The three apple problem is the formal core of Universal Humanism. It shows that the basic space ethics has to work in is not invented by any culture. It falls out of simple arithmetic.
The setup
Take the smallest possible society: two people. Now give them a resource they both need to survive. Call it apples, where one apple is what one person needs. There are only three cases that matter:
- One apple: conflict, scarcity - There isn't enough for both. This is the state of conflict, the "state of war": survival of one comes at the cost of the other.
- Two apples: fairness, sufficiency - There is exactly enough. Fairness becomes possible: each takes one, and neither needs to harm the other. This is the space of the social contract.
- Three apples: surplus - There is more than enough. Now the question is what to do with the extra. This is the space of politics and civilization.
Why only three?
Adding more apples doesn't create new kinds of situations. Four apples for two people is just sufficiency again at a larger scale; five is surplus again. What matters isn't the absolute number but where the resource stands relative to the survival threshold: below it, at it, or above it. Those three states are exhaustive.
The people side is countable too. You can't have half a person; humans are already discrete. So the model holds at any scale: two people and one loaf of bread, or eight billion people and a planet's resources. Real societies have all three states happening at once in different places.
The three rules
Each state maps onto one of UH's three basic rules:
- Scarcity → Survive.
- Sufficiency → Don't prevent another from surviving.
- Surplus → Help the less fortunate.
Ethics is mostly needed at the limits. When there's plenty for everyone, nobody fights. The form captures what happens at the edge, which is exactly where hard choices live.