Your Paradox.

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mafyapenguin94

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matrix3509 said:
mafyapenguin94 said:
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?
Hahaha no but a good answer. This one is actually pretty complex at its core, but basically, the proof begins by recognizing it is true that either everyone in the pub is drinking (in this particular round of drinks), or at least one person in the pub isn't drinking.
On the one hand, suppose everyone is drinking. For any particular person, it can't be wrong to say that if that particular person is drinking, then everyone in the pub is drinking ? because everyone is drinking.
Suppose, on the other hand, at least one person isn't drinking. For that particular person, it still can't be wrong to say that if that particular person is drinking, then everyone in the pub is drinking ? because that person is, in fact, not drinking.
Either way, there is someone in the pub such that, if they are drinking, everyone in the pub is drinking. Hence the paradox.
 

MattRooney06

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Apr 15, 2009
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timesplitters 3

you use theese things called time crystels to travel back in time so you can destory the original time crystels to stop a war that thretens humanity......

so let me get this streight

you use the time crystels to go back in time and destroy the time crystels.....so because they are destroyed you cant use them to go back in time.....so there not destroyed, but then they are, then there not, then they are, then there not, then they are, then therAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH


paradox
 

matrix3509

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mafyapenguin94 said:
Hahaha no but a good answer. This one is actually pretty complex at its core, but basically, the proof begins by recognizing it is true that either everyone in the pub is drinking (in this particular round of drinks), or at least one person in the pub isn't drinking.
On the one hand, suppose everyone is drinking. For any particular person, it can't be wrong to say that if that particular person is drinking, then everyone in the pub is drinking — because everyone is drinking.
Suppose, on the other hand, at least one person isn't drinking. For that particular person, it still can't be wrong to say that if that particular person is drinking, then everyone in the pub is drinking — because that person is, in fact, not drinking.
Either way, there is someone in the pub such that, if they are drinking, everyone in the pub is drinking. Hence the paradox.
Ah I see, but then, just to be a douche, I could just invoke a solipsist argument, that if I am in the pub, I am the only real person in the pub and all others are a product of my unconscious, therefor if I am drinking, everyone in the pub is drinking because I am the only person who is real. *gets punched in the ear* *bleeds* Ow damnit thats what I get for invoking that stupid stubborn solipsist argument again.
 

Android2137

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Feb 2, 2010
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Maze1125 said:
twitchingace said:
Suppose every man in a village is well shaven everyday.
A barber claims he shaves every man in the village who doesn't shave himself.
Question:who shaves the barber?
Could the answer not be that the barber a child and therefore not a "man"? Or better yet, could he just have no facial hair to begin with, maybe he went through chemo or something... pretty much just grasping at straws but still. Or maybe, just maybe, the barber doesn't live/work in the village, just the men from the village come to see him for a shave.
Or the barber could be lying/mistaken.
What assurance do we have that the barber is even a man?

Edit: Whoops. Forgot about the gender specific pronoun.
 

Sjakie

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Feb 17, 2010
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Lots of talk about timetraveling paradoxes. to truely understand time, you must forget about those clocks you have on the wall since time is not actually 'linear', nor is it something that stands by itself since it's interwoven with space itself. Being able to timetravel or step through a portal that does that would most likely cause a collapse of local space-time. like pricking a hole in the universe. and the future (or time if you will) would unravel like a rope into loose strings, giving way to new sorts of futures and the one you came from will either cease to exist, or you just stepped into an alternate universe. Likely, you just hopped from one string to the next. no worries there.

You can easily kill your own grandparents there without anything actually happening to you, because you came from another universe in which space-time (and thus the people in it) behaved differently. If your lucky you might be able to go back and find that nothing has changed in your 'Time' Or that you find yourself in a future where you have no legal standing because you officially dont exist and your parents werent born. Different strings remember? You would still exist though....and very alone would you be

Note: the theories above are not entirely correct. I just tried to give an example you could understand.

But back OT, paradoxes...well you got me there, cant think of one except the 'statement' one

tataa peeps
 

Maze1125

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Oct 14, 2008
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Hurr Durr Derp said:
As I mentioned before, in a situation where the timeline diverges there wouldn't be a paradox either way.
Well, obviously.
But as we are talking about a paradox, that means we aren't talking about diverging timelines.

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.
But cause and effect only exists within time. There is no cause and effect within the loop because, as you say, the loop is imaginary. Therefore your grandfather must be both alive and dead as the same time, which is a paradox.

Becoming your own grandfather, on the other hand, has no such problem.
 

Redingold

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Mar 28, 2009
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Veret said:
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.
Actually, since infinity squared equals infinity, infinity over infinity squared would be 1.

Captain Blackout said:
coxafloppin said:
What happens when you drop unbuttered toast?
It lands buttered side down. Just trust me, it really does.
Or, since a cat always lands on it's feet, what happens if you put a slice of buttered toast on the cat's back?
 

Trifixion

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Oct 13, 2009
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Joseph Heller's Catch-22 has a classic one...

Yossarian wants to be grounded from combat flight duty. In order to be so grounded, he has to be officially evaluated by the the squadron's flight surgeon and deemed "unfit to fly." "Unfit" in this case means "insane," as it was determined that a person would have to be insane in order to want to fly such missions.

All well and good, save for the fact that in order to be evaluated, the person had to request being evaluated. Which meant the person must not be insane, as insane people do not realize they are insane and therefore would not request being evaluated to determine whether they were sane or not.

I love that book. It contains all the truth in life.
 

Veret

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Apr 1, 2009
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Maze1125 said:
Infinity/infinity is not necessarily 1. It can be any number, including 0 and infinity itself.
Redingold said:
Actually, since infinity squared equals infinity, infinity over infinity squared would be 1.
And here we see the delightfully screwed up mathematics that come into play when you try to use infinite numbers in your algebra. Thing is, in an expression like inf/(inf[sup]2[/sup]), any number involved is either infinite, in which case it dominates the equation, or finite, in which case it might as well not even be there.[footnote]Or, if infinity is raised to a power (e.g. inf[sup]2[/sup]), then that term becomes the important one and all the other infinities are irrelevant.[/footnote] With that sort of simplification, you can say an expression "works out to about three, give or take six billion" and still be accurate.

So yeah, Maze you're right about that, but for the purposes of this problem it doesn't matter.

Maze1125 said:
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.
There are a finite number of stars within a finite distance of Earth, but an infinite number that are infinitely far away. So it's actually inf[sup]2[/sup]/inf, which means the average distance is still infinite.

Maze1125 said:
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.
The answer of zero I gave is most certainly wrong, yes. But remember that whole "give or take six billion" thing I did? I was only trying to prove that we are not being constantly baked by an infinite amount of stellar luminosity; all that matters is that I got an answer that was not infinity.

*Takes a breath*

Hokay. I think I more or less explained all of that properly. And if your brain hurts as much as mine does, then I think we may have hit on another paradox. :)
 

Pixel

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Apr 16, 2009
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Its opposite day today! if it was opposite day then you just said it wasn't opposite day which means you said it was opposite day which means.............

Not realy a paradox but an endless loop so it could be, but maybe it isn't?
 

Urgh76

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May 27, 2009
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somethingprofound said:
Pinnochio says 'my nose will now grow' ...
you son of a *****... you stole that off me! i posted in a thread similar to this with that same thing!

maybe im just overreacting, and you heard it somewhere else.....

OT: guess i have to have a new one. i know some guy said this but LoZ OoT: Song of Storms. you figure it out