Paradoxes

[MasterOLightning]

Post your favorite paradoxes here. These are always fun to think about.

I suppose you can post oxymorons as well.

Dostoevsky has a great one where he writes that a girl died suddenly of starvation. Can't find the exact quote. Funny stuff though.

 

[Silver Incubus]

Expect the unexpected is one of my favorites

 

[derek]

A paradoxical notice:

PLEASE IGNORE
THIS NOTICE

I like this one too:

Catch-22
There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that 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.

Joseph Heller, Catch-22

 

[MasterOLightning]

Catch-22 is really a great book. It's full of that kind of stuff.

 

[Demiurge]

"We step and do not step into the same rivers; we are and we are not" ~ Heraclitus

 

[ARC150]

A man says that he is lying. Is what he says true or false?
-- Eubulides of Miletus

 

[Zack]

I like the paradoxes of time. I will look them up and post them later when I can find the book they are in.

 

[Dushan S]

One good paradox (that is actually not just a showing that usual logic of a westerner is non working in a lot of cases, but has a very deep meaning)

Zen master was explaining to his disciplies, while holding a moderately long stick in his hand:
"Can you say that this stick is long? It is not long, because there you can see other stick, and you have seen a lot of longer sticks than this one. So if you want to be fair, you must say that this stick is short. On the other hand, you can clearly see that this stick has its measures, and you are denying his own existence, his true nature if you don't agree that this stick is long"

Or there is a lot of interesting Zen Koans, like, "What is a sound of claping with just one hand?"

 

[gatedropper]

When did you stop beating your wife?

 

[Cythraul]

^ That's a loaded question, not a paradox.

 

[kmik]

"We step and do not step into the same rivers; we are and we are not" ~ Heraclitus

I don't get it

This is a very interesting paradox

 

[Silver Incubus]

I don't get it

This is a very interesting paradox

WTF? It explains that paradox in the link you gave.........

It means the man nor the river are ever the same.

 

[Procella]

This is very interesting:

Imagine somebody saying 'I'm lying'. If he/she is telling the truth, he/she is lying, if he/she is lying, he/she is not lying...

 

[LORD_RED_DRAGON]

the time-warp story-arcs of sci-fi where certain events are set-in-stone and the character's attempt(s) to prevent those events ends up being the thing that causes the specific thing he/she was trying to prevent
the star-trek universe refered to these incidents as "causality loops"

 

[judas69]

Actually, that's a great one.. free will vs. determinism and quantum implications are very interesting topics to consider, and themselves give rise to many paradoxes and contradictions.

 

[LORD_RED_DRAGON]

Actually, that's a great one.. free will vs. determinism and quantum implications are very interesting topics to consider, and themselves give rise to many paradoxes and contradictions.

exactly

 

[Silver Incubus]

I myself am a Hard derterminist simply because it is the most rational. Sure the possibility of something COULD happen, but it never does happen. What happens, happens and I believe that there is no other reality that explores those other possibilities. The illusions of chance and free will have an important role obviously because the world has changed since the notion was first concieved, and moreso when practiced

 

[judas69]

I am a hard determinist myself aswell..

That said, I have yet to hear a convincing arguement for free will that didn't involve parallel universes and blackholes ..

 

[LORD_RED_DRAGON]

That said, I have yet to hear a convincing arguement for free will that didn't involve parallel universes and blackholes ..

free will doesn't exist
it appears as if we have control over our lives because life is nothing more than a series of decisions
but
these decisions do not give us control over our lives
for example let's say i decide to buy a used car
i cannot go back in time and control what has happened to those cars before i came into contact with them
once i start driving my car i can choose to obey trafic laws thus decreasing the chances of death while on the road, but i cannot control whether or not the other drivers also obey the traffic laws
so i am sitting at a red light that turns green and i step on the gas pedal so that the car behind me won't rear-end me, but i cannot prevent the cars perpindicular to me from running through their red light and hitting my car from the side
the Columbine vale-dictorian could not have prevented Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold from aquiring explosives/guns the valedictorian was not the one responsible for the fact that the explosives never exploded (which would have killed everyone that was at the school that day)
i could go on and on but the point is that any random person has more control over the lives of those around him than the amount of control he has over his own life

 

[Mythos Inibri]

i wondered why on american currency it says In God We Trust but our government has Capital Punishment but God says Thou Shalt not Kill.We oughta take God off of our Dollars because it is a lie.