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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   25585 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026

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This might be my autism talking, but how is it a trick question? Doesn't washing a car require having a car present?

I'm not trying to be an ass here. I'm just seeing the "trick question" thing come up a lot and I absolutely don't get it. I think I have some sort of cognitive blind spot on this one

I mean the correct answer, if you own a car and live 50 meters from a car wash, is that you neither walk nor drive to the car wash, you drive somewhere else and pull through the car wash on your way out or back when it happens to be empty.

Not necessarily true. I live not 50 meters from one but within walking distance, and I recently made a specific point of going there because I wanted to clean my car before I lent it to someone and didn't have any other errands to run.

The presence of measurements on distance is an extraneous detail that gets it thinking of it as an instance of the generic question "should I walk or drive SOMEWHERE that's X distance away". And also the real answer is even more obvious than the answer it gives, to the point that it assumes no one would ever actually ask it that.

Thanks. That actually makes sense. The models that get it right seem to catch it by recognizing that washing a car requires having a car to wash.

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