The Official Paradox Thread

[the white rabbit]

The next sentence is true. The previous sentence is a lie.

 

[jbark]

I posted this in another thread, but it is as, or more, appropriate here:

THE OROBOUROS

CURRY'S PARADOX: If this sentence is true, then pigs can fly.

The ship of Theseus paradox: If a ship's components are all replaced, one by one, is it the same ship? What of a human, whose cells are allegedly fully replaced every seven years? (allegedly because it is actually false, though leads to interesting thought experiments)

RUSSEL'S PARADOX, paraphrased: A list that contains all lists that do not contain themselves must contain itself.

Paradox of the Court: A law student agrees to pay his teacher after winning his first case. The teacher then sues the student (who has not yet won a case) for payment.

cheers,

JBArk

 

[jbark]

Ever hear of "The Game", where you are winning if you are not thinking about playing the game? So, to play the game you have to not play the game. By explaining the game, I am seriously losing the game right now, and so is everyone else reading this. My hope is that some of you are players already, and I have made you lose. I drag anyone down with me when I lose, and I lose a lot. :d

The game is almost like a computer virus, and I have now infected more of you! Hahahahah! All hail the game. :twisted:

I don't get it. Can you explain it again, please? How do I win what?



:twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: 8) :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:

 

[Mr.Peabody]

Dang, I just lost The Game by checking this thread!

I wonder what computers will do if they reach sentience. The Game might destroy them! "If I play then I lose, but to win I must not play, if I don't play, how can I win? Erch%^# does not &*((* garble &()*)*)*" ......fzzzzzzzzzzz.... Boom!

I love and hate The Game.:twisted:

Paradox of the Court: A law student agrees to pay his teacher after winning his first case. The teacher then sues the student (who has not yet won a case) for payment.

That teacher sucks. What a punk.

Zen koans often have that paradoxical nature too.

It seems facing paradoxes can lead us into jumping into a higher order where the paradox is resolved when the apparent opposites coalesce into a higher unity.

I think laughter is highly connected to this same aspect of existence, because through humor we put two opposing ideas together and this generates some kind of reaction in the body, as if it needs to release the tension formed from the opposing forces that are explicit or implicit in the joke or humor.

I forgot to comment on this earlier. What a cool thought. How can you really resolve paradoxes? How do they not drive us mad to even consider? The key is laughter! Brilliant.

I think next time I am in a trippy state of mind, I might try inventing, or at least considering paradoxes, and see what happens. Maybe I'll just pop into a higher realm?

 

[Entheogenerator]

On a different topic,
Ever hear of "The Game", where you are winning if you are not thinking about playing the game? So, to play the game you have to not play the game. By explaining the game, I am seriously losing the game right now, and so is everyone else reading this. My hope is that some of you are players already, and I have made you lose. I drag anyone down with me when I lose, and I lose a lot. Very happy

The game is almost like a computer virus, and I have now infected more of you! Hahahahah! All hail the game. Twisted Evil

Damn you! I have been on a winning streak for months!!

Last year I decided to buy my friend a DVD for his birthday, he was not happy when he opened it... Anyone ever seen this movie? :twisted:

 

[kyrolima]

kyrolima is a full member of the nexus
and sings:
"Hey soul sister.. "

 

[jbark]

Entheogenerator: very under-rated movie. One of Fincher's best I believe.


Meno's paradox (Learner's paradox): A man cannot search either for what he knows or for what he does not know.


Though searching be the only way to find. Just expect the unexpected, or expect nothing and enjoy the search.

JBArk

 

[jbark]

A few God paradoxes:

"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"- Epicurus

If a being can perform any action, then it should be able to create a task which this being is unable to perform; hence, this being cannot perform all actions. Yet, on the other hand, if this being cannot create a task that it is unable to perform, then there exists something it cannot do:

Could an omnipotent being create a stone so heavy that even he could not lift it?


Here are a few I scribed, though I suspect I am not the first to formulate them (particularly the first one, it rings a bell...):

Impossible to be at once omniscient and omnipotent. If one knows the choices one will make then there is no free will and without choice there is no power. And if god is one and not the other, he be no god.


Insofar as god exists he made all that exists from nothing. Which means, of course, that to insist he exists is to assert that nothing can make a god.


If reality is an illusion then this sentence is false.


No statement can be true unless there is an objective reality. There is no objective reality.

I LOVES ME SOME PAIR 'O DOCKS.

JBArk

 

[Mr.Peabody]

"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"- Epicurus

What if there is no such thing as evil? With heat, there is only lesser and greater amounts of heat. There is no cold, just less heat. So too, there is no evil, only less goodness. Evil is just our perception of a lack of goodness, thus it is an illusion.
(Supposedly Einstein said something to this effect, just to give credit)

No statement can be true unless there is an objective reality. There is no objective reality.

I find this interesting. I can't really wrap my head around it. To me, reality is nothing but objective. Reality is made of truth, and our minds are convergent to the truth of reality, through the use of our perceptions.

I wanted to say the one about whether God can make a rock so big He couldn't lift it! I thought it was said already.... That has been one of my favorites for years.

 

[jbark]

"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"- Epicurus

What if there is no such thing as evil? With heat, there is only lesser and greater amounts of heat. There is no cold, just less heat. So too, there is no evil, only less goodness. Evil is just our perception of a lack of goodness, thus it is an illusion.
(Supposedly Einstein said something to this effect, just to give credit)

Well, I would go one step further, though equally as unoriginally - evil and good are parcels we wrap to make sense of the world in the only way humans know how: Mythically. We invent metaphors and concepts and wrap them into myths to feign control and comprehension.

"'No statement can be true unless there is an objective reality. There is no objective reality.'

I find this interesting. I can't really wrap my head around it. To me, reality is nothing but objective. Reality is made of truth, and our minds are convergent to the truth of reality, through the use of our perceptions."

Thank you - that is one of my own. The first statement asserts that for there to be a "truth" there must be an objective reality, which is self evident when you think of it. The paradox is in the second clause: If this second is false then there is an objective reality, but no truth in the statement itself (irony). But if it is true, then there is no objective reality and no statement can be said to be truth, thus the first clause must be false. And, paradoxically, the second also must be false, since we have established that there is no truth without an objective reality. And, of course, if the second is false, the first must be true; and the loop goes on...

8)

Cheers,

JBArk

 

[Use any name]

I think we've already had Russel's paradox but to make it clear...

Does a set that contains all sets that are not members of themselves, contain its self?
If it does it doesn't and if it doesn't it does.

Employment paradox: You can't have this job until you have experience of this job.

Something my computer says: No keyboard detected, press F1 to continue.

Also I lost the game, it's been years.

 

[Mr.Peabody]

Daaaanng

I guess I was looking at it wrong. That's pretty nice! I hope I can make my own paradox, or two.

I had a thought. Could it be that all paradoxes are the same at the core, and we simply paint them with different words, creating the illusion of different paradoxes? It's just a thought I had, which probably comes from the fact that when I "get" a paradox, it seems to interact with the same region of my mind every time. I guess it's similar to getting a joke.

 

[jbark]

"No statement can be true unless there is an objective reality. There is no objective reality."

This is a simpler way of explaining it, I think:

If there is no objective reality all statements are false, including “there is no objective reality.”. Meaning for there to be no objective reality there needs to be an objective reality to say anything truthful about it, including that it does not, itself, exist.

I like this one too.


It is very similar to the other one I wrote also:

"If reality is an illusion then this sentence is false."

If reality is an illusion then we can assert nothing "true" about it, including "this sentence is false". But reality cannot be an illusion for reality is defined as the "real" and an illusion is defined as "not real", so, obviously, something real cannot also be not real, and any sentence that asserts so will be, naturally, false. So is the sentence then true?

It's late... i might have to look that bit over again tomorrow to see if it makes sense...

Cheers,

JBArk

 

[Use any name]

What do you pick up when you drop it?

What do you see when you don't look?

What are you when you aren't?

What do you know when you don't?

What do you show when you hide?

What travels up on its way down?

Do these count as paradoxes, or just redundant questions?

 

[Mustelid]

 

[jbark]

Ahhhhh, the old Martin's hippocratic paradox.

 

[jbark]

What do you pick up when you drop it?

What do you see when you don't look?

What are you when you aren't?

What do you know when you don't?

What do you show when you hide?

What travels up on its way down?

Do these count as paradoxes, or just redundant questions?

PARADOX

A paradox is a statement that apparently contradicts itself and yet might be true.

Those are questions, not statements. For them to be paradoxes, a paradoxical answer in the form of a statement would need to be provided. And they are not redundant either - redundancy is excess or repetition. Those questions have neither.

I'd be curious to know the answers to those questions though.

Cheers,

JBArk

 

[Use any name]

So I couldn't refer to then as paradoxical questions?

What if I formed them like this; That which travels up on its way down.
That which you show when you hide.
That which you see when you don't look.
etc.

Either way, as questions it took me a while to decide to post, as I was unsure if they related to the thread, but I was interested in them.

I did look up redundancy before leaving it there, but thought it might bait someone into discussion of the questions. A better lure may have been unnecessary.

What travels up on its way down? I was thinking about this one for a while and decided that the way down was a part of the way up, so the way up can be seen as also the way down. To be clear, if you throw a ball it's already on the way down. This led me to consider the other questions again. What do you show when you hide? You show what you wish to be seen, which you would do if you were showing something else, though if you were actively showing something then you would be passively hiding something else. I don't really know where I'm going with this. An impurity in the thread though so...

 

[jbark]

That which travels up on its way down.
That which you show when you hide.
That which you see when you don't look.
etc.

Those are all subordinate clauses and as such incomplete sentences and not statements, so they cannot be paradoxes: there is no main subject and no main verb. Also, simply stating states that are inconsistent or incompatible (something that goes up and goes down) does not constitute a paradox. It's like saying it is red and it is blue, or it smells but it does not smell. These are contradictions within a statement but not paradoxes.

Here is another definition of a paradox:

"a statement or proposition that, despite sound (or apparently sound) reasoning from acceptable premises, leads to a conclusion that seems senseless, logically unacceptable, or self-contradictory."

Cheers,

JBArk

 

[Use any name]

Ok, I need to work on my philosophy of language. Thank you for your pointers.