Hilbert's fully-booked hotel always finds room for one more
David Hilbert's 1924 thought experiment of a hotel with infinite rooms shows how infinity breaks the ordinary rules of counting.
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#thought-experiments.
Every story tagged #thought-experiments.
A donkey with no reason to choose starves where it stands
Buridan's ass starves between two equal piles of hay because it has no reason to choose. The tale is usually read as an argument against free will.
Judith Jarvis Thomson named the trolley problem, then doubted it
The philosopher who named the trolley problem later said you may not pull the switch unless you would steer it into yourself. West Point still teaches it.
The ship of Theseus: the puzzle philosophers never settled
Replace every plank of a ship and is it the same ship? Philosophers have argued since Plutarch, and the same question now gets asked about people.
Wittgenstein argued a truly private word can never be corrected
Wittgenstein argued a language only one person could understand fails, because nothing outside that person could catch a wrong use of a word.
Bernard Williams used Gauguin to put luck into morality
In his 1976 essay on moral luck, Bernard Williams asked if Gauguin's success could justify leaving his family. Critics say it barely weighs the harm done.