
German city offers $1.1M to whoever proves it doesn’t exist - kalonis
https://apnews.com/4986a008effe48eca446aeffb377630f
======
gibba999
Here's the basic problem: They gave a month deadline. That's not enough time
to get permission for time off from work, book a ticket, take photos to show
there is no city there, and submit, at least with the required degree of
integrity (e.g. confirming GPS coordinates in some temper-proof way, etc. --
they'll just say you took the photos elsewhere).

There is no city there.

Pretending it's a fake conspiracy seems to be convincing people otherwise,
though.

A contest with an unreasonable deadline seems, well, like a not very good
attempt to prop this thing up.

~~~
close04
Poppycock! :) You can’t cry wolf for 25 years and then say you didn’t have
time to collect evidence. This was the thing to do _before_ making the claim.

After ~25 years of this running conspiracy if none of the evidence was
collected we can call it evidence that the conspiracy theory is indeed fake.

~~~
gibba999
Who says I didn't have the time?

1) The contest has a very specific standard for evidence. Just because I went
there and saw no such city existed doesn't mean that gets me a million bucks.
That's my testimony.

2) Even going back, I need a high standard of evidence. They want irrefutable
proof. That means I'd need to have some way of, in a photographically-secure
way, guaranteeing I was there, and some kind of temper-proof photos or
similar. That takes time to figure out.

This contest is great since anything submitted will be discredited. They'll
claim they proved their existence. It does no such thing. In the rules, they
say they'll only post entries online they find amusing (in other words, not
the best ones), they decide if the evidence is irrefutable, and that the
contestant waives the right to sue / contradict that judgement.

I hope you see the problem here. They'll claim to have generated proof of
existence (hey, no one can disprove it), without providing people time to do
so, and with tools to bury any proofs which would convince others. They'll
post the comical ones, and be done with it.

~~~
close04
> They want irrefutable proof.

You should have been able to provide irrefutable proof even without the $1.1M.
Otherwise you just admitted having an unfounded supposition and pretending
it's a fact. Again, 25 years is plenty of time to obtain irrefutable proof. I
mean it's not rocket science.

Put a camera on your car (or even have a caravan of cars, harder to fake),
live stream the video including a GPS, driving along the known route and
filming the mile markers until you get to the vast empty field that is that
town. Get people on reddit or something to decide at every step which speed to
have, if you should flip the wipers, this kind of thing that proves you're
live. You can rent a helicopter, I mean $1.1M will cover a lot of expenses.

And once you have irrefutable proof other people will just claim everyone and
everything in there is part of your conspiracy setup. I mean that's the go-to
explanation for any conspiracy theorist whenever they are presented with any
proof, no matter how solid. So if it works for you it should also work against
:).

> They'll claim they proved their existence. It does no such thing

You are correct. This will not prove its existence. It will prove that nobody
can provide evidence to support the conspiracy theory even after having 25
years to collect it and $1.1M to motivate them to present it.

> they'll only post entries online they find amusing

Of course. The other entries don't exist. And they'll show you irrefutable
proof of that only if you offer a prize.

~~~
gibba999
Let's say I go into my wife's room and find her purse on the floor. Do I know
she left it there? Yes, barring bizarre circumstances. Is it just an unfounded
supposition? No. Do I have irrefutable proof the next day? No I don't. I
didn't have any reason to generate it.

Perhaps for some odd reason, a bunch of Germans thought it'd be funny to make
up a city, claim a conspiracy theory to cover it up, and posted some things
about it to the Internet. Perhaps there's more to it than that and there's a
great government coverup. Do I really care? Not so much. There's a bunch of
people pretending there's a city. I don't know why, and I don't really care
why. It's somebody else's problem.

Now, would I go to Europe for 1.1 million dollars? Sure. If I knew I'd get
paid. Everything here screams I won't get paid. For the possibility of getting
paid, I might even generate proof next time I'm traveling in that part of the
world. But at the end of the day, I'm not dropping work deadlines on a few
weeks notice for likely not getting paid.

This will absolutely not prove that nobody can provide evidence to support the
conspiracy theory even after having 25 years to collect it and $1.1M to
motivate them to present it. It will prove no one decided to drop everything
in their life and spend a couple grand for the possibility of maybe getting
paid by some marketing ploy, con artist, or otherwise.

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mc32
This is too funny.

Someone mocked conspiracy theories by spinning an undoubtedly and obviously
fake theory which was in turn promptly absorbed by actual conspiracy theorists
and also became a bit of pop culture absurdity and now the city is taking this
supposed non existence as an opportunity to promote itself back into the real
world of money, tourism and goodwill. Nice turnaround.

~~~
bhaak
"promptly" :-)

It started in 1994 on the German Usenet.

Edit: this is the original posting
[http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=2r570dINNahh%40snofru.i...](http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=2r570dINNahh%40snofru.informatik.uni-
kiel.de)

You'll notice the usenet group is de.talk.bizarre so it is completely
understandable that people think this is just a hoax.

~~~
em-bee
it's not clear that the joke started on usenet or offline and was just
reported there.

reality is that at one point all highway exits to bielefeld were closed
(that's what i was told), and that triggered the joke. that this joke is still
alive is astonishing.

source: i have been to a conference in a city that claimed to be bielefeld.
now i am not so sure anymore...

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PeterStuer
Its existence relies on formal documentation such as a deed declaring its
existence as a city. Proving it doesn't exist would rely on proving the
absolute absence of the documentation, and absence of evidence is not evidence
of absence. This is a logical proof of non-existence fallacy.

But surely the German city officials would not make a mockery of such things
by frivolously asking for something they know would be logically impossible.
So thereby the only conclusion that we can draw is that the proof of non-
existence does both exist and yet by logic can not exist.

This would have been a curious case of a macro superposition had it not been
for contest communication from Bielefeld insiders leading to an observation of
the phenomenon collapsing said superposition were it not that with the
collapse a new instance of the superposition is created without delay out of
the logical fallacy and the now created instance of the past communication
which makes this an even more curious case as we are now facing an endless
series of both collapsing and superimposing states of Bielefeld's existence.

We thereby incontrovertible proved that the only possible state is that
Bielefeld does in fact perpetually both exist and does not exist fulfilling
and exceeding the requirements for claiming the offered cash price.

We realize that this proof could be refuted if the city officials were able to
proof the absence of the offer's communication as in that case the
superposition of Bielefeld's existence could remain intact and unobserved, in
which case I will gladly refund them their $1.1M minus expenses.

~~~
b_tterc_p
I’m no philosopher but this sounds incorrect. You can prove that many things
couldn’t exist, and therefore prove that it doesn’t exist.

Like an integer greater and less than 0.

~~~
PeterStuer
You can prove something could not exist. That doesn't mean you can prove that
something that can exist doesn't.

------
zaarn
But if they don't exist, doesn't that meant they can't pay the million euros?

~~~
mieseratte
Promises you know you'll never have to keep are the best kind!

------
gcmrtc
In Italy we have an entire region (Molise) that doesn't exist.

Do other countries have their own non-existent places too?

~~~
Fnoord
A reverse one: Scarfolk.

See the book Discovering Scarfolk by Richard Littler [1].

"Scarfolk is a town in north-west England that did not progress beyond 1979.
The entire decade of the 1970s loops ad infinitum. In Scarfolk children must
not be seen OR heard, and everyone has to be in bed by 8 p.m. because they are
perpetually running a slight fever..."

[1] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20493657-discovering-
sca...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20493657-discovering-scarfolk)

------
Kaiyou
"..und sehen wir uns nicht in dieser Welt, so sehen wir uns in..."

------
k__
Probably just have to watch flat earth theorists how they do it.

------
didymospl
Do they expect something along the lines of: "Assume a spherical cow in a
vacuum, uniformly emitting milk in all directions..."?

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glenvdb
Before reading the article I thought this was going to be PR for a grant/fund
of philosophy research.

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krylon
Bielefeld native here: Good luck!

~~~
Havoc
>Bielefeld native here

Impostor clearly

~~~
saalweachter
I heard anyone whose documentation shows they're from Bielefeld is actually an
undercover BND agent.

~~~
maze-le
That's what THEY want you to think anyway...

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asadhaider
Tom Scott did a video [0] on Bielefeld a few years back which was how I found
out about this.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvHcZciihJw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvHcZciihJw)

------
jhony1104
The competitions FAQ (in German): [http://www.bielefeldmillion.de/zum-
wettbewerb/#faq](http://www.bielefeldmillion.de/zum-wettbewerb/#faq)

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dangle1
Remember Moab.

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lota-putty
Why limit the prize to just €1M?

Why not "pick a number youself" instead!

~~~
t0astbread
They're scared obviously!

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gberger
Pet peeve: converting currencies from the original makes for awkward
headlines, as well as making the article future-incompatible (because of
exchange rate fluctuations).

They should keep the original €1M in the title. It is what they offered.

~~~
ghaff
The problem is that you and I may know the rough exchange rates for Euros,
pounds, and dollars (and the fact that we can more or less treat them as
equivalent at this level). But a lot of US readers won't.

I probably wouldn't have any idea if this were some other European non-Euro
currency.

I'd agree with you if they didn't have Euros in the article but the headline
is really just there to entice readers. And it doesn't really do that with a
number that's essentially meaningless to the reader. "Germany city offers 50
zorkmids to whoever..." ADDED: If you don't want a conversion then just say
offers reward.

~~~
soneca
Reading your point and GP's point, I understand your reasoning, but I agree
with GP

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Havoc
What's the going rate for a medium yield nuke?

~~~
JeanMarcS
Not sure if it works with « doesn’t exists _anymore_ »

And who will pay ?

Too bad, it was a good idea out-of-the-box !

~~~
Havoc
Timing on history is way more fungible than existence of towns.

Got downvoted to hell so clearly hn didn't appreciate/understand my town no
longer exists joke

