There are is as serious black hat author problem right now that nobody is talking about, because the risk of speaking out is simply too great. Scammers are increasingly litigious. Dirty tricks abound. White hat writers are suffering in other ways too as readers come to mistrust any name unknown to them, and the only entity with enough power to enforce any kind of justice doesn't like going on patrol. But maybe there is something else we can do.

My first introduction to the concept of black hats and white hats was not via cowboy movies – I am not American and my own cultural milieu was less focused on that... frontier – but from Philosophy classes as a college student. Particularly what is known as the Hat Riddle (or the Prisoner Hat Riddle).

There are many variations, but in the version I heard, four cowboys –
two wearing black hats and two wearing white hats – are captured by banditos
who decide to have a little fun with them. They bury the cowboys up to their
necks in sand so they can't move or even turn their heads. The banditos
swap their hats around so each cowboy doesn't know which color hat they are
wearing. And then they are asked to guess… and if they get it wrong, they die.

The cowboys are arranged in the manner displayed in the picture at the top of this blog post. No one can see their own hat, of course. The first man, wearing a black hat, is behind a wall and can see none of his companions.

The next in line, on the other side of the wall and wearing a white hat, can only see the two men in front of him and their respective hat colors. The third man, wearing a black hat, can only see the cowboy in front of him. And then the final cowboy can see none of his friends or their hat colors, or indeed his own.

The cowboys have ten minutes to figure it out, or they will be executed. Communication between them is not permitted, and if they attempt it, they will be shot. But if any of the cowboys guesses the color of his own hat correctly, he will save them all.

After just one minute in the searing hypothetical heat, one of the cowboys calls out the color of his hat. Correctly. The riddle is this – and it's not a trick question – which one of them calls out, and why is he 100% sure of the color of his hat?

The answer – and the logic – is in the comments, and it requires a bit
of lateral thinking. Just like the problem we are all facing in the Kindle
Store today.

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