An Amazing Mind

Let’s play a game! I’ll pit you against the host of our game, Maestro Petriciosa. The rules are very simple. Before you enter the stage, Maestro Petriciosa will put two sealed boxes on the stage. Box A and box B. Box B will always contain half a million dollars. Box A contains either a million dollars, or a slip of paper that says “Nyah nyah!”

Then you come on stage. You can choose to open either Box A, or Box B. If you open Box A, you get to keep what’s inside. If you open Box B, you get to keep both the contents of Box A, AND the contents of Box B. Sounds easy so far?

Now comes the tricky bit. Maestro Petriciosa is an excellent judge of human character. In fact, he’s so awesome, he’s right EVERY SINGLE TIME. If he judges you’ll open Box A, he’ll put the million dollars in there. If he judges you’ll open Box B, he’ll put the piece of paper in Box A.

So here we go, you come on stage. The moment of truth! Which box will you open?

Think about it for a moment.

The answer is completely obvious. The problem is, about half the people think one answer is completely obvious, and the other half think the other answer is completely obvious.

The group that would open Box A argues like this: “If you open Box A, you get a million dollars. If you open Box B, you get half a million. Duh! Get box A!”

The group that would open Box B argues like this: “The boxes are already on stage. The contents are sealed. If you pick Box A, you get what’s inside. If you pick Box B, you get what’s inside Box A, and also an extra half a million dollars! Duh! Get box B!”

It comes down to one fact. Do you believe that something you do now can influence something in the past?

SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM. (I don’t like spam!)

Enlarge you penis! Online casino! URGENT: NEED YOUR HELP TO TRANSFER $20 MILLION!!! You know, junk e-mail. SPAM.

There’s lots of it. It’s annoying to you, and it’s expensive to internet providers. Apparently, about 80% of all e-mail is SPAM (I read it on the internet. So it must be true.). So who can we blame for SPAM?

The obvious solution is to blame the spammers. I don’t. (and I’ll explain why later). You could also blame the internet providers for letting them SPAM, or blame cheap e-mail, or blame the government, or your annoying neighbour from down the street. (I actually kinda like the last one )

But there’s one huge reason why SPAM exists. Get ready for it…

SPAM works!

In other words, I blame the people who buy from spammers! Yes, those people must be out there somewhere - because SPAM still exists! If no one bought from spammers, they would lose money and stop spamming.

The trouble is, e-mail is as cheap as salt water. I don’t have any exact figures (and I’m too lazy to look them up), but my guess is that if one person in 10 000 buys from a spammer, they’ll turn a good profit.

Why am I writing the whole thing here? Let’s say you buy from a spammer. You just caused a couple thousand e-mails to be sent a few days ago. (Or you caused them to be sent in the future. Depending on your point of view.)

Oh and, I wanted to quote Monty Python. That’s the REAL reason I wrote this bit :p

Related: cows!

<SaxxonPike> mmm, steak
<SLASHSPIT> you guys don’t respect the environment, do you?
<SaxxonPike> I respect a good dinner
<SLASHSPIT> how can you eat that? cows are like one of the largest contributors of methane gas
<SLASHSPIT> which contributes to global warming and stuff
<SLASHSPIT> so what are you all doing for the environment?
<SaxxonPike> I eat the fucking cows

See a problem there?

By now, if you’re following my logic, you should see the obvious problem! The only reason the cows were grown was to have SaxxonPike eat them.

Depending on your view of the world, you could say that his eating the cow NOW caused the cow to be bred three years ago. Or, more naturally, that his eating the cow NOW causes more cows to be produced in the future.

In any case, eating a cow only makes the environmental problem worse. Which brings me to my next point…

How to save the world

Want to get rid of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas? Stop global warwing? In other words, save the world?

Demand more wood!

Trees are great at capturing carbon from the atmosphere. They’re over half of carbon by mass. So cutting down trees lets you store the carbon as a piece of furniture. Problem solved!

Yeah, I know. Cutting down trees without replacing them won’t solve the problem. Here’s my step-by-step plan:

1. Pass an immediate worldwide ban on cutting new trees.
Only let companies cut down trees if they plant two new trees in exchange. Or let them get wood from private tree-farms.
2. Use more trees!
Do you use recycled paper? Then you don’t care about the environment! Do you use wooden furniture? Excellent! You are saving the world!

A bonus! Other common materials are huge emitters of carbon dioxide. Concrete, plastic, or metal - producing them releases tons of greenhouse gases. Only wood actually CONSUMES carbon dioxide when it’s being produced!

Now I just need to get all the political leaders to agree. Hmmm.

Summary

So, you can save the world by cutting more trees, ruin the world by killing cows, who are big emittors of greehouse gases, and you can make yourself richer by taking the contents of Box A, rather than taking the contents of both Box A and Box B.

Whoever said cause and effect were straightforward?