These 5 Famous Thought Experiments Will Blow Your Mind

Love thinking about what can be? You are not alone. Ever since the dawn of time people can concoct all sorts of incredible, challenging, and sometimes ridiculous problems.

Known often as thought experiments, the purpose of these is not to arrive at an answer. Rather, they focus on the process – exploring possibilities, thinking about alternatives, considering the limits of moral and ethical issues, and to aid the development of a scientific bent of mind.

Here are some of the most famous of these thought experiments to get you scratching your brain –

Ship of Theseus

Fans of the show WandaVision may already be jumping with excitement – you know this one! This ancient thought experiment concerns the king Theseus, founder of Athens. Suppose that the Greeks wanted to preserve the mighty ship of their beloved king, so they carefully pull it out of the water and put it on a pedestal.

But wood rots, and eventually, one of the oars breaks down. Not wanting to spoil the beauty of the ship, its caretakers bring in a brand new ore and replace it. This process continues till the ship now has none of the original material.

Is it then still the ship of Theseus? Centuries later, scholar Thomas Hobbes extended the question. If all the original wood of the ship was used to build a new ship, which one is the Ship of Theseus now? The “old” one, or this newly made one from old (presumably rotted) parts?

Experience Machine

Put forward by Robert Nozick in his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia, the experience machine challenges the notion of hedonism, or the argument that people always pursue that which gives them the maximum pleasure.

Imagine in the near future, there is a machine that you need to be hooked up to, and it will give you endless pleasure for the rest of your life. The rules of hedonism would dictate that everybody would line up and plug themselves right in. But many (perhaps even you) might resist.

Here comes the question – would you really want attached pleasure? One that doesn’t come from experiences or being a certain type of person? Nozick and those who support him argue that despite being the greatest source of pleasure, people reject the experience machine, and thus are not driven by hedonism.

The Violinist

Created by Judith Thomas in 1971, this thought experiment puts a very subtle but powerful perspective on the controversial issue of abortion. Imagine that you wake up one day with a world-famous violinist lying unconscious next to you, your bodies connected through tubes carrying blood.

It turns out that the musician has a rare kidney problem that can only be solved by your blood. For nine months, you need to keep up this medical procedure for the violinist to be able to live. Are you obligated to keep him alive?Most answer no to the question, not because the poor violinist deserves to die.

Rather, they focus on their own bodily rights. Thomas extends the same thinking to abortion, and states that like the violinist, a fetus too, is an ‘external’ dependent on a person’s body. A person’s right to protect their body from being used in such a way is thus their right.

Ticking Time Bomb

This question is often used in ethical debates to understand people’s moral compasses and propensity to justify their choices. The experiment in itself is very simple. Suppose there is a person with the knowledge of an imminent terrorist attack that can cause mass destruction.

The person refuses to provide this information via any means. Should he be tortured for the information? Those who are in the favor of torture often argue that one person can always be sacrificed for the safety of hundreds.

However, most human rights groups and military leaders have suggested that the ticking time bomb scenario is far to simplistic, and is essentially a ‘guilt trip’ designed to make people agree with torture, albeit reluctantly.

The Chinese Room

This argument was put forward by John Searle to show that computers cannot have a ‘mind’ or consciousness, no matter how proficient they are. This thought experiment imagines a room in which sits a man with tons of books on the Chinese language.

Somebody slips him a paper – inside on which something is written in Chinese. The man is able to interpret what the symbols mean thanks to his wealth of books, and pushes back out a response. The question then arises – can the man inside the room speak and understand Chinese? Not really, right?

Searle extends the same argument to computers, and has thus argued that no matter how fast and incredible they are, computers are incapable of understanding.

Now that you know these thought experiments, the next time you want to bring some fanciness to your house party or just have a fun and competitive discussion with your loved ones, break out these thought experiments and let the discussions begin. And hey, you’ll already be the smartest one in the room for knowing about all these!