Here are my answers to the Archetype puzzle I presented last week. If you haven’t seen it yet, go read that first. This entire post is a spoiler.
Oh, and feel free to quibble with my answers in the comments.
1. Red and blue balls in an urn
Probability, combinatorics
2. Galapagos finches
Evolution, allopatric speciation or adaptive radiation
3. Alice, Bob, and Eve
Cryptography, eavesdropping
4. A spherical cow
Theoretical physics, simplifying approximation
5. Lynx and snowshoe hare
Community ecology, predator-prey dynamics
6. Brain-in-a-vat
Epistemology (Philosophy is acceptable, too), solipsism
7. “Hello, world!”
Computer science, programming
8. The monkey and the hunter
Newtonian physics, gravity
9. The babysitting cooperative
Macroeconomics, the paradox of thrift
Bonus (2 points): What follows? Up, up, down, down
left, right, left, right, B, A (you may also include ‘select, start’ or just ‘start’ at the end)
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