Past Versions of my Blog title

The Big Happy World of Confused People


My, You're Looking Happy Today


You Look Deranged, Deranged, Deranged, Happy, And Deranged.


It's getting harder to come up with titles that make a good joke when combined with the blog url.

Kavka's Toxin

Kavka's toxin puzzle is another paradox, this time created by the moral philosopher Gregory Kavka in 1983.

Here it is described in his own words:

An eccentric billionaire places before you a vial of toxin that, if you drink it, will make you painfully ill for a day, but will not threaten your life or have any lasting effects. The billionaire will pay you one million dollars tomorrow morning if, at midnight tonight, you intend to drink the toxin tomorrow afternoon. He emphasizes that you need not drink the toxin to receive the money; in fact, the money will already be in your bank account hours before the time for drinking it arrives, if you succeed. All you have to do is. . . intend at midnight tonight to drink the stuff tomorrow afternoon. You are perfectly free to change your mind after receiving the money and not drink the toxin.

(He can tell whether or not you intend to drink the poison with a high-tech machine that he has. If you really need a justification for thought experiments, then the back story is that he's trying to test out the machine. That still doesn't make much sense, since he's paying you a lot, and he didn't really need to pick a toxin, but he's eccentric. The weirdo.)

The problem: can you fully intend to drink the poison if you know that you don't have to? You'll always know that you don't reallllly have to drink it.... but if you think that, then you won't get the money.

I think that the solution is to intend to drink it regardless of whether or not you get paid. Then you'll get paid. The only flaw is that you then won't have to drink it.... ....and you'll know that earlier.... so you won't fully intend to drink it.

I guess you'll have to drink it, be violently ill for a day, and get a cool million in cash

Side note: Wikipedia also gives a real-world example of the puzzle: the Political Manifesto.

"Before an election, a political party will release a written document outlining their policies and plans should they win office. Many of these promises may be difficult or impossible to implement in practice. Having won, the party is not obligated to follow the manifesto even if they would have lost without it. In this example, the Electorate is the equivalent of the Billionaire, the Manifesto Promise the equivalent of the intention to drink the toxin and implementing the policies is equivalent to drinking the toxin." ~Wiki

I found this funny because of that last bit: to politicians, implementing promised policies is equivalent to drinking toxin. Hehe.

Intrude, Confused People!

Feel free to start following me via the button on the right-hand side of the blog. Only if you can be considered to fall under the category of "Confused people", though. I need more of them in order to get this blog to live up to its name. Which reminds me, you have to be happy too. I realize that this is a burden for some of you. If it makes you happier not to be happy, then go with that instead. Whatever makes you happier.

And if you're wondering whether you're a confused person or not, then I'd like to point out that you are confused on this issue and are, in fact, a confused person.

(To you people who got informed of this post because you're already following me, haha, you make me laugh.)

Open to Public

My blog is now open to all comers, rather then being a secret all to myself.

Although a secret blog was quite a bit of fun, I've realized that quite a few of the posts on here would be better if I had feed-back on them, and one of them, the one announcing my self-published book, is entirely useless if it's not being read by my friends. Since people tend to only comment on the most recent few posts, I'm losing potential comments.

This brings me to another point: you should all comment more.

Yes, I hear what you're saying; I see you there in the glow of your computer screen, rolling your eyes. You're muttering to yourself, "You moron, nobody has posted at all because they didn't know about it." Well, stop sounding so skeptical. And don't call me a moron, that's just rude.

I do know that you haven't been able to post, but I'm guessing that few of you will post even after starting to read my blog. But I want lots of posts. This presents a bit of a dilemma. The solution is for all of you to post a bunch of posts. Go right now, read through the twenty-five or so posts in the archive, and comment on at least ten.

Go. I'll still be waiting here.

Go.

GOOO!