The Doctor

You, a perfectly rational agent, awake in a cell. You take stock of your surroundings, and find them bare, except for a small pamphlet next to you, entitled "Food for Thought". You open it and begin to read, it informs you that you have come to be as part of an insidious experiment run by "The Doctor", a rogue logician. The Doctor, whose motives you find impenetrable, will create in turn some group of N people, starting with one and doubling each time. Each group's fate, once created, will be determined by a complex mechanism tucked away deep in a mountain whose operation is unfathomable to you. However, the pamphlet assures you that the process is truly fair and random, no group will be favored over any other. The mechanism will output either LIFE or DOOM. The experiment ends once DOOM is output. Your fate, should the mechanism decide DOOM, will to be devoured by the Beast, whose description does not bear repeating. The Doctor reasons that since the group which receives the judgement of DOOM is always larger than the sum of all members of the groups that are spared, the Beast will not become enraged by a larger possibly more delicious cohort who remain un-devoured. You look around your cell, neither you nor it have any distinguishing features whatsoever. You consider that you are a perfectly rational agent, and try and decide exactly how worried you should be about your possible beastly consumption. After you fix your answer in your mind, a booming disembodied voice tells you that the mechanism has judged twelve trillion, four hundred and sixty-three billion, nine hundred and seven million, three hundred and four thousand, and five times before your upcoming judgement. Does your fear diminish?

End of Part One

Part Two