From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Fri Jun 07 2002 - 18:53:58 MDT
Barbara Lamar wrote:
>
> What would be the right thing to do in the following situation?
>
> You pay $20 for a desk at a garage sale. You take the desk home and decide
> to take out all the drawers to give them a good cleaning. Pulling out the
> middle drawer, you notice a button that had been hidden by the drawer. You
> press the button and a secret compartment springs open, revealing a stash of
> $10,000 cash. Do you consider the cash a bonus, rightfully yours since you
> purchased the desk? Or do you return the $10,000 to the seller?=
Are the bills sequentially numbered? Are they large bills or small bills?
New or used? Are there any bloodstains, indecipherable handwriting, or
curious markings in an unknown language? Can I return the money but keep
the gemstones, the blueprints, the map, and the oddly shaped crystal key?
What do the other buttons do?
-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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