World's best suggested paradox
- Thread starter royohz
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Because paradox rhymes with "Pair of Docks".Death God said:I must be missing something but I don't get the picture right now.FalloutJack said:Best paradox? Here you go.
Oh, and on the subject of irresistable force VS an immovable object? The universe moves instead...
Going back in time to stop something, anything from happening. It cannot be done without incurring a paradox.
That is if you consider time to be linear, or even something tangible to begin with.
That is if you consider time to be linear, or even something tangible to begin with.
A fun thing I picked up in 4-U maths class last year; Supernatural numbers.
Imagine a list of decimal numbers, for example:
1.23...
2.34...
3.45...
Now, imagine if you took the first digit of the first number, added one, the second digit of the second number, added one, and constructed a new number;
1.23...
2.34...
3.45...
-----------
2.46...
Now imagine that this list is infinite, encompassing all numbers. The number formed by the (number digit +1) method will already exist inside the series , and thus the final number will have at least one digit different.. to itself.
1.23...
2.34...
3.45...
Now, imagine if you took the first digit of the first number, added one, the second digit of the second number, added one, and constructed a new number;
1.23...
2.34...
3.45...
-----------
2.46...
Now imagine that this list is infinite, encompassing all numbers. The number formed by the (number digit +1) method will already exist inside the series , and thus the final number will have at least one digit different.. to itself.
And the answer to your question is a hardend disc of glue that slides off the teflon.royohz said:
next.
The crocodile sophisme is the best paradox I've ever read,and I got a whole book on mathematical,logical and optical illusions.
It goes something like this:
The Crocodile Dilemma is an unsolvable problem in logic. The premise states that a crocodile who has stolen a child promises the father that his son will be returned if and only if he can correctly predict whether or not the crocodile will return the child.
The transaction is logically smooth (but unpredictable) if the father guesses that the child will be returned, but a dilemma arises for the crocodile if he guesses that the child will not be returned. In the case that the crocodile decides to keep the child, he violates his terms: the father's prediction has been validated, and the child should be returned. However, in the case that the crocodile decides to give back the child, he still violates his terms, even if this decision is based on the previous result: the father's prediction has been falsified, and the child should not be returned. The question of what the crocodile should do is therefore paradoxical, and there is no justifiable solution.
I copied it from wiki,but I prefer the more storified version,where the father is really an Egyptian mother.
It goes something like this:
The Crocodile Dilemma is an unsolvable problem in logic. The premise states that a crocodile who has stolen a child promises the father that his son will be returned if and only if he can correctly predict whether or not the crocodile will return the child.
The transaction is logically smooth (but unpredictable) if the father guesses that the child will be returned, but a dilemma arises for the crocodile if he guesses that the child will not be returned. In the case that the crocodile decides to keep the child, he violates his terms: the father's prediction has been validated, and the child should be returned. However, in the case that the crocodile decides to give back the child, he still violates his terms, even if this decision is based on the previous result: the father's prediction has been falsified, and the child should not be returned. The question of what the crocodile should do is therefore paradoxical, and there is no justifiable solution.
I copied it from wiki,but I prefer the more storified version,where the father is really an Egyptian mother.
No, you cannot divide by zero. Not directly.eggy32 said:
The problem with the inner post here is that the there is some confusion between "division" and subtraction. You can easily subtract zero elements of a set. This is indeed such a trivial thing to do that it forms a basic mathematical identity: a - 0 = a (a being a real number). What the post suggest is subtraction.
Division on the other hand is fundamentally different. If you imagine a pie, you can imagine the pie being divided into say four equal segments. Or 8 or whatever number you want. It turns out, the number of segments you get out of this pie is related to how much of the pie is in each segment. If you have 1 pie and you divide it into 10 segments, you have divided the pie by 10.
But when we divide by zero, we suddenly have a problem. We are asked to take that pie and slice segments that take up precisely no pie at all. We can never finish the process of dividing the pie by virtue of the fact that we need to make infinity cuts to get the job done.
Of course, division by zero is a problem largely because of the number set we generally use. Complex mathematics offer ways to explore division by zero as a concept. But in the real number space (i.e. that useful space we use every day) you cannot do it. This is, incidentally, one of the two fundamental problems Calculus seeks to resolve. While we cannot divide by zero using real numbers, we at least have the means to gather sufficient information to understand what happens as we come very close to dividing by zero.
To the larger point, most paradoxes I have seen are the result of self reference. Most supposed mathematical paradoxes are not, in fact, paradoxes but rather are the result of mathematical fallacy.
