A tantalizing idea I&#x27;ve been trying to spell out properly that goes against the usual reasoning behind similar problem is that of putting into question the correctness of causality in hypotheticals.<p>Each such problem I&#x27;ve read about assumes that we can assume causality while reasoning about hypothetical, but strangely, if we let go of that assumptions, then we can arrive at different answers which hinge on otherwise surprising behaviour. I relate this idea to the fact that in logical reasoning, all true statements are, once proved, held to be simultaneously true. That is, given if A then B, with A being true, we don&#x27;t hold B to be true &#x27;after&#x27; A, but to have been always true, given A.<p>In the pirate problem, limiting ourselves to three pirates to shorten my explanation, we end up with the split being: 99 to C, 0 to D, 1 to E. This is because we assume that if only D and E were left, D would keep 100 to himself. Now given that distribution (99,0,1), D should now change his hypothetical proposal to (0,98,2). If we assume that C is not a &#x27;non-causality&#x27; believer, but both D and E to be, then E would vote no to (99,0,1) and D would do the (0,98,2) split. You may argue that D could then do a (0,100,0) split, but that&#x27;s not how a non-causality believer MUST act, because he knows that to get to that point, he must know thet E can logically know that he will do this split. This can be justified by arguing that when a pirates survives, he will enter such gold-splitting game later on. But my argument is subtler than this and doesn&#x27;t require it. It basically become this: all such pirates, posited to be perfectly logical, are interchangeable. Thus they must all reason in the same fashion. Thus, my argument is that <i>true</i> pure logical minds see that the true way to maximize their gold profit is to hold a world view that maximize their profit, even if causality is discarded. Thus both D and E know that tehy can maximize their profit by discarding their belief in causality. That is how D ends up proposing (0,98,2) and E accepts it.<p>Of course, I ended up there by assuming C was not a believer, but given my argument, C must also be ready to throw causality out of the window, otherwise he will end up dead. I believe my argument ends up splitting (49,51,0), but I&#x27;m not sure. Once causality is throw out, it&#x27;s hard to tell, but intuitively, with three pirates, those voting must be given almost equal gold and the remaining pirates must not have a majority.