This is another excerpt inside a bigger story that I will post on.

This recursive series of “ifs” leads down a trail of thinking so complicated that it has a name in philosophy: the Unexpected Hanging paradox. Imagine a prisoner is told that sometime during the next week he will be hanged, and it will be a complete surprise. The prisoner, being part of a philosophical problem, is not scared witless. Instead he calmly reasons thus: I can’t be hanged on Friday, because it’s the final day of the week, and therefore not unexpected. So, I can only be hanged sometime between Monday and Thursday. However, it can’t be Thursday, because now that’s the last possible day to be hanged, and so it won’t be a surprise then either.

Continuing this train of thought, the prisoner coolly deduces that he can’t be hanged any day of the week at all, and therefore will not die. He is therefore quite surprised when he is woken up early on Wednesday and sent to his death.