Your Paradox.

[nick n stuff]

i noticed that in the TV show frineds joey and chandler go on about die hard alot in one episode yet when bruce willis guest stars they think nothing of it. amnesia maybe.

 

[Apocalypse Tank]

Can the almighty God create a rock which he cannot lift?

That's all I got at the moment.

Since God can do anything, he can defy logic and do both.

 

[Hurr Durr Derp]

That's not a paradox though. A paradox is something impossible which will fuck up the universe. Like if I went back in time to kill Hitler at birth then, in the future I'd have no reason to go back in time, thus royally fucking up the universe and creating a huge plothole that the internet will whine about for years to come.

That's not a time paradox because nothing inconsistent is caused.
A time paradox would be going back in time and killing your grandmother before she gave birth to your mother, because then you'd never be born and couldn't go back in time to kill your grandmother, and so you would be born and would go back in time and kill your grandmother, but then you couldn't be born... etc.

Except it sort of is. Killing your grandmother creates a loop without ending (you kill her -> you're never born -> you can't kill her -> you're born -> you kill her), being your own grandfather creates a loop without beginning, since in order for you to exist you need to have traveled back, but you need to exist in order to have traveled back (you're born -> you travel back -> you become your own grandfather -> you're born). It's possible that your grandmother would've met someone else if you were never born, but then you wouldn't be your own grandfather and their grandchild wouldn't be you.

That doesn't make it a paradox, if anything, it's the exact opposite of a paradox.

A paradox is something that is inconsistent for every possibility.
Becoming your own grandfather is consistent for every possibility.

If you don't become your own grandfather, then you aren't born and you don't become your own grandfather. Which is consistent.
If you become your own grandfather then you are born and you can go back in time and become your own grandfather. Which is consistent.

Another example is:
"This statement is false."
and
"This statement is true."

If you take "This statement is false." to be true, then it is false.
If you take "This statement is false." to be false, then it is true.
Both cases are inconsistent and so the claim is a paradox.

However, if you take "This statement is true." to be true, then it is true, if you take it to be false, then it is false. Making it consistent in both cases.

Killing your grandfather is like "This statement is false."
Becoming your own grandfather is like "This statement is true."

If you are your own grandfather, that means you have to go back to before you were born. But where does the cycle start? You have to be born before you go back. The first time you go back you can't be your own grandfather because you've never been back before (it's the first time, after all), but if you're not your own grandfather you were never born and you can't go back.

This is what I mean with a loop without beginning. In the 'kill your own grandfather' example, the loop has a clearly defined beginning (you go back in time and kill your grandfather for the first time), but this course of action prevents itself from happening. If you kill him, you're never born so you don't kill him. If you don't kill him, you are born so you kill him. For every iteration of 'you' there has to be a next 'you' (until you simply break the cycle by not killing him; your existence doesn't necessitate the loop so it'll simply stop repeating until it reaches a desirable outcome and then it will never have happened). A loop with a beginning but no end. It simply starts and then it is or isn't. The 'be your own grandfather' loop can't have a beginning, because assuming you are your own grandfather means that for every new iteration of 'you', you have to have a previous 'you'. Since your very existence necessitates the loop, it stretches back infinitely, so it's a loop with no possible beginning.

The contradiction here is that, in order to be your own grandfather, you must travel back in time before you exist, but of course you can't do anything before you exist. But if you assume you are your own grandfather (which is kinda the whole point), then you must have traveled back in time. It's essentially the same thing as killing your own grandfather, except opposite. You can't kill your own grandfather because you can't kill anyone when you don't exist. You can't be your own grandfather because you can't have sex with someone if you don't exist.

 

[Hurr Durr Derp]

Fine. Here's a simple one. Time paradox.

I go back in time and kill myself. Therefore my future self ceases to exist. But if my future self ceases to exist to dying in the past, how does my future self go back in time to kill myself in the past in the first place?

Thats assuming that there are divergent timelines. If time is linear, you could go back in time and try to kill yourself, but you would know that you fail, because obviously you didn't die, as you lived to make the trip.

Actually, if you're assuming divergent timelines, there is no paradox. The you that traveled back and the you that gets killed technically aren't the same person since the timeline simply splits off. They're two different versions of you, but they're not the same person. The paradox is when you kill yourself in a linear timeline, since then you can't kill yourself because you're dead, but you still killed yourself. If you killed yourself you couldn't have killed yourself, and if you did kill yourself you could. That's the paradox.

 

[Gladion]

Does the fact that I speak four different languages rather fluently (plus Latin, which I'm not very good at any more) but my native language I can hardly speak at all count?

 

[Maze1125]

As they say "snip"

For time travel to even exist, you have to take a non-linear view of time, because if you have a necessarily linear view of time, time-travel couldn't happen in the first place.

And if you have a non-linear view of time, the concept of an objective beginning becomes meaningless and irrelevant. The loop of becoming your own grandfather wouldn't need a beginning. It could just be.

And, there is no iteration involved. There is no "first time through the loop" or anything, there is one dimension of time. Killing your grandfather wouldn't have you looping into existence and then back out in the next loop. You would have to exist and not exist at the same time. That is the paradox.

 

[Xhu]

I always found Zeno's Paradoxes [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno's_paradoxes] to be rather interesting. Perhaps the most famous is Achilles and the tortoise:

Spoiler: Wikipedia's version.

In a race, the quickest runner can never overtake the slowest, since the pursuer must first reach the point whence the pursued started, so that the slower must always hold a lead.

In the paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise, Achilles is in a footrace with the tortoise. Achilles allows the tortoise a head start of 100 metres. If we suppose that each racer starts running at some constant speed (one very fast and one very slow), then after some finite time, Achilles will have run 100 metres, bringing him to the tortoise's starting point. During this time, the tortoise has run a much shorter distance, say, 10 metres. It will then take Achilles some further time to run that distance, by which time the tortoise will have advanced farther; and then more time still to reach this third point, while the tortoise moves ahead. Thus, whenever Achilles reaches somewhere the tortoise has been, he still has farther to go. Therefore, because there are an infinite number of points Achilles must reach where the tortoise has already been, he can never overtake the tortoise. Of course, simple experience tells us that Achilles will be able to overtake the tortoise, which is why this is a paradox.

 

[HappyPillz]

Fine. Here's a simple one. Time paradox.

I go back in time and kill myself. Therefore my future self ceases to exist. But if my future self ceases to exist to dying in the past, how does my future self go back in time to kill myself in the past in the first place?

Thats assuming that there are divergent timelines. If time is linear, you could go back in time and try to kill yourself, but you would know that you fail, because obviously you didn't die, as you lived to make the trip.

Actually, if you're assuming divergent timelines, there is no paradox. The you that traveled back and the you that gets killed technically aren't the same person since the timeline simply splits off. They're two different versions of you, but they're not the same person. The paradox is when you kill yourself in a linear timeline, since then you can't kill yourself because you're dead, but you still killed yourself. If you killed yourself you couldn't have killed yourself, and if you did kill yourself you could. That's the paradox.

But you can't kill yourself in a linear timeline, no matter what you did because the past is fixed. If you somehow managed to kill yourself in the past, then the events of the future/present would be void, and history would start again from the point in time that you died, creating a divergent timeline.

For time travel to even exist, you have to take a non-linear view of time, because if you have a necessarily linear view of time, time-travel couldn't happen in the first place.

I wouldn't say that that's true. There is nothing to say that you weren't in the events of the past

 

[Baron Von Evil Satan]

If there are an infinite number of universes with an infinite number of possibilities then there must exist a universe where there are no other existing universes.

 

[Maze1125]

For time travel to even exist, you have to take a non-linear view of time, because if you have a necessarily linear view of time, time-travel couldn't happen in the first place.

I wouldn't say that that's true. There is nothing to say that you weren't in the events of the past

I mean literally linear. As in, only one direction and at only one rate.

 

[Veret]

Olbers Paradox

The universe in infinite, and there are countless stars in the sky.
This means that at every point in the sky relative to earth, whatever it's position, there is bound to be a star emitting light.
So how come we have night?

Spoiler

Well when he postulated the question is was unknown, there is interstellar dust and gravity wells that stop all light reaching Earth, but, not as much as would be required to block out enough light from each star as to dim the sky to only seeing dots, so the paradox does still stand to modern science as I remember it

No, your logic is faulty. Eventually, any absorbing matter would heat up until it glowed. The correct answer is that the stars were not always shining, so their light has not reached us yet.

Whether or not you guys are right, you don't need any of that knowledge to answer this one. Say we assume that there really is an infinitely large universe containing an infinite number of stars, all of which have been burning for all time--as the original paradox implies. The amount of light at any point decreases proportionally to the square of the distance (1/d[sup]2[/sup]). Even if there are an infinite number of stars, they will be, on average, infinitely far away. So we multiply this luminosity per star (1/(infinity)[sup]2[/sup]) by the number of stars (infinity) and get infinity over infinity[sup]2[/sup]. So long as you're not afraid of dividing infinity by itself, you can simplify that expression to 1/infinity, also known as zero. Hence, nighttime.

 

[Maze1125]

So long as you're not afraid of dividing infinity by itself, you can simplify that expression to 1/infinity, also known as zero. Hence, nighttime.

Infinity/infinity is not necessarily 1. It can be any number, including 0 and infinity itself.

Further, the mean distance away is not necessarily infinity, as the mean distance would be the sum of all the distances, divided by the number of stars. Which would be infinity/infinity.
So if infinity/infinity was 1, your mean distance would be 1 too.

And you can tell your result is wrong without mathematics anyway, as it gives an answer of 0, which would mean no light reached the Earth at all, which is clearly false as we can see some stars at night.

 

[seventy7l]

I hope nobody said this but..
If i killed Bill Gates before he made the internet how am i posting here and i wasn't born when Bill Gates was alive.

 

[Hurr Durr Derp]

As they say "snip"

For time travel to even exist, you have to take a non-linear view of time, because if you have a necessarily linear view of time, time-travel couldn't happen in the first place.

And if you have a non-linear view of time, the concept of an objective beginning becomes meaningless and irrelevant. The loop of becoming your own grandfather wouldn't need a beginning. It could just be.

As I mentioned before, in a situation where the timeline diverges there wouldn't be a paradox either way. You leave your own timeline and create a new one. Your grandchild wouldn't be you, so you can't be your own grandfather. The same goes for the killing option. Your grandfather in your own timeline would still be alive, you've simply created a new timeline where you killed a man. In fact, the very act of going back creates a split-off timeline since in your own timeline you weren't there.

And, there is no iteration involved. There is no "first time through the loop" or anything, there is one dimension of time. Killing your grandfather wouldn't have you looping into existence and then back out in the next loop. You would have to exist and not exist at the same time. That is the paradox.

It's not a literal 'Groundhog Day'-kind of loop, but more of an imaginary loop of what causes what. Your grandfather's murder causes you not to be born, which cause you to be unable to kill your grandfather, which causes you to be born. That these options essentially happen at the same time is true in a linear point of view, but since time travel is involved the cause-and-effect line is not the same as the timeline.

 

[BlueTomfoolery]

This:

Spoiler

What kind of paradox is that?

 

[Cypher10110]

Just State a Paradox to see how well we can understand one.

(The purpose of this thread is too see if a Paradox is actually possible)

I'll start one with the good old Futurama one where Fry ends up doing his own grandmother when time traveling in the past causing him to become his own grandfather.

Creating a paradox is plausible, but the real question is does the universe notice? If I go back in time and kill myself, will the universe care?

Is there one simultaneous universe or at any one point are there infinite possibilities existing in parallel?

 

[Cypher10110]

Okay, say that there are an infinite number of parallel universes, and in these universes every single possible configuration for existence occurs an infinite number of times over, including a universe to which there are no parallel existences.

[EDIT] I know there is a topic which discusses this, and I understand the logic is flawed, I just thought it was an interesting concept and paradox.

Oh I like this one.

What is the difference between the accepted truth, and the truth?
Our universe could be without parallel universes, but unless it is possible to prove one way or another, we can only theorize.

You could have a universe (let's call it UNIVERSE B) where the accepted theory of reality does not contain parallel universes. In UNIVERSE B there is no way to prove the existence of parallel universes. In UNIVERSE B it would appear for all intensive purposes to be the only universe. Would this be true?

Imagine if we could prove that UNIVERSE B existed (Along with other parallel universes). However, UNIVERSE B could not prove that our universe existed. Who is real? From UNIVERSE B's perspective, they are alone. From our perspective, we are one of many.

Which universe is correct?
It's really just a matter of perspective.

 

[mafyapenguin94]

Not exactly a paradox, but a neat idea:

If you have a Ship, and you replace one bolt, you still have the same ship (because you certainly don't have a new ship).
Now, if you slowly replace every piece as such, and keep all the old ones, you would have the same ship, and a pile of pieces. Now, you take the pieces and put them together, you now have two of the same ship.

OT: "It seems like you can replace any component of a ship, and it will still be the same ship. So you can replace them all, one at a time, and it will still be the same ship. But then you can take all the original pieces, and assemble them into a ship. That, too, is the same ship with which you started."

Unfortunately, and don't take this the wrong way, but both of these premises are stated rather poorly, and are therefore inherently wrong.
Sorry I did a Philosophy final on this question. The premise for this particular problem is this, and here I will use an actual event:

Spoiler

The Ship of Theseus is docked in a harbor in Athens. Over the years, parts of the ship begin to rot. The Athenians, worried that the great legacy of Theseus and his ship will be destroyed by foul weather and the sea, begin to replace the parts with exactly similar parts, I.E parts built from materials that would have been around in Theseus' time. At a certain point in time 100% of the original pieces of Theseus' ship have been replaced by these new, exactly similar parts. Suppose, hypothetically, that all of the parts of the original ship have been saved, and are reconstructed entirely as a ship. Which one of these then, is the ship of Theseus?
Keep in mind that the Principle of Identity states that every thing is identical only to itself. Since you can clearly not have TWO ships of Theseus, because it would defy this principle, it leaves a very interesting philosophical question. Namely, which is the ship of Theseus, and which is just another boat. It's not much of a paradox though

OT: Here's one that involves absolutely no time travel at all, and will still make your heads hot enough to cook eggs on. God knows it still does for me: There is someone in the pub such that, if he is drinking, everyone in the pub is drinking

 

[matrix3509]

Olbers Paradox

The universe in infinite, and there are countless stars in the sky.
This means that at every point in the sky relative to earth, whatever it's position, there is bound to be a star emitting light.
So how come we have night?

Spoiler

Well when he postulated the question is was unknown, there is interstellar dust and gravity wells that stop all light reaching Earth, but, not as much as would be required to block out enough light from each star as to dim the sky to only seeing dots, so the paradox does still stand to modern science as I remember it

But the universe is only infinite given infinite time. Also, there are not an infinite number of stars. Astronomy have estimated the mass of the universe, hence the prediction of dark matter and dark energy. Because of the speed of light limit coupled with the age of the universe and the fact that the expansion of space is not constrained by the speed of light, we cannot see any objects whose light has yet to reach us. Indeed as the universe ages, more of it will become visible, but there will always be a limit to how far back we can see. Since the universe has a finite age, there is a certain distance beyond which no light has yet reached us. Some believe that since the universe is 13.7 billion years old, we can only see light from 13.7 billion light years away. While this would be true for a static universe, our universe is expanding and because of the effects of Doppler redshift, and we can see much further than this.

 

[matrix3509]

OT: Here's one that involves absolutely no time travel at all, and will still make your heads hot enough to cook eggs on. God knows it still does for me: There is someone in the pub such that, if he is drinking, everyone in the pub is drinking

Then he is the only person in the pub. Did I win?