@505Takes @mattyglesias Monster. Delete this. None of it is remotely true, except the apostrophe.
English
Pete Prokopowicz
3.9K posts
Pete Prokopowicz
@prokopowicz
Finding parking is my superpower
Oak Park, IL انضم Şubat 2009
317 يتبع68 المتابعون
@mattyglesias It's a good and fair idea to have a secure gathering place.
English
Last night a few people shared with me “inside job” conspiracy theories about the assassination attempt and nobody was stupid enough to come up with “build political support for the ballroom” as the goal of the conspiracy.
English
@countyhwy Lake Charles, LA. The Band, and Lucinda Williams
English
This summer, County Highway will put up billboards in six places whose names contributed to great American song titles and lyrics.
Care to make a suggestion?
English
@countyhwy Don’t go back to Rockville (and there are many of them)
English
@libertydadpod Two things: starting a small business, and volunteering for two HOA boards as treasurer.
English
If you're a libertarian, why did you become one?
Don't give me, "I believe in freedom" or "because I have principles." I'm asking what led you to decide that libertarianism was the idea you should support.
English
@eurofounder It’s good she’s in LA. She can sell herself to a dealer for drugs, and sell the drugs to a white kid for cash. She’ll be home in a few months.
English
My daughter went on a solo holiday to California last week
I warned her not to go, but she didn't listen
"Papa it is just two weeks, I'll meet some friends"
Yesterday she called me from Los Angeles, scared
"Dad, the bank blocked my card, I can't pay for anything. They must think it's a fraud by mistake"
I chuckled
"It is a fraud, and this is exactly what a German bank is supposed to do" I said
"What? Dad please can you call them, I have no money"
I refused
"No. Your bank is protecting your money from the American Ponzi scheme"
She started crying
"You wanted America, you're on your own. Germany does not owe you anything anymore" I hung up
Let this be a lesson for my daughter. Trust the European system, or face the consequences
English
@AdsoOfBelk Button A - press this button to die today - 100% guaranteed*
*offer valid only if less than 50% press the button.
There is no other button.
English
Two buttons lie before you
Button A - if you can get 50%+1 of people to agree with you, no one dies
Button B - if you can get 100% of people to agree with you, no one dies
English
@wtfcetialpha5 Keep watching. When they pick a space with “Double Jeopardy” the danger starts.
English
I don't like Jeopardy because the contestants do not appear to be in actual danger.
English
@michaeljknowles They don’t know how to - that’s what’s going to go wrong.
English
What could go wrong?
unusual_whales@unusual_whales
Germany says it plans to build Europe’s most powerful military by 2039.
English
@waitbutwhy You’re at a raging river which you and 99 others must cross. If 50 or more choose to form a human chain, they will all succeed. If less than 50 try it, they will all die.
Also, there is a perfectly safe bridge over the water anyone can use.
Anyone in the water is a fool.
English
Everyone in the world has to take a private vote by pressing a red or blue button. If more than 50% of people press the blue button, everyone survives. If less than 50% of people press the blue button, only people who pressed the red button survive. Which button would you press?
English
@fahdoo @waitbutwhy No - not even related to the problem, which doesn’t have a 50% chance of any outcome.
English
@waitbutwhy If we collapse this into a single decision this is what’s happening:
You have two coins and can only flip one.
Flip the blue coin: 50% chance you die, no impact on anyone
Flip the red coin: 50% chance everyone dies, you always survive
English
The thing is, the phrasing is part of the consideration. With phrasing like this, “blue” would never win so choosing it is automatic suicide, and very few people will end up dying anyway. It’s tougher when you know the phrasing will cause billions of people to choose blue.
Roko 🐉@RokoMijic
We're doing the "Blender" game again There is a large blender. Everyone in the world has to decide whether to step into the blender. If at least 50% of the people do step into the blender, it will be unable to overcome their inertia to get started, and everyone survives. If less than 50% of the people step into the blender, then they all get blended up into paste and die. People who do not step into the blender suffer no adverse effects. Would you step into the blender? (Blue=step into the blender, Red= don't do that)
English
@RokoMijic You’re at a raging river which you and 99 others must cross. If 50 or more choose to form a human chain, they will all succeed. If less than 50 try it, they will all die.
Also, there is a perfectly safe bridge over the water anyone can use.
Anyone in the water is a fool.
English
We're doing the "Blender" game again
There is a large blender.
Everyone in the world has to decide whether to step into the blender. If at least 50% of the people do step into the blender, it will be unable to overcome their inertia to get started, and everyone survives.
If less than 50% of the people step into the blender, then they all get blended up into paste and die.
People who do not step into the blender suffer no adverse effects.
Would you step into the blender?
(Blue=step into the blender, Red= don't do that)
Tim Urban@waitbutwhy
Everyone in the world has to take a private vote by pressing a red or blue button. If more than 50% of people press the blue button, everyone survives. If less than 50% of people press the blue button, only people who pressed the red button survive. Which button would you press?
English
@waitbutwhy You’re at a raging river which you and 99 others must cross. If 50 or more choose to form a human chain, they will all succeed. If less than 50 try it, they will all die.
Also, there is a perfectly safe bridge over the water anyone can use.
Anyone in the water is a fool.
English
@HairyLeggdHarpy Tell them to double check the red button before pushing it.
English
Hey red button pushers
After you've pressed red an evil goblin pulls away the red sticker you didn't notice concealing the blue button - you were distracted, you actually pressed blue.
You're given the chance to persuade everyone else how to vote.
What do you ask them to do?
Tim Urban@waitbutwhy
Everyone in the world has to take a private vote by pressing a red or blue button. If more than 50% of people press the blue button, everyone survives. If less than 50% of people press the blue button, only people who pressed the red button survive. Which button would you press?
English
@thechaosledger You’re at a raging river which you and 99 others must cross. If 50 or more choose to form a human chain, they will all succeed. If less than 50 try it, they will all die.
Also, there is a perfectly safe bridge over the water anyone can use.
Anyone in the water is a fool.
English
You're in a glass box, it's filling with water, you drown if it gets to the top.
Press red, door opens immediately. Put on dry trousers, get on with your day.
Press blue, the door opens if 4.2bn other people press the blue button.
But you get to claim to be a good person.
English
@KirstenGrind @susannecraig NEW: New York Times withheld money from its workers for taxes - a move that would have been illegal if they were working for a different employer.
English
NEW: Elon Musk took $500 million in loans out at SpaceX, a move that would have been illegal at a public company. It's just one example of the years of financial engineering at the helm of his companies. Latest investigation with @susannecraig nytimes.com/2026/04/24/tec…
English
@GBNT1952 @annunakkki Hilariously stupid! It’s beyond just illogical. This loser’s argument is Simpson’s level self-parody.
English
Lol this reject @annunakkki’s pinned tweet complains that no one can criticize Jews and Israelis on X then runs a space called “Deport Every Israel First Traitor Today” and brings up foreign Muslims to help bash Jews…
Can’t make up the level of stupid these people have achieved.
English
@kareem_carr The thing most people get wrong is when then say “if you’re trying to minimize/maximize XYZ …”. Usually the XYZ is poorly chosen. Trying minimize the probability of the worst case moral injury may come at the cost of more dead.
A more sensible metric is minimum expected dead.
English
If you press blue, the worst case is you die.
If you press red, the worst case is you took part in an action that killed just under half of humanity.
Clicking blue minimizes the worst-case moral injury.
It says you’d rather die than risk contributing to the death of another.
Tim Urban@waitbutwhy
Everyone in the world has to take a private vote by pressing a red or blue button. If more than 50% of people press the blue button, everyone survives. If less than 50% of people press the blue button, only people who pressed the red button survive. Which button would you press?
English
@Mukherjea @quantum_geoff A “win” here is having some or all the people alive. Blue strategy produces all or nothing “wins.” Red strategy never produces a “nothing.” It rarely produces an “all.” To use purely utilitarian methods, the question is how to maximize the expected living count.
English
@prokopowicz @quantum_geoff As a red voter, it's not a win for me if you die and it's not a competitive or collaborative game. It's just a choice to survive or no. Blues are just massively complicating this in a totally unnecessary way.
English
I get really annoyed by people saying that the “rational” or “game theory” answer is to vote red here. This a coordination problem: there are two optimal outcomes: everyone votes red or >50% vote blue. People dying is (I hope) not an optimal outcome even for the red voters
Tim Urban@waitbutwhy
Everyone in the world has to take a private vote by pressing a red or blue button. If more than 50% of people press the blue button, everyone survives. If less than 50% of people press the blue button, only people who pressed the red button survive. Which button would you press?
English
@quantum_geoff Red doesn’t have to hit 💯 to succeed. If blue fails, team red wins. If on average voters split 50 50, blue wins half and red wins half. It’s “win” may be only one red standing but that beats zero blues.
English
The former will never succeed; the latter easily can. And, indeed, in online polls it almost always does. Of course red voters will insist that in real life everyone will vote red and so you should join them. They may be right! But it would be a sad reflection of humanity if so
English