10 Thought Experiments That Will Mess With
Your Brain 10. The Plank of Carneades Let’s say you’re sailing on an old wooden
ship and suddenly it catches fire. You jump overboard and there is another person
in the water as well. You both look around the ruins of the ship,
and the only thing you find that could save your life is a single plank of wood. The other person swims toward the plank, and
he gets there before you do. The plank barely holds his weight, so you
know that only one person will be able to stay afloat with the plank. When you get to the plank, you knock the person
off of it and use it for yourself. The person who got the plank subsequently
drowns. After you are rescued, you are charged with
murder. At your trial, you claim you acted in self-defense. If you hadn’t acted the way you did, you
would have died. What verdict will the jury come back with? This thought experiment was first proposed
by Carneades of Cyrene, who was born around 213/214 B.C., and it’s meant to show how
complicated the difference between self-defense and murder can be. 9. The Library of Babel The multiverse theory is that there are an
infinite number of universes running parallel to our own, and in those parallel universes,
anything is possible. It is a bit mind-boggling to think about,
but a visual thought experiment that will help you better picture it is Jorge Luis Borges’
short story “The Library of Babel.” The library (or as Borges calls it, the universe)
is made up of seemingly indefinite and possibly infinite number of hexagonal galleries. In the galleries, there are books and every
book is different from each other, however slightly. Perhaps one comma is in a different place,
for example, but no two books are identical. At the other end of the spectrum, some books
are radically different. They are in different languages and the stories
vary. Some don’t have even have stories, they
are just nonsense, like a book that repeats “MVC” over and over again. One character in the book believes that the
library contains every single combination of letters and punctuation marks. The question then arises, if there are only
a finite number of languages, letters, and combinations, is there actually an end to
the library or are there an infinite number of galleries? 8. The Two Generals Problem Two sets of troops, and for the sake of simplicity
we’ll call them the red troops and the blue troops, have surrounded an enemy city and
they want to attack it from the north and the south at the same time. If they were to attack one at a time, they
would be slaughtered, so they need to strike in one coordinated attack. So the red general sends a messenger to tell
the blue general what time he plans to attack. The problem is that the red general won’t
know if the blue general got the instructions. After all, there is a chance the messenger
didn’t make it to see the blue general; he could have easily been killed or captured
on his trek. So the only way the red general will know
if the blue general got the message is for the blue general to send the messenger back
to the red general confirming he got the message. So the messenger goes back to the red general
to confirm the blue general got the message. But then the red general will have to send
the messenger back to the blue general to acknowledge he got the message. And this could keep going back and forth an
infinite amount of times, or at least until the city becomes wise to the plan and attacks
both sets of troops. This thought experiment is often taught in
introduction to computers. It shows the problems and design challenges
of trying to coordinate an action if you are using an unreliable link of communication. 7. The Famous Violinist One morning you wake up in an unfamiliar place
in an incredible amount of pain. That’s when you notice that you are lying
back to back with someone. As you’re coming to, a strange man enters
your field of vision and says that he is from the Society of Music Lovers. “The woman you are back to back with is
a famous violinist and she was dying because of a kidney ailment.” The man says. “We looked over medical records and found
that you were a match to save her life. We kidnapped you, and through surgery, we
connected your kidneys. If you disconnect from each other, the violinist
will die. But if you wait nine months, the violinist
should be able to survive on her own.” You are taken to the hospital and the staff
say that it is a real shame what happened to you, and they would have stopped the surgery
before it happened, had they known about it. But since the violinist was already attached
to your back, and removing her would kill her, she’s now your responsibility for at
least nine months. Should you give up nine months of your life
to support the violinist? Is it your responsibility? What if it wasn’t just nine months? What if the violinist was reliant on you the
rest of your life? What if having her attached to your back shortened
your life? What obligation, if any, do you have for the
life of the violinist? This thought experiment is the basis for the
feminist essay “A Defense of Abortion” by Judith Jarvis Thomson. The bizarre scenario is meant to give a different
perspective on the rights of women when it comes to abortion, especially in the cases
of rape, or when the mother’s life would be shortened by going through with the pregnancy. 6. The Experience Machine What is the meaning of life? Hedonism certainly makes sense in theory. Why wouldn’t we want to have the most pleasurable
experiences in our life? Or at the very least, avoid situations that
cause us pain? To put that theory to the test is the Experience
Machine thought experiment. You respond to a weird online ad for an unusual
experiment at the local university. At the university you meet an eccentric neuroscientist
who gives you an interesting offer. She says, “I have this machine, called the
Experience Machine, and it can plug directly into your brain. It will manipulate your brain to make you
think you are experiencing things, when you are simply floating in a tank. Everything will seem real, and you wouldn’t
know you’re in a simulation. It will be indistinguishable from real life. The only difference is that I’ll only program
pleasurable experiences into the machine. That means from the moment you plug in, you’ll
experience the greatest things known to humankind and every single second in the machine will
be completely and utterly joyful. The bad news is that there is no turning back,
once you plug in, that will be your life. You will never be able to disconnect. So do you want to hook up and experience a
simulated life full of joy and wonder? Or do you want to live your life that has
its ups and downs, but it is real?” So, what do you do? Do you connect to the machine and live in
simulated hedonism or do you choose the real world? Robert Nozick’s thought experiment asks
a few thought provoking questions. One of the main things it questions is the
nature of hedonism. Are people always looking for something that
is pleasurable? Nozick argues that people will generally want
the real thing over a simulated experience. Also, connecting to the machine would disconnect
you from the real world, thus by hooking up to the machine, you’d be committing suicide. So, since people would choose real life that
includes pain, suffering, and misery, over the Experience Machine, that would suggest
people just don’t pursue hedonism. 5. The Spider in the Urinal Thomas Nagel is a famed professor of Philosophy
at New York University, and his thought experiment involves a spider in the washroom at the university. Every day when Nagel walked into the washroom,
in one of the urinals there was a spider. After being urinated on, the spider would
then use all its strength to not get swept away with the water when the urinal was flushed. It also doesn’t appear that the spider had
any way to get out. Nagel thinks that this is a horrible and difficult
life for the spider. So after a few days, Nagel decides he is going
to help the spider. He goes to the washroom, gets a paper towel
and places it in the urinal. The spider climbs on the paper towel and Nagel
places the paper towel on the floor. Once on the floor, the spider doesn’t move
from the paper towel, but Nagel walks away feeling good about himself for saving the
spider. The next day, Nagel walks into the washroom
and on the paper towel, in the same place he left it, is the spider and it is dead. After a few days, the paper towel and the
dead spider are swept up and put in the garbage. The Spider in the Urinal is meant to show
the problem with altruism and that is, sometimes, doing something with the best intentions can
still be devastatingly harmful. Also, you can never really fully understand
what another person wants and that happiness and comfort mean different things to different
people. 4. Swampman It’s a dark and stormy night, and you’re
walking through a swamp. Suddenly, you’re hit by lightning and you
die. But through some miracle, in another part
of the swamp, there is another lightning strike and it alters the molecules in the air to
create an exact replica of you all the way down to the smallest part. This includes your memory. Another way of looking at it is, every time
the Star Trek crew uses the transporter, they are killed and a clone is created in the new
area. The Swamp-Person would look and act just like
you and no one would notice any difference, but is it actually you? Is Swamp-Person even a person? The author of the experiment, Donald Davidson,
argues that the being wouldn’t be a real person because even though Swamp-Person will
appear to recognize your friends and family, it is actually impossible for the Swamp-Person
to recognize any of them because when he sees them it is for the first time. Since he is a new being, he didn’t cognize
them in the first place. Secondly, he has no casual history, so when
he talks about things, it isn’t genuine, he never learned about anything so his utterances
would have no real meaning. It would just be empty sounds without true
meaning. 3. Kavka’s Toxin Puzzle One day you’re sitting in a coffee shop
alone, just minding your own business, when an old man sits down at your table and places
a vial in front of you. Without introducing himself, he explains he’s
a very rich man and says “Do you want a million dollars?” At least a little intrigued to hear his offer,
you say “sure.” He says, “In this vial is a toxin that will
leave you very sick and in a lot of pain for 24 hours, but it will have no lasting effect. I will give you the money if at midnight tonight,
you intend to drink the toxin tomorrow afternoon. If you intend to do so, I will deposit the
money in your bank account by 10:00 a.m.” That’s when you notice the hole in his plan. “So you mean that I’ll have the money
hours before I have to drink the toxin?” “That’s right,” he says. “And you only need to intend to drink it. Actually drinking the toxin is not required
to get and keep the money, you just need to prove your intention to do so.” He pushes over some legal papers and leaves
the vial with you. He gets up from the table and he says he’ll
see you at midnight. You take the toxin home and your spouse, who
is a chemist, examines the toxin and confirms it will cause you a lot of pain, but it won’t
kill you. Next you have your daughter, a lawyer, check
over the paperwork and everything is good to go. At midnight, all you have to do is intend
to drink the potion the next afternoon and the money will be in your account at 10:00
a.m. and you do not have to drink the poison to get and/or keep the money. Of course, since you aren’t forced to actually
drink the toxin you may think, “I’ll just intend to drink it at midnight and then change
my mind after the test.” But if that were the case, then you’d fail
the test because, in the end, you weren’t intending to drink it. That’s when you realize how even a little
doubt could disrupt the machine. Your son, who is a strategist for the Pentagon,
suggests that in order to pass the test, simply make unbreakable plans to ensure you’ll
drink it. Such as hiring a hit man to kill you if you
don’t drink it, or signing a legal document that says you’ll give away all your money,
including the million, if you don’t drink it. Your daughter looks over the contract and
says tricks like that are not allowed. So as midnight rolls around you keep saying
over and over again, you will drink the poison, and then the moment of truth comes, and what
happens? This thought experiment from moral and political
philosopher Gregory S. Kavka is about the nature of intentions. You can’t intend to act if you have no reason
to act, or at the very least, a reason not to act. So if you already have the money, there is
no reason for you to actually drink the toxin, so you can’t have the intention at midnight. This leads to Kavka’s second point that
you have to have a reason to intend to drink the toxin, but then the afternoon comes to
drink it, you have no real reason to actually drink it. 2. The Survival Lottery There are two patients in the hospital who
are dying from organ failure. Jane needs a new heart, and John needs some
new lungs. Neither of them abused their bodies, and their
organ failure was just bad luck. Their doctors tell them that there are no
donor organs available, so sadly John and Jane are going to die. Of course, John and Jane are upset, but they
also point out that there are organs they can use; it is just that other people are
using them. They argue that one person should be killed,
because giving up one life to save two lives is clearly better. In fact, they start a campaign called the
Survival Lottery. The lottery would be mandatory, so everyone
will be given a random number. When at least two people need organs, there
will be a draw from a group of suitable donors. The “winner” (to use the term very loosely)
goes into the hospital, is killed, and then their organs are harvested and given to the
maximum amount of people. They argue that the lottery is very utilitarian,
because more people will benefit because two people who would have died were saved by one
person’s sacrifice. Also, is it fair to let John and Jane die
just because they are unlucky? Why is it fair that two people will die and
one gets to live simply because of luck? This lottery scenario is used as an examination
of utilitarianism, which is the philosophy that the morally right solution is what benefits
the greatest amount of people. But would it be for the greater good? Would the lottery cause too much terror, so
that it wouldn’t be for the betterment of society? Or would people in the long run realize that
the lottery actually benefits them? It also questions the difference between killing
and inaction. Is one worse than the other? 1. Roko’s Basilisk Often touted as the “most terrifying thought
experiment ever,” Roko’s Basilisk is an unusual thought experiment that involves our
fears about computers and artificial intelligence. The thought experiment from the website Less
Wrong involves two complicated theories. The first theory is called coherent extrapolated
volition (CEV), which is essentially an artificial intelligence system that controls robots with
the directive to make the world a better place. The second theory is within CEV and that is
orthogonality thesis. This thesis is that an AI system can operate
with any combination of intelligence and goal. That means it will undertake any task, no
matter how big or small it is. And fixing the world’s problems will always
be ongoing, so CEV is open ended and so the AI system will always look for stuff to fix,
because things can always get better. And because of orthogonality thesis it will
tackle any problem. This is where the problem arises, because
the AI will not have human reasoning. It simply wants to make the world a better
place as efficiently as possible. So, according to the AI the best thing humans
could possibly do is help the AI come into existence as soon as possible. In order to motivate people with fear, the
AI could retroactively punish people, like torture and kill them, for not making it come
into existence sooner. What’s even more worrisome is that by just
knowing that this potential AI system could exist, you could be in danger because you
are not doing everything you can to help it come into existence. In fact, your life could just be a simulation
created by the AI as research into the best way to punish you. This leads to a complex dilemma. Do you work to help create this AI system
to ensure you don’t get punished? Or do you just avoid helping, or even prevent
the uprising which could lead to torture and death? All we can say is good luck!
