the sci-fi bit is only to make it easier to think about. The real world scenarios it corresponds to require the reader to have quite a bit more background material under their belt to reason carefully about.
What are the real world scenarios it corresponds to? The only one I know of is the hitchhiker one, which is still pretty fantastic. I'm interested in learning about this.
r/Fitness does a weekly "Moronic Monday", a judgment-free thread where people can ask questions that they would ordinarily feel embarrassed for not knowing the answer to. I thought this seemed like a useful thing to have here - after all, the concepts discussed on LessWrong are probably at least a little harder to grasp than those of weightlifting. Plus, I have a few stupid questions of my own, so it doesn't seem unreasonable that other people might as well.