Since the beginning of time, or at least since the 80′s man has tried to wrap his mind around the concept of a paradox. Seriously, what would happen if you could travel back in time and kill your grandpa? Would you cease to exist? Would you tear a hole in the time-space continuum? Is it like dividing by zero?
Friend of Hooniverse and Atomic Toaster lurker Kelly and I recently had Facebook conversation on this very topic. What started out innocently enough as car chat quickly developed into a profound, science-y conversation. You see, not so long ago I created a group on Facebook called Slacktivism and the whole premise behind it is basically to share slacking stories and discuss who can out-slack who. It did not occur to me until she mentioned that she had joined and then un-joined (because she was too lazy to read and/or comment) the group that a paradox had thus occurred. Did she uber-slack or fail-slack? By unjoining did she ultimately not slack and create a paradox? Creating, managing, commenting, and participating in a group dedicated to slacking is in and of itself a paradox in and of… oh god my head hurts just thinking about it.
What about you? What is the/your ultimate paradox?
The Internet. Never before has so much potential been realized through the creation of lolcatz.
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Wait, what?
[youtube ECODePT6VHM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECODePT6VHM youtube]
You are in a car traveling at lightspeed. What happens when you turn on the lights?
Ah relativity. It's called relativity because the effect is relative to the observer. From your perspective, light travels out from the front of the car at the speed of light. From the perspective of the guy standing on the side of the road, some lunatic is barreling down the highway, frozen in time, and hasn't bothered to turn his lights on yet.
You raise (for me) an interesting question. I grok the driver's perspective but am curious about the outside observer …
Where in that person's perspective does the car seem to be frozen? At the point at which it first came into view? At the place in the arc closest to him? Are the other points in the car's trajectory empty space, or are there contrails of light? I'm having trouble visualizing this and feeling too lazy to hit up references.
You have to remember that as your speed increases, time slows down. Remember, speed is just a function of distance over time. So as the person traveling approaches lightspeed, their perception of time will slow down to the point that the light from the car appears to be moving at the same speed as it would if it were standing still. And for the outside observer, the closer the passenger of the car gets to lightspeed, the more they will appear to be frozen in time. Theoretically, at lightspeed (ignoring the whole infinite energy thing), time would not be moving forward for the person in the car. Of course, that's all just theory, since lightspeed would actually not be possible.
When pizza is on a bagel, you can have pizza anytime.
So I can have a bagel anytime? Sweet!
feeling too slack to comment on circular logic.
We'll have none of that!
None of what? This?
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Relax, otherwise people will think you're
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Jesus. This took me 4 hours to figure out. Well done.
The simplest one of all:
"I never tell the truth".
Which came first: the chicken or the egg?
The Rooster came first.
(rimshot!)
Or a pair of ducks
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My bowels will never move when a toilet is handy. It is a law woven into space-time.
Never have I seen a comment better suited to the avatar of the commenter.
wiki has an extensive selection of paradoxes, a couple of my favorites:
"If there is an exception to every rule, then every rule must have at least one exception; the exception to this one being that it has no exception." "There's always an exception to the rule, except to the exception of the rule — which is, in of itself, an accepted exception of the rule."
"I know that I know nothing at all."
The first number that can be considered "dull" rather than "interesting" becomes interesting because of that fact.
Also, is it a paradox if you put the Iocane powder in both drinks?
Well, clearly you can't choose the cup in front of you…
Of course thats inconceivable….
If I do something I enjoy in the forest and my wife doesn't see it am I still wrong?
If you don't stop that, you'll go blind.
I can no longer see what you did there.