Interestingly, that trick does get the ass to walk to at least one bale in finite time, but it’s still possible to get it to do silly things, like walk right up to one bale of hay, then ignore it and eat the other.
Okay, sure, but that seems like the problem is “solved” (i.e. the donkey ends up eating hay instead of starving).
Okay, sure, but that seems like the problem is “solved” (i.e. the donkey ends up eating hay instead of starving).
It can also use the “always eat the left bale first” strategy, although that gets kind of odd if it does it with a bale of size zero.
There is a problem if you want to make it make an actual binary decision, like go to one bale and stay.