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I have been thinking and thought of a paradox and my brain hurt from thinking to hard. who here knows a riddle or paradox or question or something.

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around, and it hits a mime, does anyone care?

Bromsy wrote:If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around, and it hits a hipster, does anyone care?

Fixed it for you...

because mimes are cool.

As far as I know one of the most well known paradoxes is that if you created a time machine, went back in time and killed you parents.
Think about it a bit.

Schroedinger's cat. 'Nuff said.

For those of you who don't know it:

A cat is in a cardboard box and you cannot see, hear or smell it ( ).

Is it alive or dead?

This can be applied to anything in the general form of:
Do things still exist if there is no-one to witness them?

Saintspirit wrote:As far as I know one of the most well known paradoxes is that if you created a time machine, went back in time and killed you parents.
Think about it a bit.

Reminds me of that episode of Futurama, where Fry becomes his own grandfather.

Skarwael wrote:

Saintspirit wrote:As far as I know one of the most well known paradoxes is that if you created a time machine, went back in time and killed you parents.
Think about it a bit.

Reminds me of that episode of Futurama, where Fry becomes his own grandfather.

Mind Fried

Quick! Somebody post a picture of Fry saying "I see what you did there..."!

Lord Rogukiel wrote:Schroedinger's cat.

Good one.
And my brain also hurts.....

What happens when an unstoppable force hits an immovable object?

I imagine something akin to a nuclear blast.

Bromsy wrote:If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around, and it hits a mime, does anyone care?

Yes the mime for a split second perhaps longer if not killed. Maybe his/her family as well.

Saintspirit wrote:As far as I know one of the most well known paradoxes is that if you created a time machine, went back in time and killed you parents.
Think about it a bit.

Or if you invent it then travel back in time to give your past self the missing parts of the plan that held you back for years.

It's times like this that I turn to the Philosoraptor for some truly thought provoking ideas...

The Schroedinger cat example is slightly off. Sorry, but I'm a bit of a stickler for physics related stuff:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger's_cat

Right, sorry about that, but they don't teach that in 12th grade phsyics.

If a car is driving at the speed of light, what happens if it turns on the lights?

Consider a race between Achilles and a tortoise. The two agree to run a 100m course. Knowing that he is twice as fast as the tortoise, Achilles agrees to give the animal a 40m head start.

When Achilles reaches 40m, the tortoise has moved to 60m. When he reaches 60m, the tortoise has moved to 70m. When he reaches 70m, the tortoise has moved to 75m.

Any time Achilles reaches the point where the tortoise was the turtle has already moved forward. Since Achilles will never catch the tortoise, he can never pass the tortoise.

How do you resolve this?

biccat wrote:Consider a race between Achilles and a tortoise. The two agree to run a 100m course. Knowing that he is twice as fast as the tortoise, Achilles agrees to give the animal a 40m head start.

When Achilles reaches 40m, the tortoise has moved to 60m. When he reaches 60m, the tortoise has moved to 70m. When he reaches 70m, the tortoise has moved to 75m.

Any time Achilles reaches the point where the tortoise was the turtle has already moved forward. Since Achilles will never catch the tortoise, he can never pass the tortoise.

How do you resolve this?

It is resolved by trying to get to the end, not to where the tortoise is.

The tortoise is not a turtle.

That is all.

The tortiose has to travel 60 meters. Achilles can travel 120 meters in the time it will take the tortoise to do so.

Achilles only has to travel 100 meters.


He wins. Tortiose ends up at about the 90 meter point as Achilles crosses the finish line. (tortoise covers 50 meters while Achilles covers 100, 40+50=90.)

How EXACTLY does the Terminator story line work? The Terminator was sent back in time to kill Sarah Conner. John Conner, her son, sent Kyle Reese to protect her. They get it on, and end up having John Conner. So John makes himself, by sending his much younger then him father, into the past to get it on with his mommy. So Skynet/Cybedyne, the ones that make the Terminators to battle/kill John Conner, actually were the reason John made himself?!?

And speaking of THAT! How did Cyberdyne come up with the idea to start work on Terminator technology? By reverse engineering the Terminator that was sent to kill Sarah.......so John also helped make the Terminators....that want him dead......even though Cyberdyne was the reason John sent his younger father back in the first place to protect mommy?!?!?!?!?!? Jesus christ!!!! I think I just tore a hole in space somewhere just trying to think about it

CptJake wrote:The tortiose has to travel 60 meters. Achilles can travel 120 meters in the time it will take the tortoise to do so.

Achilles only has to travel 100 meters.

He wins. Tortiose ends up at about the 90 meter point as Achilles crosses the finish line. (tortoise covers 50 meters while Achilles covers 100, 40+50=90.)

The paradox is that in order to pass the tortoise Achilles must first reach the tortoise. But every time he reaches the tortoise, the tortoise has moved ahead. Therefore, Achilles has to satisfy an infinite series (the distance between them being 1/2, 1/4, 1/8...) before reaching the tortoise. Since this infinite series never reaches 0, Achilles can never reach the tortoise.

Obviously we know that Achilles will win the race, but how do you resolve this?

KingCracker wrote:How EXACTLY does the Terminator story line work? The Terminator was sent back in time to kill Sarah Conner. John Conner, her son, sent Kyle Reese to protect her. They get it on, and end up having John Conner. So John makes himself, by sending his much younger then him father, into the past to get it on with his mommy. So Skynet/Cybedyne, the ones that make the Terminators to battle/kill John Conner, actually were the reason John made himself?!?

N-Jumps

Everything I say is a lie. Now, do you trust me or not?

Saintspirit wrote:If a car is driving at the speed of light, what happens if it turns on the lights?

For sake of argument, assume that traveling at light speed is possible...

You need to refine the question some more, mainly by defining your frame of reference of the observer (if any).

biccat wrote:

CptJake wrote:The tortiose has to travel 60 meters. Achilles can travel 120 meters in the time it will take the tortoise to do so.

Achilles only has to travel 100 meters.

He wins. Tortiose ends up at about the 90 meter point as Achilles crosses the finish line. (tortoise covers 50 meters while Achilles covers 100, 40+50=90.)

The paradox is that in order to pass the tortoise Achilles must first reach the tortoise. But every time he reaches the tortoise, the tortoise has moved ahead. Therefore, Achilles has to satisfy an infinite series (the distance between them being 1/2, 1/4, 1/8...) before reaching the tortoise. Since this infinite series never reaches 0, Achilles can never reach the tortoise.

Obviously we know that Achilles will win the race, but how do you resolve this?

Check my math. That is how. No paradox at all.

Lord Rogukiel wrote:

Skarwael wrote:

Saintspirit wrote:As far as I know one of the most well known paradoxes is that if you created a time machine, went back in time and killed you parents.
Think about it a bit.

Reminds me of that episode of Futurama, where Fry becomes his own grandfather.

Mind Fried

Quick! Somebody post a picture of Fry saying "I see what you did there..."!

CptJake wrote:Check my math. That is how. No paradox at all.

It's not the math that's a paradox, it's the reasoning to get there. Even Zeno knew that Achilles would win that race.

Another one:
Any definable can be referred to as a "set." Let R be the set of all sets that are not members of themselves. Is R in this set?

And yet another:
suppose you are given a set A of an infinite number of infinitely-long decimals (a1 to aN) where each place is referred to as a11, a12..a1n.
(e.g. a1 = 0.000...1, a2 = 000...2 and an = 0.99999)

Consider then a new decimal b (b1...bn) defined as follows:

if ann is even, bn equals 1. If ann is odd, bn = 2. Therefore, b will be different than any single number in your original set A. But, the original set A contains an infinite number of decimals.

How can b be outside of A when A contains an infinite number of numbers?

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