Every Sunday night, Matt and I get together with friends to play board games. It is also my weekly reminder to clean off my desk-dining room table. Here’s what it looks like in the middle of a dinner of Chinese food, homemade waffles, and a game of Acquire:
My uncle Pete once told me that being a lawyer was like playing the board games my family plays during every vacation. There are rules, and ways you interact with other people within those rules.
Every time I get down on myself for not enjoying formal logic (which I need for a class this semester), I remember how much I like playing board games and try to think of my assignments as games. Which is how I ended up with this answer to a question asking me to come up with three real-world examples of certain logical axioms:
The relation “is far away from” is transitive and symmetric, in a 2-dimensional world. Example: if Gallifrey is far away from Arcadia (D1) is X then Arcadia is far away from Gallifrey (D2) is also X: D1 ~ D2 and D2 ~ D1.1 Also, if Arcadia is far away from Earth (D3), and Earth is far away from Gallifrey (D4), then Gallifrey is far away from Arcadia (D1).
[…]
Beauty is not symmetric, not reflexive, and not transitive. If Sansa has a body dysmorphic disorder, she may not see herself as beautiful as other see her (B0 !~ B0). If Tyrian thinks Sansa is as beautiful as Shae, Jaime does not necessarily think Shae is as beautiful as Sansa (B1 ~ B2, then B2 !~ B1). Finally, if Rickon thinks Lady is as beautiful as Ghost, and Ghost is as beautiful as Shaggydog, it does not follow that Sansa thinks Lady is as beautiful as Shaggydog. (B3 ~ B4, B4 ~ B5, then B3 !~ B5).
PS: To any searching logicians, I did not get full marks on these answers. Be warned.
Now if only I could approach this weekend’s practice LSAT as if it were a game…
Inspirational Quote:
“He who cannot forgive breaks the bridge over which he himself must pass. ~George Herbert
