Suppose you’re lying in bed at night, and tomorrow you’re going in to your department, and suddenly you remember you have a package you need to pick up from the front desk. You can’t trust yourself to remember this tomorrow, so you turn to your sweetheart and say:
- “Remind me to pick up my package tomorrow.”
But maybe you’re not going in to the department tomorrow. Maybe you’re going in the day after tomorrow. It wouldn’t be appropriate to ask your sweetheart to remind you to pick up your package in two days. So you need to wait one more day before asking her to remind you. But what if you won’t remember to ask her to remind you? You’d better take care of that!
- “Remind me to ask you to remind me to pick up my package tomorrow tomorrow.”
But what if you aren’t going in to the department until the day after the day after tomorrow?
- “Remind me to ask you to remind me to ask you to remind me to pick up my package tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow.”
I’ll leave it to you to generalize The Reminder Protocol to an arbitrary number of days after tomorrow.
FURTHER READING
First World Problems (if this isn’t one, I don’t know what is!)
The Illogician
Troll Dad