one less depending on how I'm feeling when I rate it), but
you can try again if you want to go for 5.  For these purposes, I will
consider your next clarification to take the place of your original
answer, but I don't think it's unreasonable for me to clarify that I
require a CORRECT answer.

Please consider the question to be restated as follows, to avoid
confusion:

"What is the CORRECT answer to this question?"

---

Request for Answer Clarification by cm476-ga on 08 May 2002 22:38 PDT

Let me go ahead and clarify the clarification of my clarification, in
simpler terms.

If I ask, "What is the answer to this question?", and you answer, "The
answer is 'foo'.", your answer is wrong.  If that's how you answer,
then the answer to the question is NOT "foo", it's "The answer is
'foo'."

The answer is "The answer is 'foo'.", but you instead claimed that the
answer was "foo", which is wrong.

HTH.

I agree with missy, 42 is absolutely correctly !

5 starts to him!

You wanted logic, and there it is. I don't know how you would argue
with a simple clarification as that. Feel free to try of course, after
all, everyday someone is doing something that someone else said was
impossible.

webadpet-ga

The answer to this question is What?

The answer to this question.

How about "a solution" . . . the correct answer is generally a
solution.  Any synonym for "correct answer" could work here.

The (correct)answer to your question is:

The answer that isn't the wrong answer.

hows that? :-)

//kattouf

The answer to this question is the answer to this question.

the correct answer to your question is what is correctly understood,
correctly answered and correctly implemented

It's actually a simple question.  The answer is "WHAT".  It's as if
you said "red is the answer to this question".  The answer would be
red.

Someone actually PAID to get that answered?????

Get a life.

What you want it to be.

This is the answer.

If the answer you're looking for is "What" or "the CORRECT answer to
this question" then I think Missy's first clarification outsmarted
you, and in fact, her answer, whatever it might have been, was the
correct answer.

I have 2 points to make:

1) It is rightly said that to answer a question is not necessarily to
answer it correctly, so just because an answer is given and the
following page shows and labels said answer as the "Answer" does not
say anything about the correctness of the answer given.

Pay attention now, because this is where it gets good...

2) "What is the answer to this question?"

If the correct answer is "what," then we no longer have a question but
rather a statement and no question mark is required or, for that case,
allowed. That is, "What IS the answer to this question." Period.

There are a lot of questions that could be asked in order to produce
such a statement (e.g. "Can you name a word that traditionally begins
a question?" or "Can you name a word that begins with the letter
'w'?"), but "What is the answer to this question?" is not one of them.

This sentence cannot not stand up to a simple grammatical test and
thus I say it is no question at all or, at best, it is a question that
cannot be answered without a preceding question.

The word "answer" assumes a CORRECT reply, not just any reply. If
everything we typed in the answer box was the "answer" than this job
would be really easy. However, since the question posed above has no
limits in terms of anwer validity, missy is correct. The anwer could
be 42. The logical flaw is in the question, because it limits the the
answer by modifying it with the word "the" when there is actually more
than one answer to the question.

sorry - should have proof-read that..lol

togz - your linguistics above are flawed. The fact that the question
is a "question" and not a statement means that what isn't the only
possible answer.
Also, to clarify what I posted above - it's true that the word
"answer" can simply be defined as a reply, but I think the word "the"
implies the alternate definition which assumes a solution.

This question is the answer.

If the answer has to be self-referential then "This question is the
answer" should be THE answer.

Now if you consider the question to be "What is the answer to 'this
question'" then it presupposes that the answerer understands that the
reference is to the question being asked AT THAT MOMENT and not "this
question" versus "that question". If this is the case, the equivalent
self-referential answer would be "Is this the answer to the question?"

However, if the frame of reference of the questioner includes another
question then the appropriate answer would be "This question is the
answer". This of course means that it is indeed logically possible to
answer a question with another question and yet provide an answer.

What's this question to this answer? 
Do you like torturing your brain? (Sometimes I doubt I write in
English, I'm just a poor froggy)? And the other's brain?
How can you expect an answer to an unknown question?
The answer is not: what you want it to be. It is: no clear question,
no possible answer. Even if you like the answer.(Maybe you won't like
it. How to answer to an unknown question?)
I have myself a question, but do not want to pay some dollars for the
answer. Why this reward ($4.02)? How has it been shared between Google
and the researcher? (Remember you won't be payed for that, maybe there
is someone to answer me, though).
And also: are we allowed to ask something in comments? (I guess the
answer will be: froggy, you can't or Immanuel, you Kant: a funny joke
I'm sure you never heard before, cm476-ga).
(And remember I am but a poor, cheap frog-eater)

togz wrote:
>>Someone actually PAID to get that answered????? <<

Now come on, togz! What are the odds that any money has actually
changed hands at this point?

I agree with your statement, "The word 'answer' assumes a CORRECT
reply."

However, if you had read my words carefully, you would have noticed
that I wrote, "TO answer a question is not necessarily to
answer it correctly." I didn't say, "ANSWERING a question is not
necessarily to answer it correctly," because as you said, answering
assumes a correct reply, but for one "to answer" DOES NOT assume a
correct reply.

As my dear friend Webster defines it: 1. a reply to a question,
argument, letter, etc. 2. any response or retaliation...

In fact, it goes on to give several more definitions, none of which
support the theory that an answer must be correct in order for it to
be called an answer, as opposed to having to be called a reply or
response. Did you notice it reads, "ANY response or retaliation."

In light of that, I would assert that any answer appearing in the
"Answer" box is indeed the answer, and certainly that would make this
job very easy for a paid researcher....if not for the system that is
in place to safeguard against such foolery, specifically, the fact
that an inquirer is not required to pay for incomplete or incoherent
or incorrect responses, AND that a researcher may be released from the
program for giving poor responses.

There is not a coherent or logical question supplied here, so I don't
see how you can say how 42 or any other answer is technically correct.
Haven't you ever taken a test with a series of statements and you have
to determine if it is true or false or if not enough information is
given to answer the question. e.g. "Loren is a boy. Loren plays
baseball. All boys play baseball. True. False. Not enough
information."

Well we're dealing with the exact same scenario hear, yet instead of
saying "not enough information" or even "true" or "false," you are
closer to, "now, is Loren a girl's name or a boy's name. See, the
question is flawed because Loren could be a girls name and..." and
you're opening a can of worms that isn't even there.

Oh, and your assertion that the word "the" as in "the answer" is
another shaky argument. We aren't using phonetical sentence accents,
so how are you so quick to judge that the sentence is read with an
emphasis on the word "the" (long 'e')? It could just as correctly be
read with no emphasis on "the" (with a short 'e').

This is a further  explication of the answer to that question.

Dear jinjin, "Why this reward ($4.02)?"  I believe that the $.02, is a
reference to a common english colloquialism: My two cents. It is the
persons opinion.

The answer to the big question here is: Asker needs to pay up. Asked
and answered. If you fail to qualify your question, then any "answer"
qualifies.

My $.02

There is no answer to this guestion.

Doofus-ga, thanks a lot for your clarification to my comment.

I think you would all very much enjoy the books of Raymond Smullyan. I
should imagine that 'What Is The Name Of This Book?' would be
especially entrancing.
;)

Nope - this  
 
https://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=threadview&id=40058
 
is the answer to this question, isn't it? 
;-)

For missy-ga, I like the Foofighters, the band. The question I want
answered is, what is foo and why are they fighting? ;) I think I had a
friend who named her dog "foo". Why do we call little dogs, foo-foo?
Didn't Hemmingway write a novel, foo whom the bell tolls? Everytime I
exercise, I go foo. Do babies make foo? Are a foo and his money soon
parted? What's da matter with foo? Do foo have a problem with that?
Shut the foo up? If the foo fits, wear it. Don't step in the foo.
Look! up in the sky, it's superfoo. Ok, stop fooing around now, I mean
it!

This is the answer to 'What is the answer to this question?'

This is the CORRECT answer to "What is the CORRECT answer to this question?".

The answer to this question is in progress, and will not truly be
determined until this question expires on 08 May 2003 19:09 PDT.

As of this writing, the answer to this question is the cumulative
comments of all who have responded to it, including this comment.

How's that?