Paradox thread

[pace e amore]

I'll start. I'm skeptical that I'm skeptical about being a skeptic.

Edit: I'll ad another one. A male barber shaves all and only those men who do not shave themselves. Does he shave himself?

[AloneOutHere]

Steve Jobs dressed as Spongebob Squarepants

[Ridiculous]

Can something faster ever overtake something slower, give that in the time it takes for the faster to catch up to the slower, the slower has moved forward from the point the faster just caught up to?

(Yes, it's old, but I like it )

[Artemicion]

All rules have an exception, including this one.

[MommaFrog]

This sentence is false

[solarcat]

I went back in time to kill Hitler. So he died before the world saw how horrible he really was, and as a result he's remembered as the man who brought Germany back on it's feet. So to save the life of Time Magazine's Man Of The Year, I went back in time to kill the person responsible for his death.

[MommaFrog]

I always lie

---------- Post added 8th Jan 2012 at 01:10 AM ----------

I never tell the truth

[Random Dent]

How do you kill that which cannot be killed?

[GuardianKitten]

everything needs a creator.
/religion joke

[Remy]

Before you finish a race, you must pass the halfway point. Then the quarter point, then eighth, then sixteenth, and so on, to infinity. Since you can never cross an infinity of points, you can never finish the race.

[Ridiculous]

Originally Posted by GuardianKitten

everything needs a creator.
/religion joke

It's turtles all the way dooooooooooowwwwnnnnnnn

[fiddledeedee]

Ther are four mistooks in this sentance.
---
Windows works.

[MommaFrog]

I cannot get a car without a job to pay for it.
I cannot get a job without a car to get there.

[heatqueen]

Everything to the right is true. Everything to the left is false.

[Owen]

This sentence is sarcastic.

Originally Posted by Ridiculous

Can something faster ever overtake something slower, give that in the time it takes for the faster to catch up to the slower, the slower has moved forward from the point the faster just caught up to?

(Yes, it's old, but I like it )

I think it's because I'm a math major, but I don't see this as a parodox. The reason it might come across as one is that the snapshots of time that you take (i.e. each point where the faster thing reaches the point where the slower thing was) are all getting closer and closer to the point where the faster thing overtakes the slower thing. As time goes on, the amount of time it takes the faster thing to reach where the slower thing was gets smaller and smaller and smaller. Sure, you can keep taking points like this indefinately, but if you do, you get stuck before the point where the faster thing actually passes the slower thing. You inch ever closer to that point, but you never get there, not because the faster thing never passes the slower thing (it does), but because you won't let yourself get there.

Suppose you have a tortoise and a hare. A race starts, and the hare gives the tortoise a four-second head start. The the hare starts running, and he passes the tortoise once eight seconds have passed. Suppose the tortoise moves one inch every second; with the times give, the hare moves two inches every second. After four seconds, the tortoise has moved four inches. In the two seconds it takes for the hare to make that distance, the tortise has moved two more inches, so now they're at six and four, respectively. In the time it takes for the hare to catch up to where the tortoise was, the tortoise will only cover half as much ground as he did before, so it will only take the hare half as long to cover that ground, so the tortoise will only cover a fourth as much ground, so it will take the hare a fourth as much time to cover that ground, and so on.

Remember how I said that it takes eight seconds for our hare to pass the tortise? That means the snapshots of time, the points when the hare reaches where the tortise was, are being taken at four seconds, six seconds, seven, 7.5, 7.75, 7.875, and so on. We'll never reach the eight second mark because of when we stop to count the distance. It seems like the hare will never pass the tortise, but the wording of the paradox just keeps you from ever seeing the point where he does.

TL;DR: it's not a paradox; just a misleading way of wording the situation.

[Emberstone]

On October 5th, 2005, 'Twilight' by Stephenie Meyer was published...

[Bedroom Hymns]

I don't fully understand what a paradox is. Should I already know this well at my age?

[Emberstone]

Originally Posted by Bedroom Hymns

I don't fully understand what a paradox is. Should I already know this well at my age?

there are many forms of paradoxes. I will give one example to illustrate it. The challange of defining paradoxes is that they tend to be best defined by point one out.

A time traveler goes back in time, and does something that prevents him from being born. If the time traveler makes it so he was never born, how then can he exist now that he has made it so he cant be born?

the paradox is kinda a question of 'how' that arises from a problem in the situation. it is a moment or issue that cannot fully be explained by logic.

[Ridiculous]

Originally Posted by Owen

You inch ever closer to that point, but you never get there, not because the faster thing never passes the slower thing (it does), but because you won't let yourself get there.

Well I think the question that this paradox poses is, can we ever say we can get to that point if we have to pass an infinite number of points in time beforehand? The mathematics of the paradox can be answered using convergent series, but even then convergent series use the principle of limits, and you never actual reach a limit, just get really really close to it.. which is pretty much this paradox.

[Fugs]

If anything is possible, is it possible for something to be impossible?