Answser is 2 y/n

[Daddy]

[YPrrrr]

Wouldn't it depend upon if you consider killing a human being to be rational?

[Thyme]

i dunno but it reminded me of this

http://mindyourdecisions.com/blog/2008/08/19/game-theory-in-the-dark-knight-a-critical-review-of-the-opening-scene-spoilers/

Scroll down to "The Pirate puzzle". It might be the same thing, just on a smaller scale.

[YPrrrr]

Also, how is it rational to be completely obedient?

[YPrrrr]

No one cares to debate rationality?

[Selkie]

How the fuck should we know? We have no clue about  the moral fiber of the group of pirates...

[Gamosan]

Unless problem is being a tricky bitch, two is correct.

[Hippopo]

The answer is 1000.  If the pirates are rational, they'd realize that its better to keep the clan as large as possible.  It makes for stronger and better looting.  Since the treasure is described as "huge," even when they split it among the 1000 pirates, they should be happily content.  Besides, NO one will get the treasure for  998 days if they keep killing each other, and that's just stupid.

[Thyme]

The answer is 1000.  If the pirates are rational, they'd realize that its better to keep the clan as large as possible.  It makes for stronger and better looting.  Since the treasure is described as "huge," even when they split it among the 1000 pirates, they should be happily content.  Besides, NO one will get the treasure for  998 days if they keep killing each other, and that's just stupid.

Hippotholomey Phoenix Otamus, doctor of philosophy to the rescue!

actually you probably just made things more complicated

[Hippopo]

Hippo Phoenix Otamus, doctor of philosophy to the rescue!

actually you probably just made things more complicated

I know.

Look at the name on the top of the page...  Descartes...  He had so much potential, but lost my respect because he was too afraid to not believe

[sans culottes]

I'm gonna go with two as well.

[YPrrrr]

The answer is 1000.  If the pirates are rational, they'd realize that its better to keep the clan as large as possible.  It makes for stronger and better looting.  Since the treasure is described as "huge," even when they split it among the 1000 pirates, they should be happily content.  Besides, NO one will get the treasure for  998 days if they keep killing each other, and that's just stupid.

See that's what I'm trying to get at

[the shortest route to the sea]

Each pirate is utterly ambitious, and we can assume there will be no overthrow of pirate hierarchies among them or violation of democracy, so each of them will take the action that gets them the most money (regardless of the success of future raids based on numbers, I'd guess). So, if we have a treasure with a value of n, if it's divided evenly, each pirate would get n/1000. But it would be in everybody's best interests if pirate 1000 was dead, and everybody would get n/999 treasure. But everyone also thinks that pirate 999 would be better off dead, so everybody would vote to kill pirate 999, etc. etc. Now, everybody's fine with this for a while, and soon everyone decides to kill pirates 1000-502. Now the pirates want more money, since if they decided to off pirate 501 there would be an equal vote to kill pirates 501-1000 (five hundred votes against by them versus five hundred votes for by pirates 500-1). In that case, I guess nothing would happen or something bad would happen, either way the whole of the pirates proposed to be killed will vote NO so that they can at least get n/1000 treasure. Reasoning thus, the pirates decide to off pirates 1000-502; the vote passes, and the treasure is divided evenly among the remaining 501 pirates.

[Hiro]

Each pirate is utterly ambitious, and we can assume there will be no overthrow of pirate hierarchies among them or violation of democracy, so each of them will take the action that gets them the most money (regardless of the success of future raids based on numbers, I'd guess). So, if we have a treasure with a value of n, if it's divided evenly, each pirate would get n/1000. But it would be in everybody's best interests if pirate 1000 was dead, and everybody would get n/999 treasure. But everyone also thinks that pirate 999 would be better off dead, so everybody would vote to kill pirate 999, etc. etc. Now, everybody's fine with this for a while, and soon everyone decides to kill pirates 1000-502. Now the pirates want more money, since if they decided to off pirate 501 there would be an equal vote to kill pirates 501-1000 (five hundred votes against by them versus five hundred votes for by pirates 500-1). In that case, I guess nothing would happen or something bad would happen, either way the whole of the pirates proposed to be killed will vote NO so that they can at least get n/1000 treasure. Reasoning thus, the pirates decide to off pirates 1000-502; the vote passes, and the treasure is divided evenly among the remaining 501 pirates.

that made no sense 

[the shortest route to the sea]

that made no sense 

Pirates want to kill each other to get more golds, so they vote to kill off a bunch of more worthless pirates, but since pirates don't like dying they vote to not be killed. Now they can keep on doing that until the amount of pirates that would be killed reach the majority. So the pirates doing the killing will have the majority by the smallest possible amount, to win the largest possible sum.