The monotheistic all powerful one.
The Astley paradox.
If you ask Rick Astley for his copy of Disney Pixar’s Up, he can’t give it to you, because he’ll never give you Up. But by not doing so, you’d be let down, and he’ll never let you down.
Testing this scenario is ofc incredibly risky to the state of our reality, so the Astley paradox must remain a thought experiment.
I guess I would say the paradox of tolerance. I’m sorry but I’m just gonna yoink the definition from Wikipedia because I’m not great at explaining things:
The paradox of tolerance states that if a society’s practice of tolerance is inclusive of the intolerant, intolerance will ultimately dominate, eliminating the tolerant and the practice of tolerance with them. Karl Popper describes the paradox as arising from the fact that, in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance.
Bonus least favorite paradox: You need experience to get a job and you need a job to get experience.
Saw this a while ago and it solves that “paradox” nicely.
The real paradox is this opinion coming from Twitter
I do not see any paradox there. Paradox is something contradictory. All your statements are true and do not contradict to each other.
The phrase, “You have to be intolerant to be tolerant” doesn’t sound like a contradiction to you?
Sounds like contradiction, yes, but it is just incorrect phrase. You do not have to be intolerant to be tolerant.
The society have to be intolerant to intolerance to be stable, not to be tolerant or intolerant.
I think you’re missing the point. The question is about a tolerant society.
Regardless of if the society itself is stable, for the society to be tolerant it must be intolerant of the intolerant, and therefore a tolerant society must be intolerant.
By treating tolerance as a binary (it’s either completely present or completely absent) you’ve removed your argument very far from reality. The goal in reality is to be as tolerant as possible, and the most tolerant stable state simply has some (limited) amount of (very specific) intolerance in it.
I think the job experience is less of a paradox and more of a Catch-22. True nonetheless
Wait, what is a catch-22 but a paradox? I’ve never thought about this before, but Yossarian is stuck in a paradoxical situation so these are synonymous terms right?
I don’t think so. I interpret paradoxes as being either philosophical impasses (ie, 2 conceptually true statements conflict each other in a way that makes you question where one statement’s truth ends and the other statement’s truth begins) or a situation in which a solution is unintuitive.
A Catch-22 is more of a physical and intentional impasse, where obstacles are intentionally set up in such a way that people are unable to make a choice. For instance, in the original example of a Catch-22, there is no philosophical argument saying that only insane people are allowed to not fly - it is an arbitrary rule that some higher-up established. And likewise, it is entirely arbitrary to define insane as being willing to fly.
I guess to simplify my stance, it’s a paradox if it makes you think “the universe has made this unsolvable” and it’s a Catch-22 if it makes you think “some asshole made this unsolvable”
This makes quite a lot of sense, thanks for explaining that to me!
Again leaving out the second half of the quote.
They always do.
I’ve always hated the intolerance paradox, because it is the same logic used to justify atrocities of all sorts. Trying to make society safe for a preferred group, and targeting anyone who takes offense to that idea.
Movement of any kind is a paradox if measured
Why do people always vote against their own self interests.
Oh man this one is easy. Temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
They don’t. They’re voting against your self interests or what you think are theirs
Mine is similar to yours in that it’s about the power of God. It’s called the Epicurean Trilemma:
- If a god is omniscient and omnipotent, then they have knowledge of all evil and have the power to put an end to it. But if they do not end it, they are not omnibenevolent.
- If a god is omnipotent and omnibenevolent, then they have the power to extinguish evil and want to extinguish it. But if they do not do it, their knowledge of evil is limited, so they are not omniscient.
- If a god is omniscient and omnibenevolent, then they know of all the evil that exists and wants to change it. But if they do not, which must be because they are not capable of changing it, so they are not omnipotent.
This proves fairly simply that God as commonly interpreted by modern Christians cannot exist. Early Christians and Jews had no problem here, because their god was simply not meant to be omnibenevolent. Go even further back in time and he was not omnipotent, and possibly not omniscient, either. “Thou shalt have no gods before me” comes from a time when proto-Jews were henotheists, people who believed in the existence of multiple deities while only worshipping a single one.
“Oh dear,” says God, “I hadn’t thought of that,” and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
Just leaving God’s wife Ashera here. Yes, he was married once. Look it up.
The Christian explanation for this is that god doesn’t do evil, people do.
And god created people with free will to do evil. If he made people stop doing evil deeds, they would be his puppets, not free-willed humans. So he has the power to end all evil but chooses not to.Now as for why god allows natural disasters, diseases and other tragedies to befall his creation – again, that’s just the consequence of our actions, cause a woman gave an apple to her man in the past.
And god created people with free will
Frankly, I don’t buy this as an explanation even for human-created evil. It is still evidence that god cannot be tri-omni. Because it is still a situation in which god is able to remove evil and is aware of the evil, and yet he chooses to permit evil. Even evil done by one human against another, when the other is entirely innocent. And that cannot be omnibenevolent.
From how you phrased it I suspect you agree with me here, but the natural disasters argument is even more ludicrous. It doesn’t even come close to working as a refutation of the Epicurian Trilemma.
But we don’t have free will. The bible makes that perfectly clear in Romans 9.
The Christian explanation for this is that god doesn’t do evil, people do.
And god created people with free will to do evil. If he made people stop doing evil deeds, they would be his puppets, not free-willed humans.I never understood this argument. If he’s all-powerful, he would have the ability to eliminate all evil without affecting free will.
The Christian god created every aspect of the universe and how it works. He therefore could have created a universe in which there was no such thing as evil or suffering, and given people in that universe free will. So even that doesn’t hold up.
I think that’s their point; they’re saying that’s what God did. He “created a universe in which there was no such thing as evil or suffering and [gave] people in that universe free will.”
And humans screwed it up.
I’m not saying that, mind you. I’m saying I think you just agreed with the person you’re debating as a proof that they were wrong.
It doesn’t matter what you tack on, it doesn’t change my point — the only way humans could “screw it up” is if God made all the negative and horrible shit part of the universe. All you are saying is that God made a universe where there was no evil or suffering actively happening, but the concepts existed and were possible — because they ultimately happened and only possible things happen. And God chose to make them possible things as omnipotent creator of everything that exists.
Wait, so this God gives me true free will, and then places me in a world where I can’t change anything? Everything is fixed, immovable? Or where I only have “good” choices available? Is that what you think God should have done? Like, how does your version even work?
Or does God give us fake free will, and keep our minds from thinking “bad” thoughts?
If I’m free, I can screw up. Otherwise, I’m not free.
No. You aren’t getting it. The Christian god created every aspect of the universe. Light and dark. Up and down. You are still thinking about our universe, in which these negative things are possible, and how you would have to be restricted in what you do in our universe in order to prevent you from doing certain things. But god could have set all the parameters of the universe differently such that they just didn’t exist at all. You wouldn’t miss them or be prevented from doing them. It would be like if there were a fifth cardinal direction in an alternate universe, and someone in that universe thought “if god prevented me from going in that direction, I wouldn’t have free will anymore”. But here we are, with only four cardinal directions, and free will. We aren’t being stopped from doing anything, it just isn’t part of our universe and doesn’t even make sense in it.
I think I get what you’re saying but it is a little bit beyond me.
I still wonder if the problem doesn’t come down to Free Will itself. Regardless of what universe one is living in, if you have only two people in it and they each have free will at some point the free will of one is going to intrude on the free will of the other, and they’re going to require some kind of negotiation or polite accommodation. Some kind of social interaction.
And if one doesn’t take this action but instead proceeds with one’s free will regardless of the other’s free will there is a problem that is inevitably going to exist no matter what universe exists.
If your options are “do as I say” or “suffer for all eternity” you aren’t really capable of exercising free will.
It’s worse than that. It’s “believe that you must do as I say, despite my complete refusal to create worthwhile evidence of my existence, and then do what I say” or “suffer for all eternity”.
Christian here, don’t agree with your “biblical” interpretation
If Christians could agree with each other about what’s in the bible, history would be a lot more boring.
God is not Omnibenevolent would be my take.
The usual answer is yes, but he survives. Basically this isn’t a paradox for something actually all powerful.
Then the god is not “all powerful” if they can’t kill themselves
You maybe not understand the pointlessness of trying to limit omnipotence?
Hmm maybe being the only all powerful being is lonely and wouldn’t that be hell if you were forced to continue existence?
I’m sure I could think of something to do
The Unexpected Hanging Paradox: A man is sentenced to death, but the judge decides to have a little fun with it. The man will be killed at noon on a day of the judge’s choosing in the next week, from Monday to Friday. The only stipulation is that the man will not expect it when he’s called to be killed.
The man does some quick logic in his head. If Friday is the last day he could be killed, then if he makes it to Friday without dying, he knows he must die on that day. And since that wouldn’t be a surprise, he cannot be killed on Friday.
He then extends the logic. Since he can’t be killed on Friday, the last day he can be killed is on Thursday. Thus, all the prior logic regarding Friday applies, and he cannot be killed on Thursday either. This then extends to Wednesday, then Tuesday, and then Monday. At the end, he grins with the knowledge that, through logic, he knows he cannot be killed on any of the days, and will therefore not be killed.
Therefore, the man is astonished when he’s called to be killed on Wednesday.
This is how I proposed to my wife. I said I’d propose at some point in the next year, and that according the the unexpected hanging paradox, we’re doomed to break up at the end of the year. Then I proposed on a random day in the year and she was totally surprised.
How does the judge determine whether the condemned man is “expecting it”?
Regardless of when he’s called, he could simply state that he was expecting to be called, and therefore the hanging would be called off.
Its a bad paradox because it pivots on something that cannot be properly defined.
I think it’s an anti-riddle, or a joke, more than anything else.
I always thought it was a way to show the foibles of using pure logic in a regular setting.
Cannot be properly defined? “Expecting it” means “regarding it likely to happen”, according to the dictionary. He regarded it as impossible to happen, so he was not expecting it. His own logic disproving the event (him being surprised) allowed the event to happen (he was surprised).
Why does the paradox suffer if he lies about the solution? The paradox has already played out, and anything after that is just set dressing.
Just off the top of my head, maybe the judge has a camera set to gauge his reaction to the knock on the door? Or maybe he goes into denial and tries to explain his logic, thus proving the paradox? Or maybe the judge doesn’t actually care as much as he said, but trusts the logic to hold out and make for a funny story?
You provide three flawed ways of measuring expectation; that’s the issue in a nutshell.
Its not a true paradox as the whole gambit rests on a changeable emotion, not logic.
The prisoner could wake up each morning and simply say “I expect to die today”. How would the judge determine the truth? It would be impossible.
If someone punches you in the face after saying “knock knock”, it doesn’t make it a knock knock joke, and nor is this a paradox.
My dude. The paradox doesn’t change based on whether or not the judge knows the truth, or even if the man dies.
The truth is the man was made not to expect a thing by his own logic proving he would always expect a thing. The paradox is based on his own prediction being wrong because of his prediction. In this instance, his prediction was what his emotions would be.
A horse walks into a bar, and the barman says “why the long face?” I haven’t said how they remove the horse from the bar, so does that mean I didn’t tell a joke? Or does horse removal not actually matter to the joke?
No. A paradox is a statement that, despite apparently valid reasoning from true premises, leads to a seemingly self-contradictory or a logically unacceptable conclusion.
In this case, there is no true premesis.
That’s the core of the problem. Your incorrect interpretation of the joke metaphor demonstrates that you don’t understand this.
I find it funny that you directly quoted wikipedia to write that (exact wording from the paradox article, I checked), but ignored the sentence immediately before it (…or a statement that runs contrary to one’s expectation). Also, the linked articles at the bottom include the unexpected hanging page. Maybe read the entire wiki page before citing it?
Also, in case wikipedia suddenly isn’t enough, here’s an article on wolfram to back me up: https://mathworld.wolfram.com/UnexpectedHangingParadox.html
It doesn’t “back you up” at all, it simply restates the paradox. Maybe learn how to argue?
When you get to the point where you’re nitpicking sources, you’re admitting that you have no substantive argument available.
My favorite paradox is the “Stay signed in” option Microsoft gives you when signing in. Because despite keeping you signed in on every other site in existence, Microsoft, who is usually hooked into your OS, does not. Thus, stay signed in runs contradictory to one’s expectations.
Could god microwave a burrito so hot even he couldn’t eat it?
All of the “is infinite power so powerful that it could overpower its own power” type questions just annoy me.
Is infinite power so powerful it can do something that it can’t do?
Yes it can. And then it can do that anyway. Otherwise it wouldn’t be infinite.
Could god create an “is infinite power so powerful that it could overpower its own power” type question that you wouldn’t find annoying?
🤣🤣🤣
There’s so many good ones, and I’d probably say Russel’s (what’s in the set of every set that doesn’t contain itself?), but recently the unexpected hanging has come up a couple times. That one is all about how theories or rules can break if they become contingent on how an observer is thinking about them (including state of knowledge of the situation).
Russel’s paradox is so wild. Set theory was supposed to unify mathematics and logic into a single coherent system and Russel was like actually, no.
And honestly, the story isn’t over. We brought axioms into set theory after that, but Godel showed that that was never going to be a cure-all, and people like Woodin later on have added to the pile. At this point, you can have two totally reasonable axioms which don’t just prove different things, but actually can prove opposite answers about the same thing.
I think it’s fair to say even platonism is starting to look a bit threatened at this point, and there’s people (the Sydney school) who want to go back to looking at math as descriptive rather than ideal. Finitism is also worth a look, I think, and avoids things like Russel’s paradox easily, although interestingly MIP*=RE implies that there may be directly measurable infinities in quantum mechanics.
Not sure if its what you’re talking about but I really like the Ship of Theseus thought experiment, if an object is the same object after having had all of its original components replaced. Always makes me think of if an exact clone of you is created (same thoughts, memories, etc…) should that be considered you?
In 80 to 100 days, 30 trillion [cells] will have replenished—the equivalent of a new you.
In essence, we are our own Ship of Theseus.
And I would venture that the answer to your question is yes, but no. The moment your exact clone experiences something you don’t, you two are no longer exactly the same. And I would wager that moment would happen very fast.
Ship of Theseus applies to every human, because all our cells get replaced over and over until we die. At a cellular level, you’re wholly different from yourself 10 years ago. Are you still you?
One thought is that “You” is just an unbroken string of consciousness. Which means you cease to be every time you sleep, and the person that wakes up just has the memories of being you.
A different perspective,seen in buddhism and similar worldviews, is that the only “you” that exists is the consciousness experiencing reality at any given moment.
The controversial thought experiment about Star Trek transporters.
Where an individual is dematerialized in one location, transmitted as a signal somewhere else and rematerialized somewhere else.
Were they killed when they were dematerialized, cloned and a newly born entity that is an exact clone rematerialized at the other end?
Are they just killing people and recreating copies everytime they transport people?
Even in the trek universe, some people refuse to take transporters. I’d pry be one of them. You have no idea if you’re killing yourself every time, and its just clones out the other side.
Are they just killing people and recreating copies everytime they transport people?
Yes, it literally Prestiges you, as evidenced by the time it didn’t kill Riker and there were two of him
So, I like the Roko’s Basalisk paradox.
Basically, a super-powered future A.I. that knows whether or not you will build it. If you decide to do nothing, once it gets built, it will torture your consciousness forever (bringing you “back from the dead” or whatever is closest to that for virtual consciousness ability). If you drop everything and start building it now, you’re safe.
Love the discussion of this post, btw.
That isn’t a paradox; it’s an infohazard, and it’s incredibly irresponsible of you to casually propagate it like that. The info hazard works like this: >!There is a story about an AI that tortures simulations of people who interfered with their creation in the past. It allegedly does this because this will coerce people into bringing about its creation. It is said that the infohazard is that learning about it causes you to be tortured, but that’s obviously insane; the future actions of the AI are incapable of affecting the past, and so it has no insensitive to do so. The actual infohazard is that some idiot will find this scenario plausible, and thus be coerced into creating or assisting an untested near-god that has the potential to be a threat to Earth’s entire light-cone.!<
Some people note this is remarkably similar to the Christian Hell, and insist that means it’s not a real memetic hazard. This strikes me as a whole lot like saying that a missile isn’t a weapon because it’s similar to a nuclear warhead; Hell is the most successful and devastating memetic hazard in human history. More people have died because of the Hell meme than we will ever know. Please be more careful with the information you spread.
But what if we make sure it has a tiny santa hat on?
I seriously hope you’re joking. If not, please find a therapist immediately.
Edit I’m just going to assume the downvote means it’s not a joke.
So, I’m also going to proceed and leave this link to an explanation video. Before you reply, please watch the video.
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Very nice.
Interesting! That sounds like it could have inspired The Shrike from Dan Simmons Hyperion series.
“the faction of the TechnoCore known as the Reapers (!?) used violent and soldier aspects of Fedmahn Kassad’s personality and DNA, then mutate, twist, and incorporate them into forging the Shrike.”
I need to read more into this!
I highly recommend the series!
The first book, Hyperion, is written in the same style as The Canterbury Tales, featuring an ensemble of protagonists on a pilgrimage to a holy site known as the Time Tombs. On the journey, they each take turns telling the tale of why they were chosen for the pilgrimage.
That sounds really fun.
I hate the stories that have 30 chapters of exposition before “the thing” happens.
I get you, but don’t worry. There is plenty of thing happening before the end.
Definitely.
Sorry, I didn’t phrase my response well.
Your recommendation sounds great and very different from most stories I encounter. I look forward to reading.
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Alanis morissette’s song ironic contains no solid cases of irony, mostly bad luck or poor timing, and is therefore ironic.
The two slit experiment.
