Totally agreed. The spirit of the whole thing seemed about adventure, exploration, and fun. Unfortunately the reality of the finder seems to be a far different set of stress which I hope he eventually is able to escape from.
It should be the right of the finder to stay anonymous but the cat's out of the bag now.
But this I don't understand though:
> and they both seemed to agree that the location of the find should be kept secret
In the interest of transparency after the fact I see no problem with telling people where the treasure actually was. This gives people closure especially to the ones who suffered or the families of the ones who died hunting for it, lets them verify that the instructions they went on were indeed valid, and puts to rest other suspicions people may have.
Under these conditions a judge has nothing to go on if they want to dismiss a lawsuit claiming the finder cheated in any way. There are no details on how this happened, the initiator of the treasure hunt passed away so there's nothing stopping anyone from taking this to court. Transparency is there specifically to preempt claims like this.
He said it was recovered in Wyoming. The person with the lawsuit claims they had a location in New Mexico. Not sure how the judge would let this proceed, but here we are
That's the problem, it's a "he said she said" because there's no official record. The decision to keep the location hidden even after the hunt was over makes no sense. And now the source of truth is dead with no evidence left behind, that we know of now. Imagine the lottery awarding the prize without telling you the numbers.
> Not sure how the judge would let this proceed
Because judges tend to be wary about claims made by the accused that don't have some evidence behind them to review. Fenn's log book or diary, any dated record from the time he planned and executed the preparation for the treasure hunt, or his signed affidavit could have been exactly what stopped these lawsuits in their tracks.
But as it stands neither Fenn nor the finder of the treasure considered it's a good idea to be transparent even after many people suffered financial hardship, injuries, or even death pursuing the same dream. This is not an unexpected outcome.
Some rich idiot put a treasure box on public lands, resulting in significant amounts of damage to national parks and monuments and several deaths. It was ruined from the beginning and it's a damn shame Fenn is no longer around to be prosecuted for it.
Wild lands like national parks or public wilderness are places where a person can still experience risk from the natural world. That is a significant part of the whole point of having them. That’s what makes an outing an adventure and not just a pleasant stroll.
People don’t need a $1 million treasure to get themselves into trouble in the wild. It happens regularly for reasons as trivial as selfies or even just for the fun of it. It is good that there are still places where people can do that.
Who's an idiot, the rich person that hid a treasure or the people who go into the wilderness and die?
People need to learn to be responsible for themselves. Supposing they were adults, going into the wilderness and not being able to survive is totally on them. "But there was a hidden treasure" is not an excuse.
People damaging national parks and monuments - again, that's on them. "But there was a hidden treasure" is not an excuse in this case either.
Out of hundreds of thousands of treasure-hunters, over a decade, four or five people are said to have died while looking.
On average, 38 skiers and snowboarders die in the US each year ... 1600 go missing in wilderness areas ... 5000 die riding motorcycles. Treasure-hunting looks pretty safe. Feel free to hide in your home.
Out of millions of snowboarders, 38 died. Out of hundreds of millions of park visitors, 1600 went missing. Out of millions of motorcyclists, 5000 died.
Out of a few hundred "treasure hunters", 6 died. Several dozen were seriously injured. "Treasure hunting" was by far the most dangerous activity of the ones you listed, even compared to motorcycle riding. And that doesn't include the damage to private or public lands caused by these idiots in their search.
Multiple deaths just for this treasure and the guy didn't end it after being asked by police. I think that if 5 skiers died on one mountain that ski lift would be shut down.
Leaving treasure on public lands is allowed, otherwise geocaching would be illegal. Maybe not in a national park, but certainly in a national forest or multiuse area.
I've posted this before, but I thought myself GIS to help find the treasure and wrote a webapp to narrow down the search area (https://intothefor.rest)
I personally believe the main reason the finder won't release the location is because he found it on federal land (probably Yellowstone). But hopefully some day we'll know closer than just "Wyoming".
I thought that the solution was posted in one of the many articles about this. Something based on numbers/digits embedded in the words of the poem (e.g. one=>1 too=>2 etc), and the digits wrap around the end of the poem, but you're supposed to start at the word "begin".
Unfortunately I am unable to find it in my browser history.
When asked if figuring out the puzzles required the use of anagrams, or GPS coordinates, or sophisticated codes of any sort, Stuef was clear in his response.
I had this funny feeling reading this, like "I've met these people before". Not literally the individual litigants or sore losers here, but people kind of like them.
Then I remembered -- as I've mentioned a number of times here (including recently on the thread about the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search), I used to respond to https://www.eff.org/awards/coop e-mail. This is an award where EFF will give out monetary prizes for people who find large prime numbers.
A surprising number of people developed totally unshakeable confidence that they had won the award and were entitled to the money, and some of them were very persistent and very angry at me for telling them that they hadn't. Some of them wrote to me more than 80 times to try to convince me of the importance of their discoveries and to try to persuade me to award them the prize. (I'm actually kind of grateful after reading this article that none of the claimants ended up sending me a death threat.)
There were a couple of people who sent me their supposed "formulas for prime numbers" and developed a grandiose attachment to the importance of their supposed discoveries. Some of them would cc the Nobel Foundation (!) or the Clay Mathematics Institute (!) or the United Nations (!!) on their e-mails. Presumably they did this because they felt these discoveries were of such tremendous importance that they expected to receive multiple organizations' awards for them. (One or two people explicitly stated that, and suggested that their discoveries would also be important in resolving other unsolved problems in mathematics and physics.)
So one oddity about this (no pun intended) is that for some of the people, I would (probably against my better judgment and definitely against my colleagues' advice) send them specific refutations for their claims. For example, they might claim a specific number, and I would factor it with sympy, or they might claim all numbers of a specific form (e.g. "a prime number of 1s in a row"), or they might claim a formula, and I would, in addition to sending them a link to the Wikipedia article discussing how "formulas for primes" of certain forms can never exist, send them a specific counterexample. Like "sorry, 1111111111111 has thirteen 1s in a row, but it is not prime because it is divisible by 53".
Several of the people would look at my counterexamples, and, instead of concluding "oh, my reasoning must have been wrong because I was totally sure but my conclusion was mistaken" or "oh, apparently I haven't properly understood the concept of mathematical proof", they would send a new formula that was slightly tweaked, sometimes by adding 4 or something. If I then factored the resulting number, these people would then tweak the formula again and insist that they had fixed it.
At the time I was frustrated that it was so hard to get across the concept of deductive proof to people (the idea that we know that some formulas and algorithms and equalities are correct, for deductive reasons, and not just based on lucky guesses or conjecture). But thinking about this together with the Fenn treasure stuff, I want to say that there are some much deeper psychological things going on, about some people looking at a contest or treasure hunt of a certain kind and forming a resolve to be the one to solve it, leading to an unwarranted certainty that they have done so.
So I think this is a real hazard of offering a prize, especially for solving an alluring, romantic mystery that has resisted other people's efforts to resolve it: it seems that some people's identities quickly get caught up in a notion of "I'm The One" and really persistently flinch away from efforts to disabuse them of that idea.
It's also interesting to me to think how I'm involved in a lot of organized puzzle stuff where there are public challenges for people to race against each other to be the first one to resolve mysteries or challenges, but mostly those events seem to avoid these particular phenomena (not only do people not tend to threaten each other or dispute the outcome or whatever, but they tend to be very sporting about it, and consistently defer to the judgment of the puzzle creator in determining what counts as the right answer, although they might criticize a puzzle aesthetically as having too many ambiguities or red herrings or something). I guess we're lucky that these events attract people who are motivated to follow the rules and norms of the game. Maybe the puzzlehunt world benefits from (1) typically not having any prize except bragging rights or commemorative/sentimental objects, (2) having a time limit where the contest ends at some point, and (3) having a clearly identified author or editor who is recognized as having created the challenge and thereby having the right to decide what counts as a correct solution to it. (In fact, things like Cicada 3301, that lack (2) and (3), have reportedly caused some people to become kind of obsessed, not in a good way.)
I doubt it has anything to do with the prize, the classic "What To Do When The Trisector Comes"[0] seems applicable across a lot of mathematics problems and situations. Geometry of course, perpetual motion machines, prime number finding, quantum physics interpretations...
I guess if you're offering a financial prize rather than "merely" trying to teach mathematics, you're probably in too deep for any of its recommendations though.
> If I then factored the resulting number, these people would then tweak the formula again and insist that they had fixed it.
Along with each successive refutation, you should require them to include a cheque for double the last amount with their next fix, starting with a reasonable $25.
It would make them think twice about using the reviewer as a cheap refutation engine. Perhaps even make them try to refute themselves. Which would be a win for everybody.
> “In the way that scepticism is sometimes applied to issues of public concern, there is a tendency to belittle, to condescend, to ignore the fact that, deluded or not, supporters of superstition and pseudoscience are human beings with real feelings, who, like the sceptics, are trying to figure out how the world works and what our role in it might be. Their motives are in many cases consonant with science. If their culture has not given them all the tools they need to pursue this great quest, let us temper our criticism with kindness. None of us comes fully equipped.”
The key to understanding (at least this particular case) is: The case ... was brought by a Chicago real estate attorney named Barbara Andersen
The key is that this attorney doesn't have to pay anyone to file the suit. She does it herself. She's working pro bono on behalf of herself. A lot less expensive to do it that way.
Maybe she's bored? Maybe she's developed a bad rep and can't make enough money as a real estate attorney? Maybe she just enjoys the lulz? At any rate, all it's costing her is some filing fees. She's probably not paying an attorney by the hour to advise her.
This type of shit would go away if there was something approximating true "loser pays" in USA court. Right now the guy would have to file a counter suit, hire an attorney, and hope he wins the counter suit. And then hope that the judge awards significant damages.
In the meantime he could wind up spending the entire worth of the treasure on legal fees. Too bad he studied to be a doctor instead of a lawyer. :)
It's unfortunate. I'm surprised he couldn't hire a lawyer to respond to the lawsuit anonymously. The public has an interest in knowing about ongoing litigation, but maybe not before a chance to dismiss suits that are nuisances
Perhaps, one thing I've noticed spending time around professional investors is that the best long term ones I come into contact with spend most of their time exploring first hand knowledge, whether this is via conversations or reading the public documents a company publishes.
I think they very rarely rely on secondary sources, which is very similar to his approach in finding the treasure. A few examples:
- An investor who is considered one of the best technology public equity investors in history. He and his team focus on the quarterly conference calls and spend a very intensive amount of time focussing on what the executives say.
- An investor who gotten about 100x return on his mid-stage tech investments over the last 3 years. He spends his time in conversation with contacts who have first hand knowledge of the economy and growing businesses.
- An investor who was a former parter at Goldman Sachs, and retired early to invest in public equities. He spends all day looking at the balance sheets of companies.
Are there any cryptographic tools that would let you prove that that specific treasure has been found and not by the original hider?
You could store a private key in the treasure and use that to verify a signature, but how do you prove that the original hider no longer has a copy of that private key?
I can't imagine how cryptography could hope to distinguish between a member of the public VS a member of the public who was tipped-off by the original hider.
Use a HSM like a yubikey or Google titan key to sign the message. There are modes where the key is generated on-device and not (without significant hacking) recoverable off device.
No. But one could use a smart contract to strongly disincentivize themselves from uncovering their own treasure.
E.g. Smart contract sends 20% of total treasure (in cryptocurrency) back to the hider each year until the treasure is withdrawn. Treasure can only be withdrawn by the finder address linked to the paper wallet (private key) that was hidden. When it is withdrawn, it sends the finder 15% of the remaining treasure each year, to an address of their choosing.
This way, it’s almost never worth it for the hider to uncover their own treasure
Not really. The closest thing, and not foolproof, is to enlist a notary; have them verify and document the contents, seal it, note the location, then do the same in reverse when it's found and unsealed. But even then you cannot guarantee the finder wasn't told where to find it.
Reminds me of the Ready Player One story. The relationship between the treasure hider and treasure finder. It's about the journey and not the treasure itself.
There's a ton of padding in this article to be honest; the tl;dr is that the guy that found it revealed his identity because of impending lawsuits, notably one who claimed her text messages and e-mails were hacked to spy on her ideas of where the treasure might be.
The rest of the article is just a ton of fluff, repeats, and padding. I for one would just like to know where the treasure was located in the end (and I don't understand why it's not just revealed, given that there's no treasure there anymore), and what was in it. Don't really care about who found it.
