Pirates Democracy
A group of 5 pirates (named A, B, C, D and E) raid a ship and find 1000 gold coins in of the chests. Now they want to split that loot among themselves.
The ways of the pirates differs from ours, in order to split the coins, one person (starting from A) Will offer a deal to everyone and tells excacly how many coins each person should get. If at least half of the remaining pirates agree with his offer, they will split the coins like he said. But if not, pirate A will be killed and now pirate B should make an offer, till it gets to the pirate E (If everybody except pirate E is dead, then E will take all the coins).
These pirates are Geniuses and can predict what will everybody offer because of their simple priorities down below.
Now somethings about these pirates to help you solve the riddle (sorted by priority):
1 : they value their lives the most (meaning they will do everything to not be killed by the vote)
2 : they are extremely greedy (they want the most number of coins they can get, even 1 more coin)
3 : they are extremely bloodthirsty (meaning if it doesnt affect their money or life, they will vote the pirate who is offering to die)
Question : how many coins will pirate A get?
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1 solution
We can solve this riddle from the end to the beginning.
We know that if E is the only one living he gets all the coins, so if it comes down to pirate D to offer, E will reject his offer and kill him. And since they are Geniuses, D knows that, so D wont let it come down to the last 2 people.
So whatever C offers, D will accept and they will split the coins accordingly, and C knows that, so if it comes down to the last 3 people, C will make the offer to take all the 1000 coins himself.
And B knows that so he wants to make an offer that at least 2 other people will accept, so he offers to take 998 coins himself, give 1 coin to E and 1 coin to D and since E and D are getting more money than they would if they killed B, they accept.
And A knows this so he will offer to get 997 coins himself, give 1 coin to C, and 2 coins to D (or E ,doesnt matter), so C and D accept and they will accordingly split the loot.
Final answer : A gets 997, B gets 0, C gets 1, D gets 2, E gets 0.