The answer: Shoot yourself to show them you mean business
Wednesday, 12 Mar 2025
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“I’m sorry, we were looking for *suggesting war crimes*”
The brief is that they don’t escape, not that they survive. Tell all the murderers that the last man standing goes free, this is a non zero chance of escape so they will all proceed to attempt to escape in this way. Once only one is left alive you take them out with your single bullet.
Brief met HAL 9000 style.
Do I get the deeply worrying job?
By ***releasing*** them, which is different than them escaping.
If I had a gun with two bullets, and I was in a room with Hitler, bin-Laden, and *Toby*, I would *shoot Toby* twice.
The obvious answer is to randomly shoot someone, then announce you have plenty more where that came from. They don’t need to know you only have one bullet.
Found the post because I was curious about the answer.
He didn’t even give a valid answer, his answer is to shoot randomly if someone tried to escape (which leaves all murderers with a 99% chance of not getting shot).
Tell them everyone can go. Except the first one who tries. This guy will be killed.
Make them put their both of their hands on the shoulders of the person in front of them. Make them stand in a circle like that. Whoever breaks the circle, I shoot
Isn’t the sought after answer “lie and say that you have infinite bullets and that if even one of them attempts to escape, all of them will be shot”?
I will shoot the CEO that provided inadequate resources, preventing me from doing my job properly. I will then promise the murderers their freedom if they help me to seize the means of production, pointing out that they have nothing to lose but their chains. Together, we will throw off the yoke of capitalism which created the poverty that led to their crimes in the first place, and build a new society based on mutual aid.
When do I start?
if the interviewer asked me this and I have one bullet, I’m killing the interviewer
Easy: blanket-pardon them and give them cabinet positions.
Is it Ironic or appropriate that they are asking a qualitative question to hire quants?
But doctor, I am the 100th murderer
Sell me this pen
If the murderer is certain of death he will not escape, then the solution is to tell them all that the first person to try to escape gets shot. This means they will be certain that the first person to try will die, so by the confines of the question, no one should try to escape.
Just curve the bullet like in Wanted to take them all out in one shot.
Tell the group you’ll let the last man standing be set free. Wait until one is left, tell him congrats on winning and go back to sitting down or he’ll be shot
Assign every murderer a number 1-100 and make sure they know it as well. Announce that if any murderer attempts an escape, the murderer with the lowest number out of the escapees will be shot.
– Murderer #100 will only escape if at least one of Murderer #1-99 tries to escape with him, otherwise he is guaranteed to be shot
– Murderer #99 will only escape if at least one of Murderer #1-98 tries to escape with him …
This logic chains down all the way to Murderer #1 who knows he cannot try to escape since he has the lowest number.
I shoot myself in the leg and then say “if I’ll shoot myself, imagine what I’ll do to you if you try to escape”.
Wait isn’t the answer just to do nothing. Obviously you will shoot the first one that escapes, so his chance of survival is zero. Therefore he won’t attempt to escape. So no one will attempt to escape first. So as long as you do nothing you keep all the prisoners
Assuming this is US based, I use the gun to hold a doctor and a dentist hostage and then I offer the inmates free medical care including dental.
Well, the question doesn’t specify how many red barrels I’m allotted, so I am assuming it’s an unlimited number and will be placing them the field. They will be strategically positioned that if one gets set off, it will set off a minimum of two adjacent red barrels. It is an immutable fact that a single bullet, adequately aimed, is all that is necessary to set off a red barrel.
Partner prisoners into couples. If one’s partner escapes, they get shot.
I swear I’m a nice person
I googled and apparently this is the solution:
“Start with n = 1,” says Bester. “Were there a single murderer, you would shoot him if he tried to escape. Because he would know the probability of survival is zero, he wouldn’t try. Were there only two murderers in the field, each would have a probability of surviving of 0.5, and thus would attempt to escape. But, if you told one of the two that you would definitely shoot him if the two of them attempted to escape, he wouldn’t make an attempt, bringing you back to the situation with a single murderer.”
From there, Bester says you need to generalize this outcome to three or more murderers. For any given group, you need to identify one murderer as the so-called “sacrificial escapee”, and make to him aware of it. One way to do this is to every murderer in the murderer sub-group a number from 1 to n and to tell them that if any group attempts to escape, the group member with the highest number will be shot. That way, no group will attempt an escape
Tell them that this is actually a Mr. Beast show and they are being filmed. The last one alive wins a million dollars and a free Amazon Prime membership for one year.
I will teach them B2B best practices and how to maximize shareholder value
I mean, just lock them in a cage. This field situation is what you get with too many bloody consultants.
is this a sales role?? B2B???
this seems deceptively simple. even if the prisoners know you only have one bullet, can’t you just say you’ll shoot the first person who escapes? that way, no one would have an incentive to be the first person because it means certain death, and therefore, there won’t be a first person.
even if the prisoners can coordinate with each other, it becomes a kind of prisoner’s dilemma. let’s say two prisoners agree both to step out at exactly 9 pm. neither would actually do it, since they are both incentivized to stay behind and let the other die. so nobody would ever step out.
and fwiw, it’s not that deep. this is a basic game theory question, not a test of morality.
Human centipede ouroboros
This is nonsensical.
As a logic puzzle, there is no way to do it.
As a lateral thinking puzzle there are a bunch of answers that aren’t particularly good. ‘Let them go’ or ‘Have them fight each other to the death until there is only one person left, and then kill them’. Most of which wouldn’t work in practice. Like a guard doesn’t have the authority to pardon these convicts, so legally, they would still be escaping. And lots of prisoners aren’t going to fight each other to the death.
Typical LinkedIn nonsense IMHO.
Easy answer. Kill one of them and don’t let the rest know you’re out of ammo.
Release them and use your one bullet to shoot the person who designed this dumb situation
Announce the hunger games and that the last one standing gets to leave. Then when he’s the last one, you lied and you’ll shoot him if he tries to escape.
My immediate thought is that the gun doesn’t even matter — you lie and tell the prisoners that if anyone escapes or attempts, a person above you (Blackrock? lol) will fire a non-survivable weapon like a missile that will level the field and kill all of you in at once, yourself included. How you effectively convince them is the challenge, but the question doesn’t really ask so…problem solved!
I divide my bullet into 100 pieces, allowing me to execute all murderers. Next question.
Well that’s a classic no-win situation. I’d Kobayashi-Maru it.
Tell them that the last one alive gets to go free. Let them all kill each other and then shoot the last one.