How to keep an idiot busy for hours

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

How to keep an idiot busy for hours refers to a joke often involving sending a person in a circle trying to find out "how to keep an idiot busy for hours", the implication being that the person is an idiot. This can take many forms, including questions with no possible answer or activities with no apparent conclusion or objective. One example of this is a small card with "If you'd like to know how to keep an idiot busy for hours, turn this card over" printed on both sides.

[edit] Corollary

A more intelligent victim may fall afoul of the further trick "How to keep a genius busy for hours", a similar act of subtle deceit which involves appealing to the victim's sense of reason to force their attention, often taking the form of a logical contradiction. A related example to the "idiot" form above comprises of a small card with "The statement on the other side of this card is true" printed on one side and "The statement on the other side of this card is false." This is a variation of the Liar paradox.

If we let A be the first statement and B be the second, then we can write the two statements as follows:

$\begin{matrix} \Alpha & \to & \Beta \\ \Beta & \to & \neg \Alpha \end{matrix}$

Clearly, the two statements contradict, but nevertheless, the "genius" has an urge to try to figure out which of the two statements (if any) is true.

[edit] Variations

This has been adapted on the Internet with a number of pages saying "If you'd like to know how to keep an idiot busy for hours, click here." Another variation on this joke, is "How to keep a blonde busy for hours", employing the same technique. This variation is a blonde joke. A similar trick appears in "Bart Simpson's Guide to Life", where the reader is told in various different ways to turn to a certain page to find the meaning of life. When they get to that page, there is simply another page given as containing the meaning of life. The reader finds itself back at the beginning after going through about a dozen pages.