Daft_ishWhat is your favorite paradox or conundrum? I am partial to can god kill god?
originaluciferwhy do we park on a driveway and drive on a parkway?
goldteethAnd why do we bake cookies but cook bacon?
BizarrolandJokes aside, I have baked my bacon and it works really well for preparing an awful lot of bacon very quickly.
Once you do that, you have bacon that you can quickly microwave and slap on a sandwich, plus you can easily collect all of the grease for making gravies or general cooking purposes if you so desire.
I’d go so far as to say baking is superior- it never reaches temp to make the oil pop and makes a mess inside the oven, and you’re only limited on how much bacon you can cook by how many cookie sheets you own (and maybe how much bacon you have stored away in the freezer 😁). Oh yeah, easy to collect the fat afterwards! Makes great rice!
snooggumsA driveway is named because it was originally a circle that you could use to drive right up to the house. Think old mansions in movies.
Parkways had separated lanes with shrubberies and plants on between and around, basically parks with a road through them.
A driveway that is straight and ends in a garage isn’t really a driveway. Separated lanes with no plants or parks isn’t really a parkway. But the names both stuck around.
The same reason we use ship for a cargo and car for shipping.
Could god microwave a burrito so het 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?
IninewCrowI think that’s how he created our universe 5,000 years ago … he’s just waiting for us to cool off so can eventually take a bite.
If he bites too soon, we might end up on the floor though :(
Only if he broke into a radio station & doused that burrito with hot sauce from a battery powered toy gun!
Also, I’m gonna need a football helmet full of cottage cheese & any naked pics of Bea Arthur you happen to have lying around.
SusagaThe 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.
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.
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.
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.
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, 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: …wolfram.com/UnexpectedHangingParadox.html
Unexpected Hanging Paradox -- from Wolfram MathWorld
A paradox also known as the surprise examination paradox or prediction paradox. A prisoner is told that he will be hanged on some day between Monday and Friday, but that he will not know on which day the hanging will occur before it happens. He cannot be hanged on Friday, because if he were still alive on Thursday, he would know that the hanging will occur on Friday, but he has been told he will not know the day of his hanging in advance. He cannot be hanged Thursday for the same reason, and...
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.
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.
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.
Krafty KactusNot a paradox but Roko’s Basilisk is a fun one
Roku's basilisk just doesn't make sense to me because any semi-competent AI would be able to tell that it is not punishing the people that failed to help create it it's just wasting energy punishing a simulacrum.
We are not going to suddenly be teleported into a future of torment. If the AI had the ability to pluck people out of the past it should have no reason to waste it on torture porn.
What if this is that simulation tho.
Then AI already exists and you have no memory or recollection of either helping to create it or accidentally contributing to its non-creation and therefore you being tormented by the AI would serve no moral purpose.
Any torture you would be experiencing in that simulation would simply be that the AI desires to torture, and you happen to be one of its victims.
Roko's basilisk would still not be in play
Any person alive during the time when the Basilisk is being created is at risk. Also, if you create a good AI instead, then you didn’t help build the Basilisk so if anyone else does, you’re screwed.
God clearly can’t exist because an omnipotent, omniscient, and just God is a paradox already. Omnipotence and omniscience means that God, if they exist, would have full control of every moment of the universe (even if they only “acted” initially). Some (I’d argue nearly all) people suffer for reasons out of their control. Only deserved suffering is just. Since undeserved suffering exists then God cannot exist (at least omniscient, omnipotent, and just - as we understand those terms). God could be an omniscient, omnipotent asshole or sadist… God could be omniscient and just (aka the martyr God who knows of all suffering but is powerless to prevent it)… or God could be omnipotent and just (aka the naive God who you could liken to a developer running around desperately trying to spot patch problems and just making things worse).
Alternatively, by omnipotent maybe the scriptures are just hyping them up - “God is so fucking buff - this one time they lifted up this rock that was like this big. Fucking amazing.”
agamemnonymousAs you said, that does depend entirely on God having those properties, exactly as you define them.
Alternatively, if definitive property is “universal consciousness”, then God clearly must exist. Either consciousness is an emergent property of sufficiently complex systems, in which case the entire universe is obviously more complex than the human nervous system and consciousness should certainly emerge within it; or, consciousness is some external field, like gravity or electromagnetism, that complex systems can channel. Either way, the existence of your own consciousness implies a universal one.
I don’t think your alternative proposal makes sense, at least not to me. An emergent property being present in one complex system doesn’t imply that it must be present in all complex systems.
What does imply it’s presence, then? The emergence of comparable effects is implied by isomorphic complexities. If you can’t define the foundational structure which implies emergence, you can only fall back on a probabilistic approach.
Unless you can define exactly what structure it is that belies the emergence of consciousness, you must acknowledge that the comparative complexity of a more complex system is undoubtedly probabilistically suggestive of at least comparable, if not far more complex, emergent behavior.
The proposition that consciousness is emergent, but only at a very specific and narrow band of complexity, falls quickly to Occam’s razor. It’s logically and probabilistically ridiculous.
My point is that not all complex systems are the same. Maybe it depends on your definition of consciousness but from what I know we have only ever observed that in a very specific set of complex systems which is brains and possibly fungi. Two different systems being complex isn’t enough in my view to infer that they would have the same properties unless there are other similarities.
It absolutely depends on your definition of consciousness. Every conversation about a concept depends on the definition of that concept. My definition is based upon sensation, processing, and decision-making, in regards to the self and the environment. I’d argue that plants and even cells exhibit simple forms of consciousness. If you take the emergent-property perspective, I’d argue even molecules and individual particles have a broad and abstract consciousness, although certainly several orders of magnitude less sophisticated than yours or mine.
The statement “we have only ever observed that in a very specific set of complex systems which is brains and possibly fungi” tells me less about consciousness than it does about our ability to observe it.
ZagorathAh, the Epicurean Trilemma. This was my answer too. Weirdly attributed to a guy from before monotheism was the predominant belief.
Alternatively, by omnipotent maybe the scriptures are just hyping them up
The scriptures don’t use that word, and it’s notable because the Old Testament didn’t believe that to be the case, either. Early Israelites were henotheistic. They believed other gods might exist (hence the need for “thou shalt have no other gods before me”), but only worshipped the one. When multiple gods exist, it is by definition necessary that they cannot be omnipotent.
It’s pretty clear that he is not meant to be omnibenevolent either. The god of the Tanakh is wrathful. Christians later reinterpreted him as omnibenevolent, but this was clearly not the authors’ intent. I believe Jewish scholars still don’t think he’s omnibenevolent today.
Religious scholars have come up with a number of other proposed solutions to the trilemma. Ones involving free will are quite popular, though not the only ones. I have yet to find any argument that is remotely convincing, however. Saying “free will” just means god either cannot or chooses not to enable people to have a form of free will that does not involve them desiring to do evil. It also ignores the very many evils not created by human action. Child cancer, earthquakes, drought-induced famine (today humans have the technological ability to solve this last one and might simply choose not to, but historically it has been an insurmountable problem not caused by human free will).
I recommend you read “Religion of the Apostles” by Stephen De Young. He explains the common misconceptions of the early Israelite beliefs. The “Gods” are lesser divine beings that were meant to protect the 70 tribes after the Tower of Babel fell. The deities rebelled against God and led the nations astray and were worshipped. The tribe of Israel worshipped the God of “Most high” which is the one true God above all divine beings. So they aren’t henotheistic because there is only one God. The term “Gods” was used because they were divine beings but they were created whereas God the Father is not. Everything proceeds from him.
A great podcast that explains evil and suffering is “Whole Counsel of God” with the same guy. In short, suffering is unavoidable because man falls from Eden after sinning and the consequence of sin is death. Making death the consequence is a mercy because man can become sanctified during his life and through death re-enter the kingdom of God. Consequently suffering draws people closer to God than anything else.
I’m not a theologian and wrote this on my phone but that’s my quick recap. The book is way more thorough of course.
I haven’t read the book, but I did some reading about it, and it seems like it’s come against some significant criticism for being poor academics and its author criticised for presenting his own one academic idea as a fact.
So while it’s certainly interesting to hear his theory from your summary of it, and to learn that there are competing theories out there, I don’t think it’s going to change my understanding of where scholars more broadly stand on it. The fact that I can’t really find anyone talking about de Young’s interpretation of early Israelite monolatry (which I’ve just realised is possibly a more accurate term than henotheism, though the lines between the two are blurred) concerns me from that perspective. Which is not to say that’s it’s necessarily wrong. It especially could have been a phase they went through on the way from monolatry to Second Temple Judaism’s monotheism.
But in general I’m very wary of non-academic books presenting grand theories that cannot be well backed-up by academic sources, even when by an author with academic credentials. Reminds me too much of Guns, Germs, and Steel.
“His” main critique is against evolutionary theology which is common amongst reformers and Christian critics. “God was seen this way. Then it changed and he was seen this way. OT God is angry. NT God is compassionate etc” This is not a new idea and has been held by the Orthodox church since it’s inception and has been codified for the last 1200-1300 years. The Orthodox view everything consistently through a Christological lens which is why their view of sotieriology etc is so different than what you will get from Protestants or even Roman Catholics.
Fr. Stephen De Youngs book is just a readily consumable encapsulation of ancient arguments, historical findings (such as the Rosetta stones) with his own analyses and contributions. Would you be better off reading the church fathers and primary sources yourself? Possibly but you’d also need to know ancient Greek and Hebrew.
Christians and academics love to argue and I’m not surprised to see that people are critical of the book. I don’t think there is any religious commentary that hasn’t received criticism.
At any rate I encourage you to look at Orthodox theology more generally. You will find a logical consistency and depth of analysis that the secular world usually says is lacking in the Christian worldview.
Monty Hall
The Monty Hall problem is not a paradox.
Correct, extend it to 10 or 100 choices instead of 3 and it’s easy to see.
Me: Pick a number between 1 and 100.
You: 27
Me: Okay, the number is either 27 or 44, do you want to change your choice?
You, somehow: No, changing my choice now still has the same probability of being right as when I made my first choice.
It’s obvious that you’d want to change every time.
ddhThat’s a great way to look at it. I’d just call it ‘counterintuitive’ in the Monty Hall formulation.
I: 27.
You: The number is 27 or 44. Do you want to change the choice?
I: why would I?
Because when you first picked 27, it was 1 out of 100 choices. Then I tell you that you either got it right, or it’s this other number. None of the others are correct, only 27 or 44.
So you think your 1/100 choice was better than the one I’m giving you now? On average, you’ll be right 1% of the time if you don’t switch. If you do switch, you’ll be correct 99% of the time.
Another way to think of it is: you choose 27 or you choose ALL of the other 99 numbers knowing that I’ll tell you that 98 of them are wrong and you’ll be left with the correct one out of that batch. One of those clearly has better odds, no?
In this example, there were 100 choices in the beginning, and later you reduced to 2 choices. Clearly an advantage. Does the same apply to the 3 door problem?
Let’s take this question in another angle. Instead of 3, there are only 2 doors. I am to choose one out of 2, which has a prize. After I choose one, you show me a third door which is empty. Now, should I change my option?
Yes, it’s the same concept. The same math/logic behind it doesn’t change. You’re choosing 1/3 or you are choosing 2/3 and I’ll tell you which of the two is incorrect. It’s just easier to visualize with 100 doors instead.
I’m not sure I’m following the other angle…there are 3 correct possibilities at the start but I can only choose 2? Or there are 2 possibilities and then you introduce a 3rd door that is never correct?
Or there are 2 possibilities and then you introduce a 3rd door that is never correct?
Yes that one. Similar to the one you did with 100 doors, just in opposite direction.
Do you know the third door is never correct? Because then the probability doesn’t change.
Scenario 1: You chose 1/2 at first with a 50% chance of being correct, I introduce a 3rd door (but it isn’t a legit possibility), so the actual choice for you is still 50/50 (between doors 1 and 2)
Scenario 2: If you think it’s possible that 3 could be correct (but it actually never is) then, no, you wouldn’t want to switch. By staying with your first choice has a 50% chance of winning, by switching it only has a 33% chance. But there’s no way to know this ahead of time (because as soon as you know you shouldn’t switch bc 3 is the wrong door, then you’re back in scenario 1)
Scenario 3: For completeness, let’s say the 3rd door can be correct sometimes. Then it doesn’t matter if you switch or not. It’s a 33% chance of winning either way. If there is a chance it can be correct, then your first choice doesn’t matter at all and the second choice is the ‘real’ choice bc that’s the only time you’re able to choose from all real possibilities.
The only reason that the Monty Hall problem changes probability in the second choice is because you are provided more information before the switch (that the opened door is absolutely not the one with the prize)
In scenario 1, legit or not, you said the chance is still 50-50. In other scenarios also you shouldn’t change or it wouldn’t matter. That’s what I say, just in the opposite direction. But the problem of probability depends on the wordings and phrases, which means I may not have understood the ques well.
Another angle: You explained the Monty Hall problem at the end that the probability changes because in second choice we have more information. So you are implying that the initial 1/3 probability of the now-open door adds to the door we did not choose - making the switch advisable. Here I also say the probability does change from initial 1/3, but to 1/2-1/2 for each remaining doors; why should the probability be poured to the unselected single door?
In the original the possibilities for a prize behind the doors 1,2,3 are:
A) YNN B) NYN C) NNY
In (A) - A.1 you choose door 1 and then stay, you win A.2 you choose door 1 and switch, you lose A.3 you choose door 2 and stay, you lose A.4 You choose door 2 and switch, you win A.5 you choose door 3 and stay, you lose A.6 you choose door 3 and switch, you win
By staying, you lose in 2 of 3 cases (A.3 and A.5)
By switching you only lose in 1 case (A.2)
It works out for (B) and © the same way. You have a 2/3rds chance of winning if you switch and a 1/3rd chance of winning if you don’t.
This isn’t a trick or anything, the math is pretty clear and you can actually write out all the scenarios and count it up yourself. It’s just a little counterintuitive because we aren’t used to thinking in terms of conditional probabilities this way.
Another way to think about it is the probability of losing. If the contestant loses, it means that they picked correctly on their first choice and then swapped. This will happen 1/3rd of the games, because there is a 1 in 3 chance of picking correctly the first time. So, if you have a 1/3rd chance of losing by swapping, then it follows that you have a 2/3rds chance of winning by swapping (choosing incorrectly at the start and then switching to the correct door)
The Bard in GreenFor some reason “The following statement is true.” “The previous statement is false.” has always tried to send my brain into an infinite loop.
The problem with that particular paradox is that it's not possible. Therefore one of the statements has to be wrong.
I don’t think you’ve quite clocked it. It’s not that one of the statements has to be wrong, because that’s just a point in the cycle. If A is wrong, then B is right, which means A is right, which means B is wrong, which means A is wrong and the cycle begins anew.
They aren’t wrong, they’re contradictory. There is no logical way to parse the two statements. That’s what a paradox is.
I don't think that "nuh-uh! Uh-huh!" Rises to the level of a paradox.
The phrases can be contradictory without being paradoxical. It's only a paradox if both of the phrases are true at the same time.
You have understood nothing.
Neither statement can be true OR false. If statement A is true, statement B is true, which means statement A is false. To simplify, if statement A is true, statement A is false.
“This statement is false” can be neither true nor false. That is the most basic paradox there is.
Yes. But which one?
Call me Lenny/LeniThe ship of Theseus.
I like the version of it from John Dies At The End. Same thought experiment just with an axe
ReiI 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.
MxM111I do not see any paradox there. Paradox is something contradictory. All your statements are true and do not contradict to each other.