Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hi, my name is Robert Lambin. This is the Monster Fact,
Speaker 2: a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 2: focusing on non mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters in time.
Speaker 2: One of my favorite films of all time is easily
Speaker 2: the nineteen eighty six fantasy musical Labyrinth, a movie that
Speaker 2: summons the combined creative talents of Jim Henson, Brian Frowd,
Speaker 2: Carrie Jones, David Bowie, Sarah Connolly, and composer Trefor Jones,
Speaker 2: just to name a few. While its predecessor, the nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty two film The Dark Crystal, took its fantasy world
Speaker 2: creation incredibly seriously, Labyrinth leans more into pure musical fun
Speaker 2: and python esque absurdity. Now there's a lot of this
Speaker 2: flavor to discuss in Labyrinth, but I wanted to talk
Speaker 2: specifically about the four guards that Sarah encounters as she
Speaker 2: makes her way across the Goblin King's labyrinth. They are
Speaker 2: doglike humanoid creatures that guard a pair of doors. They
Speaker 2: are either conjoined beings and therefore two guards, or they
Speaker 2: are affixed behind their signature shields in a way that
Speaker 2: allow for two beings per shield. Their absurd appearance is
Speaker 2: of course linked to their visual resemblance to double headed
Speaker 2: European playing cards, in which a king, queen, jack or
Speaker 2: joker is double bodied and double headed in such a
Speaker 2: way that the card can be discernible from either side
Speaker 2: of the table. According to St. Bindet and the Excellent
Speaker 2: Labyrinth Bestiary, the heads of the left door guardian are
Speaker 2: Alf and Jim, while the heads of the right door
Speaker 2: are Ralph and Tim. When Sarah encounters the guardians, she
Speaker 2: quickly learns the rules concerning their doors. One door leads
Speaker 2: to the car at the center of the labyrinth, where,
Speaker 2: of course, Sarah is trying to go in order to
Speaker 2: rescue her step brother Toby, while the other door leads
Speaker 2: to Bubbabubum, certain death. The lower heads have no idea
Speaker 2: which doors which, but the upper heads do, but Sarah
Speaker 2: is only permitted to ask one of them. Furthermore, one
Speaker 2: of the two guards always tells the truth, while the
Speaker 2: other one always lies, So Sarah faces a conundrum. How
Speaker 2: can she find out which door is which. How can
Speaker 2: she risk asking the wrong guard and being lied to.
Speaker 2: The scenario instantly invokes what is known as the liar's paradox.
Speaker 2: If a liar tells you they are lying, well, then
Speaker 2: they are telling the truth. Consider the statement quote, this
Speaker 2: sentence is a lie unquote. If that statement is true,
Speaker 2: then it's false. If it's false, then it's true. Oh my. Sarah,
Speaker 2: of course, is a bright young woman and makes the
Speaker 2: short work of the guardians and their attempts to confuse her.
Speaker 2: As John Turi points out in the paper Objective falsity
Speaker 2: is essential to lying an argument from convergent evidence, published
Speaker 2: in Philosophy Studies in twenty twenty one, she engages in
Speaker 2: what is called answer laundering. If Sarah simply asked one
Speaker 2: of the guards which doors which, then it might be
Speaker 2: a true or untrue statement that she gets in return,
Speaker 2: and her chances therefore are no better than simply picking
Speaker 2: a door at random. Instead, she launders one answer through another.
Speaker 2: Turi explains quote by asking one guard whether the other
Speaker 2: guard would say that this door leads to success. Sarah
Speaker 2: deduced the correct one either she gets the truth about
Speaker 2: a lie or a lie about the truth. Whenever she
Speaker 2: is told yes, the correct answer is no, and whenever
Speaker 2: she is told no, the correct answer is yes. The
Speaker 2: truth in the lie dependably canceled each other out in
Speaker 2: the scenario provided to restresses that lies cannot be true.
Speaker 2: Turry points out that the riddle of the Four Guards
Speaker 2: is a variant of the Knights and Knaves logic puzzle
Speaker 2: from Raymond Smollien's nineteen seventy eight publication What is the
Speaker 2: Name of this Book? The scenario in the book that
Speaker 2: closely resembles the scene from Labyrinth involves a knight and
Speaker 2: a knave otherwise indistinguishable. Who guard a fork in the road?
Speaker 2: Which road do you take? Dare you ask these two men,
Speaker 2: given that one is secretly a noble knight and the
Speaker 2: other secretly a vile nave, Only one of them is
Speaker 2: going to give you a good answer. The other one
Speaker 2: is going to lie to you. The solution again comes
Speaker 2: via answer laundering ask which path the other individual would
Speaker 2: say is the correct one. So this is how the
Speaker 2: Four Guards of Labyrinth work, unless I am lying, which
Speaker 2: I am not. Tune in for additional episodes of The
Speaker 2: Monster Fact each week. As always, you can email us
Speaker 2: at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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