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Originally written by Exceptionally Masculine:

And Jeff isn't a person?

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Originally written by Student of Trinity:

Prisoner is sentenced to death in a state where judges have arbitrary power. Judge's sentence is as follows: "You will be executed at dawn on one of the seven days of next week, but you will not know which day until noon on the day before."

Prisoner sits in cell a couple of days before the fatal week begins, and reflects on the sentence. He notes that if he is so lucky as to survive through the first six dawns, he will then know at dawn on day 6 that day 7 will be his doom. But this would be contrary to the sentence, since he would know before noon. So the prisoner concludes that he cannot actually be executed on day 7.

Prisoner then concludes that day 6 is out as well, for with day 7 eliminated, the same reasoning as before would now apply to day 6. And so on: with each last day eliminated by the perverse wording of the sentence, all the days are eliminated in order. Prisoner concludes that he cannot be executed at all, because the judge's perverse sentence is actually self-contradictory. Yahoo!

At noon on day 3, the prisoner is informed that he will be executed at dawn on day 4. And so he is. The seemingly self-contradictory sentence was carried out flawlessly.

What was wrong with the prisoner's analysis?

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Originally written by Evil Autocrat:

You increase your chance to 1/2 instead of 1/4, but unless the lifeline works exactly like the doors (you pick, then two of the choices you didn't pick are eliminated) it's not as good as the door trick. That one relies on the non-randomness of the information you get. If you could pick one answer and then reveal two of the three others as false, you'd have a 3/4 chance of getting the question right by switching.

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Originally written by Thuryl:

Okay, new analysis.

Suppose there are 200 players. 100 decide to adopt an "always switch" strategy (let's call them switchers or group S), 100 decide to adopt a "never switch" strategy (let's call them non-switchers or group NS). 50 S and 50 NS are randomly assigned to a group where the envelopes contain $25000 and $50000 -- let's call them S-A and NS-A respectively. 50 S and 50 NS are randomly assigned to a group where the envelopes contain $50000 and $100000 -- let's call them S-B and NS-B respectively.

The first round of handing out envelopes occurs.

25 S-A get $25000, 25 NS-A get $25000, 25 S-A get $50000, 25 NS-B get $50000.

25 S-B get $50000, 25 NS-B get $50000, 25 S-B get $100000, 25 NS-B get $100000.

Obviously, after switching, the switchers as a group are not any better off -- the switchers who got the smaller amount have simply exchanged places with the ones who got the larger amount, meaning that they're in exactly the same situation as the non-switchers. It seems obvious that switching is not really a better strategy than non-switching.

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Originally written by Manhood Typing Kelandon:

Wait, how did the no-switchers get anything but $50,000? You start out by knowing that you got 50K. If you don't switch, you should invariably get 50K.

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Originally written by Manhood Typing Kelandon:

The reason is that we don't know how much money is at stake. Stareye's analysis lets the dollar values be $25,000, $50,000, or $100,000. Thuryl's lets the dollar values only be $25,000 or $50,000.

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Originally written by Drakefyre:

Just posting to say that Ash Lael/The Creator and his Zani party registered candidacy after the deadline had passed.

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