What's your favourite paradox?

If time travel ever became a reality it would be very dangerous...

Maybe all the paradoxes around it show that the concept is based on somewhat flawed logic though?
 
anhalo said:
If time travel ever became a reality it would be very dangerous...

Maybe all the paradoxes around it show that the concept is based on somewhat flawed logic though?
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Probably. I've looked at the philosophy of time travel in a limited manner, and compared to other branches of philosophy it is ridiculously complicated.
 
And time travel can only be possible in one direction - forward in time. If it were possible to go back in time, then by now it would have been invented in, say the 25th/30th/40th century, and they'd be popping back to see us... That's assuming Earth makes it to the 25th/30th/40th Century, of course.
 
Boneman said:
And time travel can only be possible in one direction - forward in time. If it were possible to go back in time, then by now it would have been invented in, say the 25th/30th/40th century, and they'd be popping back to see us... That's assuming Earth makes it to the 25th/30th/40th Century, of course.
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Not nessecelery.

If the physics defines that any traveller to the past was already there, and any actions performed by the visitor were preordained, as it were, so no change is possible, however much free will he might feel he is exercising, no paradox can arrive. And this is quite a large segment of the physics theories that allow temporal displacement (most of Heinlein's time travel stories encapsulate this assumption). Or else, time travel is only possible with a receiver as well as a transmitter, so the invention of time travel is the furthest back you can go. (somewhat on the lines of Benford's "Timescape") Which would annoy historians and patent lawyers, but explain away the temporal Fermi paradox…
 
MstrTal said:
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.
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This one is supposedly true. Although likely not in the way you imagined. It is my understanding that the lyrics to "I'm my own Grandpa" were based on an actual occurrence.

http://www.onlyinternet.net/preceptor/rm118/grandpa.htm
 
digs said:
Ahhh okay. Doesn't that raise another paradox: that to fully experience God, you have to not fully experience God?
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Kind of. To truly experience God , you have to be aware of him with your heart,mind and soul rather than with your senses.
 
This statement is false.

(Don't think about it; you'll only get a headache. :))
 
goldhawk said:
This statement is false.

(Don't think about it; you'll only get a headache. :))
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The Liar's Paradox has always been one of my favorites. Simple, circular and, of course, impossible to reconcile.

Catch-22 (in Joseph Heller's words):

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane, he had to fly them. If he flew them, he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to, he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
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Hi,

Time travel brings a whole swathe of paradoxes with it. First there's the grandfather paradox - go back in time, kill or make it impossible for your grandfather to have kids, and poof you're in trouble. Clearly if he couldn't have kids you were never born, but at the same time if you were never born you couldn't go back in time to annoy your grandfather. So you become in essence, Schrodinger's cat.

Next as others have mentioned there's the time tourist problem. Everybody from when time travel is invented wants to go back in time to see certain events, the crucifixion for example. Now that's everybody from the infinity of time that passes by after time travel is invented. So just how many time travelling people would be in the crowd? Thousands, millions, billions, trillions?

Of course there's the issue the time travel destroys free will. Say you go back in time to watch the crucifxion. You make no changes except for one tiny one, you were there. Now if we assume that that is fixed, then everything else that occurred after that point until the point where you went back in time, must also be fixed. The slightest change anywhere along the time line between the two points could result in you not being at a point where you could not go back in time.

Of course it also violates the conservation of mass / matter / energy laws. (Maybe they're just guidelines eh?) But lets face it if everyone who time travels weighs say eighty kilo's then the universe in the past is suddenly eighty kilo's larger then it was an instant before the time traveller arrived, and the universe in the future that he left is eighty kilo's lighter. In effect matter has been both created and destroyed. Now that may not sound like a lot, but what say a million people suddenly pop into existence at the crucifixion? Now its eight hundred thousand kilos. What say its a billion, or a trillion people? At some point the mass increase and decrease will be so large that the orbit of Earth will be changed. That could stuff things up.

Cheers.
 
A lot of scientists are thinking time has no dimension. If true, time travel is impossible; there is no "there" to go back to.
 
I think a public execution by torture (crucifixion) is something I'd definitely avoid going anywhere to watch if I had the choice, Psychotic. Extremely low on my list of tourist destinations ...

Back to paradoxes. I like the quantum mechanics two-slit experiment.

Simplified, it goes like this: you send one electron through one hole in a plate, and it makes a mark on one spot on a screen on the other side of the plate. But if you make two holes in the plate, the electron makes two hits on the screen in two different places -- so the same electron goes through both of the holes at the same time, which means it's literally in two places at once ... it's true
 
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RJM Corbet said:
Back to paradoxes. I like the quantum mechanics two-slit experiment.

Simplified, it goes like this: you send one electron through one hole in a plate, and it makes a mark on one spot on a screen on the other side of the plate. But if you make two holes in the plate, the electron makes two hits on the screen in two different places -- so the same electron goes through both of the holes at the same time, which means it's literally in two places at once ... it's true
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So that's why Spock was able to meet himself, without destroying the time-space continuum... and Marti McFly's girlfriend*, and Doc Brown...



* Anyone know why they didn't stick with the original actress from Back to the Future part 1? A time thing, presumably?
 
Chaoticheart said:
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.
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Not really a paradox but a linquistic impossibility.

Restate it in mundane terms.

In the village there is a barber, the barber is male and he shaves all those who don't shave themselves. Does the barber shave himself.

The question cannot be answered for if he does he doesn't and if he doesn't he does.

It is the semantic equivalent of dividing by zero
 
RJM Corbet said:
you send one electron through one hole in a plate, and it makes a mark on one spot on a screen on the other side of the plate. But if you make two holes in the plate, the electron makes two hits on the screen in two different places
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Easier to do with photons. You ought to get diffraction. But that only happens with lots of photons. Hence the Wave particle duality paradox.
Electrons can be made to behave like waves too. Electrons are not in orbit around nucleus like planets around a sun. At quantum level particles behave very oddly indeed.
 
What about the Ship of Theseus, otherwise known as "Trigger's Broom" from Only Fools and Horses? (Trigger says that he has never ever had to buy an new broom.)

If a ship, or a broom, is repaired over time by replacing each of its wooden parts, would it still remain the same ship/broom?
 
Boneman said:
So that's why Spock was able to meet himself, without destroying the time-space continuum... and Marti McFly's girlfriend*, and Doc Brown...



* Anyone know why they didn't stick with the original actress from Back to the Future part 1? A time thing, presumably?
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Claudia Wells' mom got cancer and she left acting to be with her. Its said she recommended her friend Elisabeth Shue for the part.

http://www.hollywoodchicago.com/new...s-the-original-jennifer-in-back-to-the-future
 
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