this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2026
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It's used as a test of basic intelligence, but it's also seriously incomplete and maybe a test of more advanced intelligence would be to have someone explain at least some of the many ways in which it's incomplete.
If I told you to let me have your 5 treats later so that I can turn them into more treats than there are particles in the entire universe and I'll give you half, you should probably call bullshit on that.
If I'm starving to death and I'm not going to survive until however much "later" is unless I eat one of those treats right now, then choosing "five treats later" would actually be the wrong choice.
This is not always a clear choice, either. The test is interesting, and it tells you a lot about how certain people think, but it isn't universal, and it doesn't actually prove anything. You need to understand and interpret why the answer makes sense in each context. And the context is always changing. We live on a changing planet. It is time to start thinking about how the context of "5 treats later" might have changed, and whether we are going to survive until whenever "later" is, and whether it is actually physically possible to provide all of those 5 treats in the hypothetical future that we are imagining.