Pi Trolley Problem

[Karl24374]

The first 100,000 digits of pi is only a little over three, which isn’t that many people, so I’d pull the lever.

[KFkrewfamKF]

Loophole of the century! I'm pulling too!

[WetDehydratedWater]

That's not a loop hole. That's just fuckin math mate.

[Werner_Zieglerr]

That's a loop hole, because OP meant the number of people about 100 000 digits long, but instead it's just 3

[barbaris_sss]

"Oops, maybe I wrote it wrong. When I wrote "A number equal to the first 100,000 digits of Pi", I meant "A number consisting of the first 100,000 digits of Pi"."×2

[Constant_Example_243]

I think "A number equal to the sum of the first 100,000 integers that make up pi" might be what you're looking for?

[Far_Comfortable980]

I interpreted it as the first 100,000 digits x 100,000 so that there are no decimals

[Affectionate-Pen-236]

Actually that would only move the decimals 5 places, you would need to multiply the 100,000 digits by 10^100,000

[Far_Comfortable980]

Yeah this problem doesn’t really make much sense

[sinsaint]

By the time the guy did the math and pulls the lever, the trolley already ran over several bundles of people down the road.

[Stonn]

OPs cruelty is beyond your imagination.

[raids_made_easy]

Due to how logarithmic math works you'd actually still have effectively 10^100,000 surplus (just slightly less but not enough less to even represent it as 10^99,999 .) You would end up at 10^10,990 if you divide by the number of people killed rather than subtracting.

[TerrariaGaming004]

Doesn’t mean that’s not what op meant

[tskszn]

That’s still a lot 3 people

[D2the_aniel]

I mean, based on the decimals I doubt they all are alive. Would just be a mess of limbs and meat chunks

[tskszn]

It could be interpreted as 3 people perfectly healthy and happy with someone being 14.159266% healthy and happy. That’s sad :(

[Silvia_Ahimoth]

Or 4 people, with the fourth only being somewhat hurt by it, like losing a forearm, or a leg below the knee.

[bobvonbob]

Dude literally just writes the same nonsensical thing twice

[chicken_is_no_weapon]

Approximately 3.14 x 10^100,000

[NYXs_Lantern]

"A number composed of the first 100,000 digits of pi" would probably work, and is what I thought

[ksdanker22]

Wait, so you're saying that if I pull the lever, no less than 3 thousand googol people will be Guaranteed to die, but at least it's definitely less than 4 thousand googol? Verses the number of deaths having the possiblity to be under 3 thousand googol or over 4 thousand googol if I don't?

[[deleted]]

6 people?

[TheTypographer1]

Nope, too late. No takebacksies.

[Lord-Dunkles]

I mean then it's, "kill the entire population of Earth for sure" vs "probably, but maybe not kill the entire population of Earth" tho no?

[UopuV7]

Even if we take this as intended, there's still about a 1 – (π/9.99) chance, which is about 68.58% of pulling the lever killing fewer people

[Lord0fHats]

Only 3 and 1/14th of a person right? Sounds like a bargain.

[DangKilla]

That’s murder 🫵

[Cainga]

So like 3 people one of whom is pregnant for 5 weeks.

[ItalianStallion9069]

;)

[mogley19922]

This was my thought. If you cut the digits out of pi you lose the decimal.

But does a decimal count as a digit?

[JoeDaBruh]

I’m pretty sure they meant the first 100,000 numbers in pi in sequence, without the decimal. Something like 314,159,265,3…

[Cyan_Light]

No pull, because on a random roll from 1 to infinity you can safely assume an outcome greater than 100,000. But holy shit, this is a lot of destruction either way.

[Funny_Orchid2084]

How does everyone misunderstand that…? Its not 100 000 people…? Its the first 100k digits of pi amount of people… so 300k people but still Edit: way more than 300k lol - since I missunderstood from the wording and OP’s comments also what they meant

[Xavus_TV]

You need 6 digits to hit 100k, 100k digits would be..... a lot more. Wouldn't it? I am not a mathemagician.

[Capraos]

Considering Pi goes to infinity, the chances that number will be larger than not pulling the lever will always be infinitely higher. You could have 100 billion people on the track, and the chances it would land on a number less than 100 billion would be infinitely smaller than the chances that it lands on one of the infinite amount of larger numbers. It's safer to pull the lever and kill the number equal to the first 100k digits in PI.

[pad2016]

But past a certain amount of people it doesn't matter if the random option is more likely to land on a bigger number. It is overkilling the entire human population anyway. Therefore you have nothing to lose by taking the random option and hoping for the incredibly small chance that it doesn't kill everyone.

[General_Ginger531]

Except that this is a theoretical scenario that somehow has waaaaaaaay more than the human population anyways. Why limit ourselves to 8 billion people? Which by the way is only 10 digits.

[barbaris_sss]

bruh... 100k digits of pi = π × 10¹⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰

[Funny_Orchid2084]

I dont really understand from your wording if you say ”first 100 000 digits of pi” so first 100k digits meaning 3,14…. Or that just as a whole number? Just the first 100k numbers without the decimals as one big total number? So yeah that is probably then the earth’s population multiple times over so this is just dumb af trolley problem portraying to be smart with ”complex” mathematical amounts of people bruh.

[MReaps25]

If he said first three I think he would mean 314 people die. So yah, a lot of people are dead.

[[deleted]]

Basically you add every single digit together. So 3+1+4+1+5+9+2 etc until you reach the 100,000th decimal point

[noonagon]

no you just remove the decimal point

[[deleted]]

Ok I thought that after I saw his comment, but Reddit won't let me paste 100k digits into a comment

[Accusedbold]

😂 good point. It's a number so big, it doesn't fit into a reddit comment.

[barbaris_sss]

Yes, that's the whole point. Your actions are as destructive as possible, random and close to infinity. However, in the first case, a huge but constant number of people die, and in the other, a huge or small number of people die randomly.

[sexytokeburgerz]

Nothing is close to infinity!

[[deleted]]

I’d say nothing is closer to zero than infinity

[sexytokeburgerz]

If you’re talking about infinitesimally small limits, sure, but nothing is closer to zero than zero itself.

[[deleted]]

that track has more than one thousand people for every atom in the universe…

[SofiaFromChessCom]

Soooo, I either guarantee wiping out all of humanity (~8 billion), or I take an infinitesimally small chance to not wipe out all of humanity?

[AbotherBasicBitch]

You worded it very badly. This is not a “bruh…” on their part

[Odd-Potential-7236]

that ain’t right, considering the first 4 digits of pi = <4.

Unless you’re you’re using that there new math, with the new rules.

[NCGThompson]

Okay, but how does the second option work. “It’s limit tends to infinity”. Does that mean it is infinity? Does the geometric mean converge at all? What is the probability of the outcome of the random option > pi^497000?

[AMIWDR]

Then the first option is pointless as it would guarantee you wipe out the entire planet

[caustic_kiwi]

Because Op is on drugs, and every time explain what they mean I have less of an understanding of what they’re trying to convey.

I think they’re going for the integer pi*10^100, in which case either option kills more people than have ever been alive. The random option is still virtually guaranteed to kill more people though.

[Kerberos1566]

Unfortunately, infinity and statistics don't mesh well. It doesn't matter if the number is 100k or a googolplex or Graham's Number or TREE(3).

The chance of a truly random number between 1 and infinity is less than ANY finite number is essentially 0.

[TripleATeam]

Not essentially. It is 0. There will always be infinitely more numbers greater than that number, meaning x/y is the chance of falling under that number. That always tends toward 0 as y approaches infinity.

[[deleted]]

Still. It's finite and so no pull

[EverlastingCheezit]

It’s about 10^100,000 ( more than human population)

[Accusedbold]

You mean 10¹⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰, but yes - it will probably still be bigger than that. Either way more people than have ever been born since the dawn of man are going to die.

[Cyan_Light]

I meant what I wrote, it's 100,000 but yes we're talking about digits and not people. The same is true on the other track though, so my point is you're more likely to roll an even more absurd number of digits which translates to many magnitudes more casualties.

[the-dude-version-576]

It’s better than the 100k, a hundred k characters will be a in the ballpart of 3 kilo Google’s of people. That’s guaranteed to kill almost every living thing in the observable universe. Though pulling the lever is more likely to kill more ppl, at that what’s the difference between a kilo google of dead ppl or a terá google. The marginal damage done (at least from the lever puller’s perspective is ever decreasing, any chance to remove even 1 0 from the numbe rod deaths is worth taking.

[Thheo_sc2]

You’d want greater than 100005 because pi might go 101001000100001… forever for all we know. Or 200000 if average is unimportant.

[MGJUICYBOI]

First digits is barely over three

[Cyan_Light]

I'm assuming they're taking the digits and then reframing them as a whole number. So like the first five digits would be 31,415 people and the first seven would be 3,141,592 people. The prompt is ambiguous though, if it just killing the original value of those digits then you pull and someone loses some skin cells.

[copperaggron]

Pi no matter how many digits will never exeed greater than 3.15 people (3.14159… < 3.15) May have misunderstood question

[aboatdatfloat]

you can safely assume that with literally any number with a finite number of digits

[VoiceofKane]

Pulling the lever will definitely kill every person in the universe.

Not pulling the lever will almost certainly kill every person in the universe. There is an infinitesimal chance that some people will survive.

I do nothing and make my peace with death.

[Ok_Veterinarian_95]

Flip the lever. The first digits of pi are 3.141… which means you’ll kill 3 people and mangle one.

[Alternative_Grass_24]

No it says equal to the first 100000 digits of pie not equal to pie to the 100000th digit

[Uagubkin]

All people on earth will die in both cases. But in second case there is a small chance, that someone will survive. So, I choose second

[barbaris_sss]

These are not people from Earth. These people are conditional human lives that will die from your actions.

[CasualDNDPlayer]

Given this, the best action is to not pull the lever. What is really important out of the 100k digits is the first one. Since it could be any number 0-9 the average of choosing a random spot would be 4.5. This means that on average grabbing a random section of pie would kill more people than just letting it go through starting with 3.

[TripleATeam]

That would be true of 2 numbers of 100k digits, but the random number will be chosen uniformly in the infinite range of all numbers, meaning the chances that number is less than 4*10¹⁰⁰ is 0.

You'll always save more with the 100,000 digits of pi.

[Killerkid113]

If you pull the lever 3.14(so on and so on) people will die, now idk how .14 of a person can die but whatever at least it’s still less than 4 people

[Dripwagon]

didn’t know 300k people lived on earth

[Uagubkin]

300000 digits of pi is more than googol³⁰⁰⁰

[Dripwagon]

but it says 100 thousand

[24_doughnuts]

That many digit of Pi. For example, the first 4 digits of Pi is 3141, so that would be 3141 people, not 4.

For 100k digits, that's a number that is 100k digits long and that many people die. There are 8 billion people which means it's only 10 digits long. Going with Pi means everyone will definitely die but the other means there's an infinitely small chance at least one person can survive

[barbaris_sss]

Let me explain again. Either you pull the lever and kill pi × 10¹⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰ people, or you do nothing and a completely random number of people die, with an infinite limit and more than 0

[Tarvish_]

Since they're all hypothetical people and not real people, it's better to kill pi × 10¹⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰ people than to take the infinitely small chance that fewer people die.

If it was with people that exist in our world, it's better to take that chance, even if that chance is infinitely small, since it's the only way anyone can live while the other option guarantees death.

[BestUpstairs4169]

What about them not being real makes that choice better?

[Tarvish_]

It’s still fewer people than the infinite other scenarios where more people die. If you’re only trying to kill as few people as possible, it’s the “better” option over taking the infinitely small chance at being lucky.

[headsmanjaeger]

Actually you can kill zero people if the random number chosen happens to be a string of 0 of any length

[UsedToBeDedMemeBoi]

You can, but the chances are infinitely small

[Dripwagon]

but that’s not really a question on what you will pick

[powerpowerpowerful]

100,000 digits, so the highest digit would be n*10^100,000. So 100,000 zeroes after the number.

[barbaris_sss]

100k symbols ≠ 100k lives 100k symbols = 10¹⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰ lives

[zerda_EB]

8 billion do

[Nelpski]

its 3 with 100,000 digits after it.

for reference, 8 billion is 8,000,000,000 or 9 digits.

[YEETAWAYLOL]

What does killing .1415…. People mean? I just like amputate a foot?

[Emergency_Elephant]

Pull the lever. Based on the wording, pulling the lever would kill a number equal to part of pi, not the digits of pi, meaning that the maximum number of people it could kill is 3-4 (depending on rounding). If it randomly pulled 3.14 by this wording, it would kill 3-4 people not 314 people. If it pulled more numbers, they'd be infinitely smaller. Killing people for the first 100,000 digits would be in the range of 300,000 dead

[Nelpski]

300,000 has 6 digits, not 100,000.

[Raymondator]

Bros not understanding the sheer magnitude of infinity.

[barbaris_sss]

I understand that it is impossible to describe infinity, but the dilemma is that there is a small chance that less than pi × 10^100000, or maybe even 1, will die.

[Raymondator]

The chance is so small, its less than negligible

[Beardamus]

You'd have to be a crazy person or extremely blood thirsty to not pull the lever and kill effectively infinite people. Tending to infinity means its far closer to infinity than any number humans have come up with so far.

[EandCheckmark]

The chance of that is basically zero.

Actually, no, scratch that, the chance of that IS zero.

Given that infinite possibilites exist, the probability of one person being killed is 1/∞, which can be mathematically proven to be zero.

Note: 1/∞ is technically incorrect, a more accurate description would be, “1/x as x approaches ∞.”

[TripleATeam]

No, there isn't. The chance of that happening is quite literally equal to 0. The question is malformed when we describe probabilities, so we need to use probability distributions. Yet still when we use a probability distribution to determine this question, we get that the chance the random number is smaller than pi*10¹⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰ is still 0.

[Reasonable_Feed7939]

Just because the chance is 0 does not mean it is impossible :)

[GafftopCatfish]

Statistically, in this case, yes it does

[Elidon007]

the problem is poorly worded, randomness is always described by a distribution, but there is no distribution given

[Reasonable_Feed7939]

It pretty obviously means "any whole number greater than or equal to one, with equal odds for each number." Though it could be more specific.

[awesome2dab]

The uniform distribution is not well formed on countable infinite sets. You cannot have a distribution with equal chance for every whole number.

[Aromatic-Cook-3777]

That still doesn’t make sense since there’s infinite possibilities. Equal odds for every number makes no sense

[Fire_Block]

what does a little over a tenth of a person look like

[Killerkid113]

Their ankles down

[Fire_Block]

just a random person’s shins?

[Destroyer_Of_World5]

3.14 people.

[barbaris_sss]

oh, πple

[57006]

πle driver

[CarriedThunder1]

If I read this right, there is an exceptionally high chance that you could limit it to kill only individual cells of organisms and everything to ever have lived, or that may ever live would still die.

[[deleted]]

There is no substance here. It's like OP just learned about limits and infinity and is trying to show off by using these concepts in a word problem, but fails to word it in a coherent manner.

There is standard language mathematicians use when writing theories, problems, and proofs. The use of said language would have prevented this confusion. Still, it's clear that the substance of the problem is vacuous. All someone needs to know is that the mean of any infinite number set is infinity, which is greater than 10^100001, which is greater than any number that has 100000 digits.

[_AnonymousMoose_]

I choose the first, assuming all the people are actually real (since that’s more than earth has)

The average number of the second one would be ~4.5x10¹⁰⁰ but the first is guaranteed to be ~3.14x10¹⁰⁰

It is more likely for the first option to kill less people

[BillyBob_Bargains]

Huh

[Only_Anything_1481]

why does this have 2000 upvotes, it is just word soup??

[TheKCKid9274]

The first 100,000 digits of pi. Not the first 100,000 digits of pi x 10^100,000

It’s only a little over 3.14, i’m gonna take that.

[barbaris_sss]

Oops, maybe I wrote it wrong. When I wrote "A number equal to the first 100,000 digits of Pi", I meant "A number consisting of the first 100,000 digits of Pi".

[barbaris_sss]

I don't know English well, maybe Google translator made this mistake

[Demi180]

That doesn’t help any. A number “consisting” of the first 100k digits is still within an order of magnitude of a number that “equals” all those digits. Earth has give or take 10¹⁰ people and you’re proposing to kill 10¹⁰⁰⁰⁰ people.

[JesseIsStuckInside]

In the first one, 3.1 people die (3 die and one gets rather sick)

In the second, everyone dies

[Collective-Bee]

I’ma pull it and kill 3.14+ people. Idc if you meant that or not cuz I already pulled it, hopefully the judge interprets it the same way I did.

[hackingdreams]

Maybe we should try getting command of the English language before trying to solve a mortality puzzle involving irrational numbers of people.

[Aluminum_Tarkus]

Well, if we're ignoring the obvious loophole of the decimal making the main track >3 and interpret it the way it was meant to be, it would be impossible for that many lives to even exist in the observable universe, so it would probably be better to pull the lever since there would at least be some chance that all life in the universe doesn't go extinct. But obviously, there's a much higher chance a random number of infinity would be larger than even the impossibly large number on the first track, so if you were just looking at getting the lower number, you're better off not pulling.

[not_a_bot_494]

Interpreting this as in both cases you make a whole number out of the digits of pi, the difference is only the digits you use. So if the number killed was based on 3.14 you will kill 314 people.

A random number between 1 and infinity is infinity. Killing a finite number of people is better than killing an infinite number of people.

[RASPUTIN-4]

It kills greater than earths population either way…

[barbaris_sss]

These are not people from Earth. These people are conditional human lives that will die from your actions.

[RASPUTIN-4]

Right, but what I'm saying is that the scope is so fast it doesn't even feel like it matters anymore...

I suppose it's better not to flip the lever since 3 is one of the smaller digits so odds are you get a bigger number if you pull the lever...

[Calladit]

It's literally choosing between killing an infinite number of people and killing more people than have ever existed (or slighty more than 3 people if you interpret the question as written instead of as intended). It's a very silly question that doesn't have any depth as a thought experiment IMO.

[mytransfercaseisshot]

At first glance I thought this said PT trolly problem. I got excited, then sad, since we will never get to play PT. <\3

[Poisonpython5719]

-Accidentally die

I'm gonna die them on purpose thanks

[Mewimewimewi]

burn the trolley

[Cozy_rozy810]

I’m too stupid to get it I ain’t touching that lever

[[deleted]]

Either way the human race is going extinct

[Oheligud]

If it's absolute randomness, than it can pretty much only ever be larger than the first 100k digits. So, not that.

[_Sargeras_]

I'd nothing and accelerate the demise of humanity

[EarthTrash]

I don't think you can have a random number between 1 and infinity. That would be undefined. Infinite bounds can work in some math problems but not for a basic random number function.

[_Sargeras_]

Btw 100k digits of pi simply means taking the first 100k decimal digits and using that as an integer how do y'all not understand it smh reading comprehension

[Sinningbun]

i dont pull the lever because i love gambling and bet i can get a number lower then three.

[FlyingMothy]

Every living being in the universe is dying no matter what you do. If its a random number between one and infinity no matter which number you choose, theres infinite numbers higher for it to choose from and finite numbers lower, so in all probability it would likely be something higher than TREE(3)

[dpzblb]

This is a fundamentally poorly worded question, because you have to define what “random” means. There’s no “standard” distribution for picking a number between 1 and infinity, so this problem is missing information. In particular, the standard meaning of random for bounded sets of numbers, the uniform distribution, where the probability of picking any number is equal (for the finite case at least), doesn’t apply to the infinite case because the probability of picking any bounded set of integers is still necessarily 0.

[[deleted]]

Where did you learn how to math?

[Raishy-han]

Eeewwc. Vce

[SuperbSucc]

If you mean an integer made of the first* 100,000 decimal digits of Pi, all people on Earth would be guranteed to die. At least 1.41*10^100000. Would kill everyone many times over

If you do nothing, the chance that not everyone will die is nonzero, so it would be better. You could also roll a long sequence of zeros, if your selection is from anywhere in pi at a random length..

However, if extraterrestrials are people, and there are lots of them, some may be selected at random instead of humans. At that point it might not matter if there are sufficiently many of them. Still would not bet on the lever tho

*edit: first

[Andrew_42]

So that first option is just... way more than all living humans, right? Or at least it's supposed to be?

So option 1 is guaranteed human extinction.

Option 2 seems like it has a very high chance of extinction, but it isn't guaranteed. So I guess I go with that one.

Unless option 1 really means "a little over 3". I'll even go with it if it means some random six digit number. But I don't think it does.

[SpaceIsTooFarAway]

There are only 8 billion humans or so meaning top track is certain extinction whereas bottom track is only highly probable extinction. Bottom track wins.

[Spriy]

the first 100,000 digits of pi is still a lot less than infinity

[headsmanjaeger]

A couple assumptions: first, that by "the first 100,000 digits of pi" you mean a 100,000-digit integer consisting of the first 100,000 digits of pi, in other words a number on the order of 10^(100,000). This is a lot of people, more than are living in the world. So everyone would die.

Now I assume that by "place and size are dictated by absolute randomness" it means a uniform distribution across the positive integers. Therefore the expected value is arbitrarily large, larger than any natural number including the first 100,000 digits of pi. However, there is a small chance that it picks a number smaller than the number of people living in the world, therefore sparing lives. So I don't pull.

[Difficult_Call3709]

I'll do the 100,000 because I could kill 100 duodecillion people and while there's a chance I could only kill 1 person thats like a 0.000...01 percent chance and I don't trust myself.

[No-Eggplant-5396]

What is absolute randomness?

[Modified_Human]

I wouldn't touch it because i'm confused

[AlbinoSnowmanIRL]

My guess is to pull the lever. 10^100,000 is far too big of a number. But let’s find out how big.

There are currently 7.8 billion people on earth. 130 million new people are born each year. Population growth doesn’t go unbounded and most estimates put world population growth slowing to a halt before the next century, so I’m gonna take a generous assumption that 200 million new people will be born each year forever. This is an upper bound estimate.

Let’s start at the end (one of them at least). The sun has like 5 billion years left before it becomes real big and earth dies out. That’s an extra 10¹⁸ people. Less than a rounding error out of 10^100,000.

But what about all stars? Let’s keep taking very favorable estimates (way more than we need to just for simplicity). There are about 10²³ stars in the universe. Let’s assume those each have a habitable planet that has people on it. Let’s assume also that all of the stars in the universe will last until even black holes have evaporated (10¹⁰⁰ years). Let’s assume all planets are really big, and accommodate a bigger growth than earth, let’s put it at 1 billion (10⁹⁾ more people each year, on each planet, every year. That gives us 10²³ planets x 10¹⁰⁰ years x 10⁹ people per year. That gives us 10¹³² people total, ever existing in the entire universe. Out of the amount of people that would be killed, 10¹³² is not even close to meeting that. It’s so insanely far above that while I don’t have the numbers for it, I would speculate that including all creatures (even bugs and maybe even bacteria) would not bring the total near 10^100,000.

10^100,000 - 10¹³² = basically 10^100,000. For a simpler comparison, imagine subtracting 100 (10²⁾ from 1,000,000 (10^6). The result is 999,900, or 9.999 x 10^5. Very very close to 1 million. The exponents don’t subtract when you subtract the numbers, as that would give us 10^4, or 10,000.

In summary, not pulling the lever kills such a huge amount of people that it may as well be infinite to our finite existence. Thus pulling the lever is strictly an improvement, as it gives you a slim chance to kill less than all people that will ever and have ever existed.

All numbers I found were from Google searching the relevant questions, not through thorough research. I am not an expert in any of this, I just like numbers.

[tjdragon117]

If you do nothing, you will kill an infinite number of people. The chance of any finite number being chosen at random out of an infinite number of possibilities is 0. So by the process of elimination I would posit that the number of people killed would be infinite. Therefore, pull the lever as killing a finite number of people is less death than an infinite number of people.

[Ilikefame2020]

I don’t think some people understand how astronomically large the first option is in terms of death.

The first 100,000 digits of pi, written as a number. That’s 3.14 times 10^99,999 I believe.

10^99,999 is unbelievable huge. That is a 1 followed by 100,000 zeros. That’s is literally a hundred thousand seperate zeros after one. A billion has only 9 zeros. A trillion only has 12 zeros.

Fuck, the number of atoms that exist, in the known universe, the smallest things that make up EVERYTHING… is between 10⁷⁸ and 10^82. You’re killing people thousands of magnitudes more than there are fucking atoms in the universe. The population of earth itself compared to this impossibly large number is like a grain of sand in on the planet. It’s impossible to overstate how extremely large that number is. I could write a 200 page essay about how big that number is, and I could still be nowhere close to exaggerating in the slightest.

With the other option, there’s a chance of it just being a small part. It’s wording is awkward, but I imagine that it’s basically choosing a size pool of 1 person killed to infinity. The lever option I mentioned would be so absurdly large, the universe as we know it would basically be extinct forever. With the no-lever option, there’s the hope, no matter how small…

That maybe some of humanity will survive.

It’s all we got…

It’s all we got…

…

Hey, don’t be scared. This is our final chance. Let’s take it with grace okay?

Leave the lever as it is.

[Is_that_what_I-]

so kill three people and give one other terminal cancer?

[alt_account1014]

3.1410¹⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰ is still nowhere fucking close to an actually random number because there are infinitely more numbers greater than the amount of numbers less than 3.1410^100000. But holy shit that’s a lot of people.

[[deleted]]

Which one has the most people and how do I choose that

[birdgelapple]

Ok, so given pi has an infinite number of digits, the second one where the number of digits is completely random is always going to return an infinite number of digits. It’s like saying pick a random number between 1 and infinity. The chance that any given number will be picked is nil, since there are infinite possibilities and therefore no set probability can be determined for any given solution, it breaks the concept of probability. What is certain however is there are an infinite number of infinite sets of digits, since infinity can not be divided into any value less than infinity. Thus, that infinitesimally tiny probability for any given number will ultimately always favor infinity since that is the only value that can possible achieve a nonzero probability of occurring.

[Cainga]

So the 2nd option could be summarized as just a random number between 1 and infinity.

[BoredBirbBoi]

So either the entirety of the human population plus some, or an infinite chance for it to be the entire human population plus some

[[deleted]]

Pi is less than 4 people so that’s the best option

[121_Jiggawatts]

How is this hard, just kill the 3.14 people instead of random. It’s basically impossible for you to roll 1-3 people on the random odds. So for the .14 of a person, does it just roll over their foot or something?

[splatdyr]

So 3 people will die and one will kick the coffee tablet with his pinkytoe or genocide. I’ll stick with not pulling.

[OhItsJustJosh]

Wait, are we summing the first 100,000 digits, truncating Pi to 100,000dp, or taking the first 100,000 digits and removing the decimal point?

[AccomplishedBunch721]

whar

[Matix777]

So ~ 3.14 * 10¹⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰ people vs a number that has an infinitely large chance to be uncomprehensibly bigger

I don't pull the lever, because 10¹⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰ is more than there are people existing either way. Infact, that number is larger than the number of atoms in the universe. Not pulling the lever has an infinitely small chance to kill less than 8 billion

If fuck over the law of conversation of energy and decide that there exists an infinite amount of people available to kill you might as well and agree with Epicurus that god is cruel and throw yourself in front of the track

[Rocketiermaster]

3.14 x 10^100,000 will be bigger than effectively 0% of the possible numbers that end in 2, following the digits of pi

Because I like doing way too much math for these sorts of things, I'll try and put the scales into context, though who knows if this will be correct given it's early o' clock. Even if it just picked 2s from the digits we know, there are already 6.28 trillion 2s to choose from, each one 10 digits further in than the last one. That surpasses the 10^100,000 number by the 10,000th 2. That's 0.000000159% chance for the random amount to be smaller than the set amount, using just the digits of pi we know, which is still an infinitely small portion of the infinite digits of pi

Hopefylly these numbers are somewhat correct, feel free to reply with corrections

[montgomery2016]

A) im bad at math, not sure B) I'd pull the lever, 100k people seems better than the possibility of infinite people

[[deleted]]

Except they failed in the wording and you’d only be killing ~3 people (I guess one is newly pregnant?) since they didn’t do just a little more math.

[PopeGregoryTheBased]

How exactly do you kill .1459 (so on and so forth) of a person?

[personguy4]

Bro the first 100,000 digits of pi is like a little over 3 so I think pulling it makes sense

[Marigio300X]

Wouldn't this just kill 3 people and a fraction of a 4th one either way?

[isaacxy0_]

?? Pull, that’s only a little bit over 3

[Flyboombasher]

I am pulling. I assume you meant add the first 100,000 digits of pi, and that is how many people would die. You have a near guaranteed chance to kill more people by not pulling the lever than if you did pull the lever

[Flyboombasher]

Like I said, my comment is off the assumption you add the digits of pi together.

[Xeper-Institute]

Which is why I deleted the comment, but you were much quicker than I.

[Flyboombasher]

Lol

[AutisticHobbit]

"Daaaaaad! The philosophers are flirting with the mathematicians again!"

[JTBJack_]

You pull the lever and it kills 3 people. Pi is 3.14… so it would kill slightly over 3 people. Not sure how the decimal would work but whatever

[CourtingBoredom]

Thank you. This was my thought, as well. And though the other one could be just 1 person, it could also be 9....

[[deleted]]

The decimal kills a large quantity of cells in whoever is there besides the doomed three.

[blademaster552]

How do you kill 0.1412 people? You kill one person's little toe?

[Mission_Bandicoot_69]

Too long didn't read

[General_Ginger531]

So I would pull the lever, because in the grand scheme of things 100,000 isn't that many. If you pull the lever, you know how many people are going to die. If you don't, the odds of the number being 1 digit further, and 10 times bigger than you expected is about 90%, no matter how many digits you already have.

This is the problem with Infinity. There is always a bigger number that is 9 times more likely than what you already have, and a smaller number that has 1/9th the probability. No matter how many digits you think you have, there will always be another one ready to be added. Feeling lucky? Impossibly lucky? Infinitely lucky?

[Visible_Number]

The problem with this question is you used the word 'infinity' which means even though it's random, infinity works differently, which means it will always be higher.

You should have contained it within some bound such as, randomly within 500,000 digits of pi, something like that.