Wasted Nothing

A superintelligence from another galaxy, whom we shall call Omega, comes to Earth and sets about playing a strange little game. In this game, Omega selects a human being, sets down two boxes in front of them, and flies away.

Box A is transparent and contains a thousand dollars.
Box B is opaque, and contains either a million dollars, or nothing.

You can take both boxes, or take only box B.

And the twist is that Omega has put a million dollars in box B iff Omega has predicted that you will take only box B.

Omega has been correct on each of 100 observed occasions so far - everyone who took both boxes has found box B empty and received only a thousand dollars; everyone who took only box B has found B containing a million dollars. (We assume that box A vanishes in a puff of smoke if you take only box B; no one else can take box A afterward.)

Before you make your choice, Omega has flown off and moved on to its next game. Box B is already empty or already full.

Omega drops two boxes on the ground in front of you and flies off.

Do you take both boxes, or only box B?

Il Movimento No Global è “ritualistico” nel senso individuato fin dal lontano 1983 da Guenther Anders (da Guenther Anders, non da Costanzo Preve!). Da circa due decenni le manifestazioni ritualizzate sono tutte eguali, e rappresentano una forma particolarmente degradata di “cerimonialità impotente istituzionalizzata”.

Al centro bandieroni della pace lunghi quaranta miglia, secondo il principio delle bandiere delle squadre di calcio. Poi un immenso corteo salmodiante con giovani dipinti, eccentrici su trampoli, famigliole con bandierine, coppiette alla Peynet, ceto politico esibizionista in prima fila, preti progressisti, extracomunitari pittoreschi. Ai lati del corteo è sempre previsto un dramma satiresco che si compie a fianco della commedia, basato su giovani in passamontagna con il casco da motociclista che spaccano vetrine ampiamente assicurate ed improvvisano passi da break-dance con loro coetanei a reddito minore vestiti da poliziotti catafratti, mentre il ceto politico esibizionistico ufficiale ripete il mantra per cui “non c’entrano nulla con il movimento”. Curioso, visto che si muovono ancora più veloci degli altri.

I must admit, I had to read the story twice before I believed it. Russia wants to send monkeys not only into space, but to Mars. I had an idea that monkeys (or more specifically macaques) were used in space missions in the past, but in my mind this was in the past and would be considered cruel in this day and age. But hold on, aren’t macaques used in medical experiments the world over anyway? Why is it so shocking that macaques should be chosen to pioneer interplanetary travel before mankind?

Now, to revitalize Sochi’s history of macaque space flight, they are beginning a two-year program to select 40 monkeys to be sent to the Institute of Biomedical Problems in Moscow so tests can be continued into aerospace biomedicine. This will culminate in a possible primate mission to Mars.