Can the bilking argument be challenged in such a way that the mere possibility of intervention does not generate any serious paradoxes? The bilking argument is due to Max Black (1956) who assumed the following scenario. Suppose Houdini makes a prediction about the outcome of, say, a coin about to be flipped \(B\) before someone actually does the flipping \(A\). We may also assume that in the past Houdini rarely failed in his predictions. In this case we might be tempted to say that the Houdini’s