The Bellhop Problem

[Edwardo Piet]

Try this one, it seems simple at first blush

A man walks into a store and steals a $100 bill. 5 minutes later, he returns to the store and buys stuff worth $70. He pays with the bill that he had stolen, so the owner of the store returns him $30. How many dollars did the store owner lose?

 but I have in the past seen flame wars over it.

$30?

He paid $70 because he was given $30 back but overall the store owner has lost $30 because the man stole $100 and the store owner gave $30 back?

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I'll have to agree with Whatevs on this, but I'm open to being corrected.

As for Monty Hall problem, according to this author, the now accepted answer is questionable actually. At first, I was very skeptical about that, but after reading his post, I'm less skeptical of his view. It all lies in the assumptions being made.

https://ima.org.uk/4552/dont-switch-math...lem-wrong/

I already knew it relied on assumptions though

These things do! It's why there are no true paradoxes and why I believe the Liar's Paradox was already solved just not many people have accepted the solution because it's so confusing or far fetched to most people (although it makes perfect logical sense to me. P.S. If I was to write a book about logical argumentation it would be called "Contradictions and Equivocations" and it would fundamentally be about how equivocations are just as illogical and commonplace as contradictions and they simply both violate the law of identity in different ways... one does explicitly and the other does implicitly).

I haven't even read the article yet but one of the assumptions is that the owner shows the guest one of the incorrect doors (one of the goats) right? But in a real game show it would be nothing like that?

Of course, but that's one of the very premises of the problem. And yet people still feel they shouldn't switch because they are applying their realistic intuitions to an unrealistic problem. But however unrealistic the problem is... the solution to the problem follows logically once you accept the premises. If it were a valid argument it would be sound but not valid... but it works kind of like a mathematical thought experiment anyway and thought experiments are rarely sound. For example: The thought experiment of the experience machine. There's absolutely no reason to believe that the experience machine exists. The purpose is to illustrate that if it did exist then that would mean hedonism was false so hedonism can't be correct in all possible worlds (For the record, I think the experience machine argument against hedonism fails spectacularly and ultimately relies on personal incredulity about what one couldn't possibly want even though one would in fact want it).