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Generalizing the Futurama Theorem

2016/08/16 by Jennifer Elder, Jennifer E. Elder, Elder, Jennifer +2 · 2 voices
Computer Science · Mathematics · #20B30 (Primary) #20F05 (Secondary) #Artificial Intelligence in Games #Cellular Automata and Applications #Computability, Logic, AI Algorithms #FOS: Mathematics #Group Theory (math.GR) #math.GR

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1608.04809

openalex publication_date 2016/08/16 · arxiv published 2016/08/16 · arxiv updated 2016/08/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

The 2010 episode of Futurama titled The Prisoner of Benda centers around a machine that swaps the brains of any two people who use it. The problem is, once two people use the machine to swap brains with each other, they cannot swap back. In this article, we present a new proof of this theorem and also a generalization of it to what would happen if, instead, the machine swapped cyclically the brains of p characters, where p is prime.

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