What's your favourite paradox?

[anhalo]

What is your favourite paradox?

I recently came across one where if you went back in time, and made a large change to history that would stop you being born, would you ever have existed to go back in time and change it and so would you or would you not exist?

XD

 

[Sapheron]

It doesn't even have to go that far. Even a minor change, if you think about it logically, could set in motion a new chain of events in which case you don't go back in time because you can't, no longer have the reason to, or whatever else.

As for your original question though, I enjoy the sheer silliness of Schrodingers Cat.

 

[paranoid marvin]

Definately the Babel Fish

Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful could evolve purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God. The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing". "But," says man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It proves you exist and so therefore you don't. QED." "Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

Or anything else that proves the existence of God. Prove he exisits and faith is irrelevant ; without faith our belief system collapses. So proving he exists essentially proves that he doesn't

 

[TheDustyZebra]

Ahh, that's what happened on May 21st! God came back for judgment day and vanished in a puff of logic.

I've always liked that bit, myself, but I think my favorite is from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Traveling around in the time machine, the boys suddenly find they need some keys that they had forgotten, and Bill makes a note to himself to go back later when he has time and leave the keys under a bush, then goes over to the bush and voila! there they are, where he will leave them. I've never figured out a single reason why that wouldn't work! Of course, that might make it a non-paradox....

 

[MstrTal]

I always loved the "Same matter can not occupy the same space" paradox. Where a time traveler can not touch themselves without ending their own life, imploding or some other dire life or universe ending circumstance coming to pass.

 

[Chaoticheart]

The omnipotence paradox e.g. an omnipotent being should be able to create something to heavy for it to lift, but as an omnipotent being he should be able to lift everything.

 

[Cayal]

The omnipotence paradox e.g. an omnipotent being should be able to create something to heavy for it to lift, but as an omnipotent being he should be able to lift everything.

Aptly put by Homer: Could Jesus microwave a burrito so hot that he himself could not eat it.

 

[digs]

Or anything else that proves the existence of God. Prove he exisits and faith is irrelevant ; without faith our belief system collapses. So proving he exists essentially proves that he doesn't

I do not understand this AT ALL.

 

[Lucky_Lola]

Ahh, that's what happened on May 21st! God came back for judgment day and vanished in a puff of logic.

*snorts coffee out nose*

 

[MstrTal]

Oh another paradox I love is when someone is their own grandparent, great grandparent or family founding ancestor that directly relates to the founding of their line thus providing the necessary genetic material enabling their existence. Something delightfully twisted and lewd about this one.

 

[RJM Corbet]

... if you went back in time, and made a large change to history that would stop you being born, would you ever have existed to go back in time and change it and so would you or would you not exist?

Ray Bradbury, from the collection 'Golden Apples of the Sun'. I don't remember the name of the story.

This paradox actually changed my whole way of seeing things and in fact converted me to sci-fi, many years ago now. I've used it in my own work.

But the change was just a very tiny one -- I think he bent a blade of grass when he slipped off the special pathway which the 'time tourists' had to walk on, and suddenly there was no 'himself' to return to ...

 

[alchemist]

"Today is opposite day." Think about it....

 

[RJM Corbet]

Thinking about it.

Well, there's the zen stuff: What is the hand of one hand clapping? But that's not really a paradox.

Still thinking about it ...

 

[anhalo]

Oh another paradox I love is when someone is their own grandparent, great grandparent or family founding ancestor that directly relates to the founding of their line thus providing the necessary genetic material enabling their existence. Something delightfully twisted and lewd about this one.

I remember that one coming up in Futurama, lol, where Fry becomes his own grandad...

 

[chrispenycate]

Ray Bradbury, from the collection 'Golden Apples of the Sun'. I don't remember the name of the story.

This paradox actually changed my whole way of seeing things and in fact converted me to sci-fi, many years ago now. I've used it in my own work.

But the change was just a very tiny one -- I think he bent a blade of grass when he slipped off the special pathway which the 'time tourists' had to walk on, and suddenly there was no 'himself' to return to ...

"A sound of Thunder" – and it was a butterfly, which might explain the alternative history term of "butterflying" some event out of existence (although it might have come from chaos theory, and that hypothetical butterfly the other side of the Atlantic causing storms. And according to http://www.lasalle.edu/~didio/cours...ses/hon462/hon462_assets/sound_of_thunder.htm it's in "R for rocket" not "Golden apples".

I will admit I prefer logico/linguistic paradoxes, 'set of all sets that do not contain themselves' (Spanish Barber) style paradoxes, to those invented by specifying the characteristics of something that may not exist (after all, should time travel prove to be/have been possible, there is a strong probability that no action will be possible that did not already occur/is not already occurring/will not be occurring already in that portion of the static plenum three dimensional beings consider as "spacetime"…

 

[MstrTal]

Yeah a variant showed up in Gargoyles (a Disney Cartoon) where one of the rich main human characters traveled back in time and left some coins with a secret society addressed to himself with instructions on how to make himself rich. Thus he became rich by instructing himself how to sell the the antique coins and invest the money to become rich and later travel back in time to become rich. Kind of like Butch stealing the Delorean in Back to the Future 2 and using the book to gamble up a fortune with the answers already known.

 

[paranoid marvin]

I do not understand this AT ALL.

The way I see it , the whole point of religion is to believe in something through pure faith ; to acknowledge that God exists even though we have no direct proof. With proof of God's existence , there is no need to have faith , and without faith our belief system collapses. God ceases to be...God.

Put another way , if God was (literally) a guy in the sky sat on a cloud that we could all see, would we revere him as a God? Or would we take him for granted as part of our normal day to day life? The fact that God requires us to believe with so much evidence to the contrary, gives us a special bonding with Him.

Yes , I do believe , and no I don't require to have to put my hand in His side to prove it. God is in our hearts and in our minds; he isnt a physical manifestation that can be proved or disproved, and that's how I prefer it to be.


(sorry to go all seriously religious there!)

 

[Hex]

I don't know if it's a paradox, but I like the Monty Hall problem (oooh wikipedia lists it as a paradox so it must be then).

 

[digs]

The way I see it , the whole point of religion is to believe in something through pure faith ; to acknowledge that God exists even though we have no direct proof. With proof of God's existence , there is no need to have faith , and without faith our belief system collapses. God ceases to be...God.

Put another way , if God was (literally) a guy in the sky sat on a cloud that we could all see, would we revere him as a God? Or would we take him for granted as part of our normal day to day life? The fact that God requires us to believe with so much evidence to the contrary, gives us a special bonding with Him.

Ahhh okay. Doesn't that raise another paradox: that to fully experience God, you have to not fully experience God?

 

[Boneman]

Spoilers for two films - Frequency and Somewhere in Time...

Not really a paradox, but in 'Frequency' Jim Cavaziel is talking via a CB radio to his father 25 years in the past, and his father hides his wallet under a loose floorboard and Jim goes and gets it, and says "I've got it!". The look that his father gives, as he steps away from the floorboards is priceless... Of course if he'd taken the wallet out again, after Jim had got it, what would have happened? Brilliant film, by the way, highly recommended - they way they alter the past is handled really well.

In 'Somewhere in Time' Christopher Reeve is approached by an old lady at the beginning of the film, and she hands him a fob watch and says "Come back to me." He's intrigued, and finds she's died, but was a beautiful actress in 1912 - Jane Seymour. He manages to travel back in time through self-hypnosis and eventually gives her the watch. But the watch didn't exist for her to bring to him, until he brought it to her, and he didn't have it until she did. Geddit? Brilliant paradox...

I love time-travel films...