from Hacker News

German city offers $1.1M to whoever proves it doesn’t exist

by kalonis on 8/23/19, 10:56 AM with 49 comments

• by gibba999 on 8/23/19, 11:56 AM

  Here's the basic problem: They gave a month deadline. That's not enough time to get permission for time off from work, book a ticket, take photos to show there is no city there, and submit, at least with the required degree of integrity (e.g. confirming GPS coordinates in some temper-proof way, etc. -- they'll just say you took the photos elsewhere).

  There is no city there.

  Pretending it's a fake conspiracy seems to be convincing people otherwise, though.

  A contest with an unreasonable deadline seems, well, like a not very good attempt to prop this thing up.

• by mc32 on 8/23/19, 11:22 AM

  This is too funny.

  Someone mocked conspiracy theories by spinning an undoubtedly and obviously fake theory which was in turn promptly absorbed by actual conspiracy theorists and also became a bit of pop culture absurdity and now the city is taking this supposed non existence as an opportunity to promote itself back into the real world of money, tourism and goodwill. Nice turnaround.

• by PeterStuer on 8/23/19, 1:17 PM

  Its existence relies on formal documentation such as a deed declaring its existence as a city. Proving it doesn't exist would rely on proving the absolute absence of the documentation, and absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. This is a logical proof of non-existence fallacy.

  But surely the German city officials would not make a mockery of such things by frivolously asking for something they know would be logically impossible. So thereby the only conclusion that we can draw is that the proof of non-existence does both exist and yet by logic can not exist.

  This would have been a curious case of a macro superposition had it not been for contest communication from Bielefeld insiders leading to an observation of the phenomenon collapsing said superposition were it not that with the collapse a new instance of the superposition is created without delay out of the logical fallacy and the now created instance of the past communication which makes this an even more curious case as we are now facing an endless series of both collapsing and superimposing states of Bielefeld's existence.

  We thereby incontrovertible proved that the only possible state is that Bielefeld does in fact perpetually both exist and does not exist fulfilling and exceeding the requirements for claiming the offered cash price.

  We realize that this proof could be refuted if the city officials were able to proof the absence of the offer's communication as in that case the superposition of Bielefeld's existence could remain intact and unobserved, in which case I will gladly refund them their $1.1M minus expenses.

• by zaarn on 8/23/19, 11:40 AM

  But if they don't exist, doesn't that meant they can't pay the million euros?

• by gcmrtc on 8/23/19, 12:33 PM

  In Italy we have an entire region (Molise) that doesn't exist.

  Do other countries have their own non-existent places too?

• by Kaiyou on 8/23/19, 11:46 AM

  "..und sehen wir uns nicht in dieser Welt, so sehen wir uns in..."

• by k__ on 8/23/19, 12:24 PM

  Probably just have to watch flat earth theorists how they do it.

• by didymospl on 8/23/19, 1:15 PM

  Do they expect something along the lines of: "Assume a spherical cow in a vacuum, uniformly emitting milk in all directions..."?

• by glenvdb on 8/23/19, 11:55 AM

  Before reading the article I thought this was going to be PR for a grant/fund of philosophy research.

• by krylon on 8/23/19, 11:44 AM

  Bielefeld native here: Good luck!

• by asadhaider on 8/23/19, 12:18 PM

  Tom Scott did a video [0] on Bielefeld a few years back which was how I found out about this.

  [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvHcZciihJw

• by jhony1104 on 8/23/19, 11:28 AM

  The competitions FAQ (in German): http://www.bielefeldmillion.de/zum-wettbewerb/#faq

• by dangle1 on 8/23/19, 12:47 PM

  Remember Moab.

• by lota-putty on 8/23/19, 12:44 PM

  Why limit the prize to just €1M?

  Why not "pick a number youself" instead!

• by gberger on 8/23/19, 12:21 PM

  Pet peeve: converting currencies from the original makes for awkward headlines, as well as making the article future-incompatible (because of exchange rate fluctuations).

  They should keep the original €1M in the title. It is what they offered.

• by Havoc on 8/23/19, 11:45 AM

  What's the going rate for a medium yield nuke?