5th Ping: Pranky! Sweety! Pumpkin! — Script

And I’m Peter. A kind of virtual host, I suppose.
So then — what exactly is pinging today?

Since you insist… I’ll take you at your word, then.

When I heard your story last time, something stuck with me:
why did the children stop their impulsive acts just because of sweets?
Could candy really have had that much deterrent power?

Let’s suppose there existed a world where social and judicial responsibility were entirely suspended —
a place where each person could act purely out of self-interest.
If Halloween were to take place in such a world, would “Treat” really be strong enough
to liberate people from the temptation of Trick?
That’s what I kept wondering.

The real nature of Halloween, seen through a cost-and-benefit comparison between Trick and Treat.

Ah, don’t worry — I haven’t forgotten.
The theme we’re handling in this Ping is nothing more than a type of thought experiment.
It is not intended to encourage any real-world actions, nor does it recommend them in any way.
ShortWave™.STUDIO, along with Jesse and Peter, assume no responsibility for any acts or statements
that you take after watching this Ping.
Everything you do is your own responsibility — please be aware of that.

First, let’s estimate the cost of a Trick.
There are many types of Tricks, but for today we’ll take one specific example — wrapping a tree in toilet paper.
We’ll define that as the standard form of “a Trick executed when Treat is denied.”
To avoid vague hand-waving, let’s set up an imaginary suburban stage for our calculation.

The area — a fictional neighborhood named Pumpking Town.
For children to walk around comfortably, we might set its size to a reasonable radius of about one kilometer.
Even with a round trip factored in, that would still be a voluntarily walkable distance.

Within that one-square-kilometer area, let’s say there are roughly seventy houses.
Given variations in population density by region, seventy feels like a balanced average.
Each house could be identical in shape and structure, and every front yard could have a single tree —
the perfect size for a child to “decorate.”

Children would visit all seventy houses, calling “Trick or Treat” once per door.
If they receive treats, they move on; if they don’t, they “decorate” that house’s tree before heading to the next.

Now, the problem is the cost of executing a Trick.
If that cost turns out too high, the whole simulation collapses.
To keep the simulation simple, let’s say it might take around ten meters of toilet paper to wrap one tree.
Across seventy houses, that would come to roughly seven hundred meters in total — give or take.
Assuming a standard roll holds about fifty meters, we’d probably need somewhere around fourteen rolls, more or less.

Roughly, yes.
Next comes the cost of acquiring those rolls.
Exact numbers are hard to pin down, but if we take sixty cents per roll as a loose estimate,
that gives us about eight dollars and change.
Let’s round it up to ten — counting the bag, and, well, the inevitable impulse-buy snacks.
So we’re looking at something like ten dollars for the full Trick operation.
Even if every one of the seventy houses refused to give Treats,
the entire “revenge budget” would stay around that mark.
Surprisingly low, don’t you think?

Now, conversely — if all seventy houses were to offer Treats,
what kind of benefit might the children gain?

Let’s suppose each house gives candy worth roughly two dollars.
That’d put the total somewhere near a hundred and forty dollars in value — give or take a few.
Compared to the ten-dollar cost of Trick, the return looks enormous;
Trick’s expense almost fades into the background.

Not so fast — there’s a trap here.
Pumpking Town may be free from legal liability,
but its economy still behaves like the real world.
So when children buy supplies for Tricks,
they face interference from parents and inner conflicts of desire —
the so-called high-layer dependencies.

Exactly.
Children — especially younger ones — generally lack independent payment authority.
To obtain the toilet paper needed for Tricks,
they’d require financial and behavioral support from higher layers.
But convincing those layers with “because I want to decorate a neighbor’s tree in toilet paper”
has a success rate of nearly zero.

Add to that a psychological bias —
if you’re going to spend ten dollars, why not spend it on candy instead of toilet paper?
Considering mental effort and guilt, the effective cost of Trick skyrockets.
Unless the chance of obtaining Treat is literally zero — and perhaps even then —
there’s little rational reason to perform or prepare a Trick at all.

Therefore, we can conclude — tentatively, of course —
that all Halloween events carried out by children are eminently rational and ethically consistent in nature.

Good children, listen to the adults around you and enjoy Halloween responsibly.
If you start Tricking just because you didn’t get candy,
you’ll end up the one losing out!