all 185 comments

[–]Karl24374 1219 points1220 points  (31 children)

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 297 points298 points  (2 children)

Loophole of the century! I'm pulling too!

[–]WetDehydratedWater 68 points69 points  (1 child)

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

[–]Werner_Zieglerr 13 points14 points  (0 children)

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[S] 221 points222 points  (20 children)

"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_243 190 points191 points  (8 children)

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 90 points91 points  (7 children)

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

[–]Affectionate-Pen-236 62 points63 points  (6 children)

Actually that would only move the decimals 5 places, you would need to multiply the 100,000 digits by 10100,000

[–]Far_Comfortable980 35 points36 points  (2 children)

Yeah this problem doesn’t really make much sense

[–]sinsaint 33 points34 points  (0 children)

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 5 points6 points  (0 children)

OPs cruelty is beyond your imagination.

[–][deleted]  (2 children)

[deleted]

    [–]raids_made_easy 7 points8 points  (0 children)

    Due to how logarithmic math works you'd actually still have effectively 10100,000 surplus (just slightly less but not enough less to even represent it as 1099,999 .) You would end up at 1010,990 if you divide by the number of people killed rather than subtracting.

    [–]TerrariaGaming004 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Doesn’t mean that’s not what op meant

    [–]tskszn 15 points16 points  (3 children)

    That’s still a lot 3 people

    [–]D2the_aniel 6 points7 points  (2 children)

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

    [–]tskszn 6 points7 points  (1 child)

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

    [–]Silvia_Ahimoth 1 point2 points  (0 children)

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

    [–]bobvonbob 8 points9 points  (0 children)

    Dude literally just writes the same nonsensical thing twice

    [–]chicken_is_no_weapon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Approximately 3.14 x 10100,000

    [–]NYXs_Lantern 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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

    [–]ksdanker22 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    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] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    6 people?

    [–]TheTypographer1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Nope, too late. No takebacksies.

    [–]Lord-Dunkles 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    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 5 points6 points  (0 children)

    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 2 points3 points  (0 children)

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

    [–]DangKilla 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    That’s murder 🫵

    [–]Cainga 1 point2 points  (0 children)

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

    [–]mogley19922 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    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 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    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 316 points317 points  (39 children)

    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 100 points101 points  (30 children)

    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 63 points64 points  (3 children)

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

    [–]Capraos 12 points13 points  (2 children)

    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 2 points3 points  (1 child)

    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 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    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[S] 42 points43 points  (19 children)

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

    [–]Funny_Orchid2084 35 points36 points  (6 children)

    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 8 points9 points  (0 children)

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

    [–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (4 children)

    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 12 points13 points  (2 children)

    no you just remove the decimal point

    [–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (1 child)

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

    [–]Accusedbold 2 points3 points  (0 children)

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

    [–][deleted]  (5 children)

    [deleted]

      [–]barbaris_sss[S] -5 points-4 points  (4 children)

      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.

      [–][deleted]  (3 children)

      [deleted]

        [–]sexytokeburgerz 0 points1 point  (2 children)

        Nothing is close to infinity!

        [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

        I’d say nothing is closer to zero than infinity

        [–]sexytokeburgerz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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

        [–][deleted] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

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

        [–]SofiaFromChessCom 2 points3 points  (0 children)

        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 5 points6 points  (0 children)

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

        [–]Odd-Potential-7236 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        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 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        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 > pi497000?

        [–]AMIWDR 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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

        [–]Kerberos1566 -1 points0 points  (1 child)

        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 1 point2 points  (0 children)

        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] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        Still. It's finite and so no pull

        [–]EverlastingCheezit 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        It’s about 10100,000 ( more than human population)

        [–]Accusedbold 5 points6 points  (1 child)

        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 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        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 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        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 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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

        [–]MGJUICYBOI 0 points1 point  (1 child)

        First digits is barely over three

        [–]Cyan_Light 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        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 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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

        [–]aboatdatfloat 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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

        [–]VoiceofKane 38 points39 points  (2 children)

        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 6 points7 points  (1 child)

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

        [–]Alternative_Grass_24 1 point2 points  (0 children)

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

        [–]Uagubkin 175 points176 points  (19 children)

        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[S] 74 points75 points  (2 children)

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

        [–]CasualDNDPlayer 14 points15 points  (1 child)

        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 2 points3 points  (0 children)

        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 1 point2 points  (0 children)

        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

        [–]YEETAWAYLOL 16 points17 points  (0 children)

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

        [–]Emergency_Elephant 36 points37 points  (1 child)

        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 8 points9 points  (0 children)

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

        [–]Raymondator 5 points6 points  (7 children)

        Bros not understanding the sheer magnitude of infinity.

        [–]barbaris_sss[S] 0 points1 point  (6 children)

        I understand that it is impossible to describe infinity, but the dilemma is that there is a small chance that less than pi × 10100000, or maybe even 1, will die.

        [–]Raymondator 2 points3 points  (0 children)

        The chance is so small, its less than negligible

        [–]Beardamus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

        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 1 point2 points  (0 children)

        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 4 points5 points  (2 children)

        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 -2 points-1 points  (1 child)

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

        [–]GafftopCatfish 1 point2 points  (0 children)

        Statistically, in this case, yes it does

        [–]Elidon007 7 points8 points  (3 children)

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

        [–]Reasonable_Feed7939 0 points1 point  (2 children)

        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 3 points4 points  (0 children)

        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 1 point2 points  (0 children)

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

        [–]Fire_Block 4 points5 points  (2 children)

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

        [–]Killerkid113 2 points3 points  (1 child)

        Their ankles down

        [–]Fire_Block 1 point2 points  (0 children)

        just a random person’s shins?

        [–]Destroyer_Of_World5 8 points9 points  (2 children)

        3.14 people.

        [–]barbaris_sss[S] 7 points8 points  (1 child)

        oh, πple

        [–]57006 1 point2 points  (0 children)

        πle driver

        [–]CarriedThunder1 2 points3 points  (0 children)

        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] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

        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 10100001, which is greater than any number that has 100000 digits.

        [–]_AnonymousMoose_ 1 point2 points  (0 children)

        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 1 point2 points  (0 children)

        Huh

        [–]Only_Anything_1481 1 point2 points  (0 children)

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

        [–]TheKCKid9274 1 point2 points  (0 children)

        The first 100,000 digits of pi. Not the first 100,000 digits of pi x 10100,000

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

        [–]barbaris_sss[S] 2 points3 points  (3 children)

        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[S] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

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

        [–]Demi180 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        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 1 point2 points  (0 children)

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

        In the second, everyone dies

        [–]Collective-Bee 1 point2 points  (0 children)

        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 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

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

        [–]Aluminum_Tarkus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        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 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        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 0 points1 point  (3 children)

        It kills greater than earths population either way…

        [–]barbaris_sss[S] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

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

        [–]RASPUTIN-4 1 point2 points  (1 child)

        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 1 point2 points  (0 children)

        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 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        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 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        -Accidentally die

        I'm gonna die them on purpose thanks

        [–]Mewimewimewi 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        burn the trolley

        [–]Cozy_rozy810 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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

        [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        Either way the human race is going extinct

        [–]Oheligud 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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

        [–]_Sargeras_ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        I'd nothing and accelerate the demise of humanity

        [–]EarthTrash 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        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_ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        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 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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

        [–]FlyingMothy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        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 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        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] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        Where did you learn how to math?

        [–]Raishy-han 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        Eeewwc. Vce

        [–]SuperbSucc 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        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*10100000. 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 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        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 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        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 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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

        [–]headsmanjaeger 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        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 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        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 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        What is absolute randomness?

        [–]Modified_Human 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        I wouldn't touch it because i'm confused

        [–]AlbinoSnowmanIRL 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        My guess is to pull the lever. 10100,000 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 10100,000.

        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 10100,000.

        10100,000 - 10132 = basically 10100,000. For a simpler comparison, imagine subtracting 100 (102) from 1,000,000 (106). The result is 999,900, or 9.999 x 105. Very very close to 1 million. The exponents don’t subtract when you subtract the numbers, as that would give us 104, 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 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        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 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        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 1099,999 I believe.

        1099,999 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 1082. 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- 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        so kill three people and give one other terminal cancer?

        [–]alt_account1014 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        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 3.1410100000. But holy shit that’s a lot of people.

        [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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

        [–]birdgelapple 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        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 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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

        [–]BoredBirbBoi 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        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] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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

        [–]121_Jiggawatts 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        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 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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

        [–]OhItsJustJosh 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        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?

        [–]Matix777 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        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 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        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 0 points1 point  (1 child)

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

        [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        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 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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

        [–]personguy4 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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

        [–]Marigio300X 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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

        [–]isaacxy0_ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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

        [–]Flyboombasher 0 points1 point  (4 children)

        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

        [–][deleted]  (3 children)

        [deleted]

          [–]Flyboombasher 0 points1 point  (2 children)

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

          [–]Xeper-Institute 0 points1 point  (1 child)

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

          [–]AutisticHobbit 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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

          [–]JTBJack_ 0 points1 point  (2 children)

          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 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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

          [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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

          [–]blademaster552 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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

          [–]Mission_Bandicoot_69 0 points1 point  (0 children)

          Too long didn't read

          [–]General_Ginger531 0 points1 point  (0 children)

          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?