Can a paradox exist, although it seems illogical

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That's funny. I use the same method to prove that the Flying Spaghetti Monster exists.

Thats because a paradox DID exist at the start of the universe to get the whole ball of wax going.

But we immediately lost the paradox.

So

Its a paradox lost!

Damn hard to top that one!

Last edited by ripped on 20 Jan 2013, 9:02 pm, edited 2 times in total.

There is a spider that has the antidote to its own poison in its body.

That's pretty cool.

There is an old one about pilots not being able to fly a suicide mission if they wanted to, because it proved they were crazy. and pilots who didn't want to fly that mission then being forced to.

It is not a paradox or a contradiction either.

Catch-22. Crazy pilots would not be allowed to fly a combat mission, but if they asked to be excused that proved they were sane and they had to fly it. That's a great book and movie (from the book) showing the silliness of the military, bureaucracies, and human nature in general. The movie had many flyable surviving B-25 Mitchell twin-engined twin-tailed medium bombers shown in it. The story is set in Italy in World War 2. The movie makes much use of flashbacks and might be confusing to watch if one hasn't read the book, or not.

There's also the surprise exam paradox. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unexpected_hanging_paradox

As the hangman's paradox, this paradox appears in WV Quine's "The Way Of Paradox" - a book anyone interested in paradox should read. (I've never been comfortable with the hangman's paradox, maybe because I don't fully understand it, but I don't see how it is a true paradox but just faulty reasoning.)

But those things aren't contradictions. They only seem like contradictions if you apply artificial constraints to them which are not inherent in the statements.

1)Look before you you leap/ he who hesitates is lost: these things are only contradictory if you apply the artificial constraint that each one must apply in all situations. You obviously can't follow both pieces of advice simultaneously. But nobody ever said you could. One piece of advice applies in some situations and the other applies in other situations. It's situational, not contradictory. There isn't anything contradictory about acting in different ways depending on the situation.

2)You can't get a job without experience. You can't get experience without a job: These things aren't contradictory. They're just wrong if you try to apply them uniformly to all jobs. Entry level jobs routinely hire people with no experience . That's why they are called entry level. You also can get experience without a job if you are willing to work for free. That's what interns do.

3)The most creative people usually have the least output while hacks crank out massive amounts of work First of all, some creative people crank out large amounts of work (for example Picasso made many, many drawings as well as paintings and daVinci cranked out gigantic amounts of pretty much everything). But even if it were uniformly true that creative people all created less stuff than hacks, there is still no contradiction. There is simply the observation that sloppy and mundane work takes very little time to produce.

Trencher, thanks for the reference.


EDIT: the rest of my post was eliminated as it was complete nonsense.

Last edited by ModusPonens on 23 Jan 2013, 4:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Sorry, it's been a long time since I've read Quine. I remember the example is in there, but I'd have to reread it to remember what he said. Seems like the hole in the argument is the assumption that if something isn't done one day, it will never be done. My memory is hazy, though.

There's Einsteins 'train and platform thought experiment', where a flash of light is emitted in the middle of a speeding train carriage ( speeding at like half the speed of light ).
An observer in the middle of the moving train carriage would 'see' the light reflected back off both the ends of the carriage at the same time, while a stationary observer on a platform beside the train would 'see' the light reflect off the back wall of the carriage before the same pulse of light hits the leading wall of the carriage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_of_simultaneity

The fact that simultaneity is frame relative is NOT a paradox or contradiction.

ruveyn

The differing sensory experience of the two observers in this context is commonly referred to as a paradox.
For the forum would you share your insights into the logical resolution of this apparent paradox?
Thanks, Ripped.

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?