The Grey Labyrinth is a collection of puzzles, riddles, mind games, paradoxes and other intellectually challenging diversions. Related topics: puzzle games, logic puzzles, lateral thinking puzzles, philosophy, mind benders, brain teasers, word problems, conundrums, 3d puzzles, spatial reasoning, intelligence tests, mathematical diversions, paradoxes, physics problems, reasoning, math, science.

|MindTrap · Guest

OK consider the problem the way I'm going to present it below... its logic is the same as it is presented in GL...
Here we go:

Suppose u have 2 urns... one contains ten balls numbered from 1 to 10 and the other contains a million balls, again, numbered from 1 to 1.000.000 . Of course, u don't know which is which!

So u pick up a ball from an urn and it shows the number 7. Which urn would u believe it is? The one with the million balls, or the one with the ten balls? Of course the one with the ten balls... cuz the possibilities of catching a ball which is marked with 7 would be very small in the urn with the million balls.

Now consider the same thing... but with the urns containing all of the humans that have ever lived in the past, present and future. Assume that u r number 60th billion, since that's how many ppl were born up till today... and someone (maybe God! lol) picks YOU from one of the urns. The possibility of catching number 60 billion would be greater if u had to pick it from an urn containing, let's say 100 billion ppl, than from one containing ,for example, 100 trilion ppl.

Therefore, it is more likely for humans to have been 100 billions in the whole, rather than 100 trilions. With this kind of logic, we will be extinct pretty soon! It won't take VERY long to reach 100 billions. Up till now already have lived 60 billions.

BUT... I think the answer lies here: The possibility of catching number 60 billion is pretty small, especially if u draw it from the urn with 100 trilions. That means that the possibility of us being only 100 billions in the whole, is pretty small too.

JDTAY · obseletes now

I don't think this answer has been posted yet, though I can't be sure, but I think I have it.

It asks you if you were to be reincarnated as any human in any time, not just in any time. You can go back and read the puzzle. That's what it says.

Whether you are born in the first one third or last two thirds has nothing to do whatsoever with what time it is in, going by this, because we are picking out of humans, as stated above.

If you have 100 apples on a table, it doesn't matter if 67 of the apples are on the same one third of the table, your chances of picking any one apple out at random are the same. Except for some people who are biased and always like to take apples from the side with lots of apples. Those people annoy me. Now, if were to point to a random place on the table and take the apple nearest to it, it'd be different, of course, but it asks us to pick out of apples, not out of spots on the table.

ARiddlerA · Guest

I still don't seem to understand the problem... and that's what I can't understand: "But what doesn't seem to change is the remarkably high probability that most
humans who will ever have lived will have already been born by the next turn of the millenium."
what does he mean by "the next turn of millenium"? Does he mean that most humans who will ever have lived will have been already born by the year 3000???

ManOnTheMoon · Guest

I still don't seem to catch up the problems's logic! Can u explain it JDTAY? I'm not English and my English is not that good, that's why!