The new mathematical method for equitable cake sharing (“A Fair Slice: New method makes for equitable eating,” SN: 12/16/06, p. 390) actually leads to a version of Zeno’s paradox. The problem is that the cake remnant left after the referee gives the two eaters their respective, equally valued pieces is no more likely than is the cake as a whole to be homogeneously desirable, thus creating the same problem in equitably dividing it as was faced in dividing the whole cake—and so on for all the successive remnants.
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