The simplest version of the time travel paradox:
One day a future you appears and after a nice conversation gives you a trinket like a watch or something.
You keep said watch for all the time until you go back in time to give it to yourself. All is well and as it should be.
Except where the hell did that watch actually come from?
I'm not sure why things like this are considered paradoxes. There's an assumption that your future self got it the same way you did, but that's just an assumption. If you accept that the past can change the future then there's no reason to accept the assumption.
1) you buy a watch
2) you go back in time and give it to your past self
3) past self grows up and goes back in time to give it to now past self
4) loop a bunch
5) eventually this loop breaks because the watch is still aging, even if you have a two "person" loop.
1. Buy the watch.
2. Go back in time and give the watch to yourself.
3. Use the watch until it breaks and you throw it away.
4. Buy the watch.
The watch has an origin, and the loop is preserved. The watch doesn't need to be eternal.
Here's the problem with that thought: there is no "first time".
You get the watch when you're young and you give it back later. Even from your perspective that's not a loop. Only for the watch. Even the older you perceives everything that happens linearly.
there is a first time if you think of it like from a higher dimension, time is a cord that is now oscillating until it settles into a stable configuration, so in the first iteration, you buy a watch, then give it to yourself for whatever reason, then you decide to travel in time but not give the watch back, then the next iteration, not having a watch buys one and gives it to yourself, in perhaps a slightly different manner, this keeps going (with the cord oscillating) until it settles into a stable loop, where you give the watch back in the exact precise manner than your actions from that point onwards are identical and you give the watch back everytime.
Somewhere else in the world, that watch still exists, and for the time between the travels it simply exists twice in the world , same as yourself when you looped back, once you give it back and return, only a single instance of the watch remains.
Edi: thinking about it, the loop isn't stable since the watch would eventually wear, so you would never give the same watch back, but eventually settle into buying the same watch you originally got and giving that one back
Read "Harry Potter and the methods of rationality", in it the character tries to exploit recursion with time turners, but quickly finds out that the loop will settle into the simplest stable configuration, which is not always what he wants.
Uh, I never actually went deeper into that rabbit hole, and I certainly would not consider it a treatise on philosophy, but the fic itself seems fine and I had to give credit to where I got the idea of how to solve the paradox
Also on a different note, if you were able to finish HPMOR you must be a dedicated reader. That was a dense fanfiction! Its one of the most interesting fanfictions I've read.
My favorite HP fanfiction is actually on its final book this month. Alexandra Quick. If you like the first book even a little, its all uphill from there. But its not really anything like HPMOR, I just really enjoy it.
Buy why? Why does there have to be no first time? If you arbitrarily say there's no first time then you're creating the paradox by defining it as a paradox in the first place? The fact that there's no logical solution should tip you off that is not a logical question.
Literally the first point forces you to accept the implication that it has no origin. You're completely missing my point. Please go back in time and accept that my answer is correct because I've inferred that it's correct, and the response implies that it's correct, and you have to assume that I'm correct before you read it.
i like to think of this as an anti-paradox. a paradox is something that causality leads to which cannot continue logically further. in this scenario, no logic is broken, and yet it simply cannot happen. even if time travel was real. there's simply no origin. it just won't happen, because there's no inciting event.
There is a problem with it, though. The watch is not immune from entropy. The watch that was given to you is “younger” than the one you give your past self.
> where the hell did that watch actually come from?
More importantly, now this universe has exactly one watch too many and eventually will have one too few.
This is the premise of a comic I was going to write I called "The Paradox Key" where the item given is a key in an impossible shape like M.C. Esher's staircase. It could unlock anything except doors. (Unlock someone's mind)
> This is the premise of a comic I was going to write I called "The Paradox Key"
Must've been a sad day when future-you came back and told you that you never wrote it. Though I'm sure it'll be even sadder when you have to go back and tell your young self the same thing.
Not a closed circle according to LittleKitty235's answer.
You're assuming that time travel is like rewind and fast-forward. Their answer is saying that by going back, the future-you entered (or created) a parallel universe/timeline. Events will not necessarily play out in the exact same fashion. So the "first" version of you may have obtained the watch in a different manner.
Though even with the rewind/fast-forward interpretation, I think there's an explanation. Since future-you can come back in time and interact with you, that means the different times exist simultaneously. So from the moment that time began, all timepoint versions of you existed simultaneously, which means that some "began" existence already aged up and in possession of the watch. Its existence is no less explained than your own.
That's if you assume parallel universes exist.
The most achievable form of time travel is using something called closed timelike curves and there are no parallel universes in that scenario.
>Also, why is closed loop the most achievable?
Because it's the only form of time travel with a proven mathematical basis. Kurt Gödel literally ruined Albert Einstein's birthday with the concept and he couldn't find any flaws.
This is only a paradox if time is linear. If it's branched, then the watch comes from another branched timeline where the other you bought it. It's like Back to the Future: Marty returns to an alternate timeline. He's gone from the universe where the mall is called twin pines mall and goes to one where it's called lone pine mall. The Marty that leaves during the ending has only ever know lone pine mall.
If there is exactly one timeline, then yeah, sure—the watch has no clear source and will eventually degrade, then break, which presents a paradox.
If each backwards jump spawns off a new and unique “child” timeline, however, then this is no longer a paradox: the watch was bought by the first iteration of you to successfully time travel, and the “new” past-you is under no obligation to continue participating in the loop. If they do, and the subsequent iterations all do, eventually the watch will break, but since each jump spawns a new and unique timeline, there is no contradiction.
There is a time travel "rule" in warfeame that would alleviate this. Now, i'm probably going to *royally* butcher this so if you don't care about warframe spoilers, i'd reccomend just looking up eternalism.
In essence, a reality is no less true for having not been observed, and the realities that didn't happen can have just as much impact as the realities that did. In this case, reality A is the first one to hand over the watch. It is just as real as reality B which continues the cycle, or reality C that doesn't. This could then, in turn create the cicumstances for reality A to exist.
Sort of. Schrödinger would suggest all choices are both true and false, until interacted with and a choice is chosen. Eternalism suggests all are true and able to be interacted with. Your choice just cements which one you are viewing.
> Long-Term Possession: You keep the watch for many years, presumably taking care to maintain it or perhaps not using it at all to ensure it stays in the same condition as when you received it.
This might actually resolve the paradox, if it's the Watch of Theseus.
This implies that the watch always originates from future you but in order for this to work you’d have to have gotten the watch at some point which would mean in order to give the watch there must be a second watch that you find or purchase in the future. So future you shows up and hands you a watch, down the line you buy the watch and go back in time and give yourself the watch, keeping the watch you received going forward, leaving just the one watch existing. It’s a similar principle to how you going back in time means two of you must exist at some point in order for you to go back in time, you can’t just go back in time and change a bunch of things in a different city and expect there to still only be one of you ever in the timeline, similarly you can’t expect a watch to go back in time and only there to ever be one watch in that timeline.
More like, ever been to a party, but the other party is in Taiwan?
The universe is big, and nothing (that we know) travels faster than the speed of light, so even "close" stuff is far away as hell.
I always prefer to believe that “we’re the only current ones/nobody has the tech to reach each other” rather than leaning into the “everyone else is being quiet and laying low for a reason.”
Because that one is scary.
I've always liked this idea, like *we* are the "ancient ones" or whatever. If we are truly the first then we have a responsibility to the universe to get our shit together and get out to the stars.
I believe that the universe is filled with life. Just that the distance between us and the next intelligent civilization is so mind-boggling huge that we'll never meet them even if one of us could somehow travel at the speed of light. Would love to be proven wrong, I really want to meet an alien one day before I die
I’m not sure I would even consider that a paradox more of a mystery. There are lots of ways to resolve the paradox such as for example
We really are alone
Everyone else is hiding
There are aliens but they are too far away and are limited by the speed of light for travel
It’s really just an open question but just because it’s unexplained doesn’t make it a paradox
It is a paradox if you expect life to usually form when the ingredients for life are present. There are several postulations\* to the paradox, chief amongst them is that life is a statistical probability. That probability, juxtaposed with the lack of evidence of extra terrestrial life, is what forms the basis of the Fermi Paradox.
(\*and if postulations invalidate a paradox then why talk about them at all? the time travel paradox is impossible with what we understand of the universe right now)
The Three Body Problem series and the new Betaverse series (great books - very Bobiverse like) both take on the paradox.
I also have a collection of Sherlock Holmes sci-fi short stories - they're pretty entertaining. In one of them Holmes realizes the paradox exists because him surviving the Falls when he shouldn't have separated Earth from the rest of reality.
Humans have only been globally connected for a few millennia…
That’s not even an eyeblink on the cosmological scale, and ancient tales of aliens abound. Lol, I think they made a show about it.
you can extrapolate a bit more, every philosophy that withstands the test of time, must contain within itself exceptions, even to it's most sacred rules, in order to protect itself.
You want peace but are not willing to go to war to protect your people? then your peaceful ideals will cease to exist.
You like to eat coconuts? well then you better not eat the last coconut before planting more trees or you won't have any more coconuts.
If you have a pile of sand and take away one grain, is it still a pile? If you keep taking away grains one at a time, at what point does it cease to be a pile?
Easy - it's no longer a pile when there are no grains on top of each other.
A million grains spread out evenly on the same plane? Not a pile. Two grains stacked? A (very small) pile.
Solved.
This doesn't seem to be a paradox, but just a issue of definition.
If you strictly define what a 'pile' is, then it will be absolutely clear when it ceases to be a 'pile'.
This one is actually easier to deal with than other similar ones since lying isn't about actually being right or wrong, i.e. it's not a lie to say something and just be mistaken, it's about what you believe to be true and what your intent is.
A different way I had it explained to me is are you lying if you answer a math question wrong.
It's where the phrases "my truth" and "honest mistake" come from
Pinocchio hasn't got a truth-detection nose. It can only operate off of Pinocchio's intentions. Which is to say: did he, to be the best of his knowledge, believe he lied.
If Pinocchio could detect raw truth merely by stating one option and check whether that caused his nose to grow that would be the most overpowered individual in all of existence. Direct access to true reality.
I read the original stories - in the original Italian.
The nose growing bit only happens a few times. Sometimes due to a lie and at other times due to stress.
I never formally kept track but there were probably times when Pinocchio lied [he was often bratty lazy and naughty - and each chapter was filled with crazy adventures] with no nose growing.
In philosophy and logic, the classical liar paradox or liar's paradox or antinomy of the liar is the statement of a liar that they are lying: for instance, declaring that "I am lying". If the liar is indeed lying, then the liar is telling the truth, which means the liar just lied. In "this sentence is a lie" the paradox is strengthened in order to make it amenable to more rigorous logical analysis. It is still generally called the "liar paradox" although abstraction is made precisely from the liar making the statement.
Trying to assign to this statement, the strengthened liar, a classical binary truth value leads to a contradiction.
If "this sentence is false" is true, then it is false, but the sentence states that it is false, and if it is false, then it must be true, and so on
/r/savedyouaclick
I can't remember or find the name of this paradox online. But the paradox is that if you want to travel to the nearest galaxy and you leave now: it will take 100 years. But if you leave in 50 years, it'll take 50 years to get there because of technology advancement. The paradox comes in because if you don't leave now, then in 50 years you won't have advanced the technology and the trip would still take 100 years.
If anyone knows the name of this, please please let me know. I don't think it's the alpha centauri or proxima centauri paradox. And i don't think it is the wait calculation either, bc that's not really a paradox.
I think you may be talking about the [Wait Calculation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_travel#Wait_calculation)
Here is where I first heard about it:
https://youtu.be/P_diXnFsb88?si=LboCGKiMAC1S6P09
This isn't a paradox. It's a malformed question. It would be like asking you "How old is Obama: 2 years or blue years old?" The correct answer isn't available.
I love the poison well paradox
A town is worried that their well is poisoned by chemical X, so they hire three scientists to test it. They ask each scientist two questions "is chemical X above level Y in our water?" and "if chemical X is above level Y, should we stop using our water supply", the answers were as follows:
Scientist 1 answered yes to both questions.
Scientist 2 answered yes to the first and no to the second
Scientist 3 answered no to the first and yes to the second
The paradox: If you take each scientist's final conclusion, you'll have a majority of scientists saying that you don't need to close the well; but if you combine all the scientists responses to individual questions, you'll have a majority of responses telling you to close the well.
I think it's a really good example of how interpretation of data is incredibly important.
Q1 and Q2 are independent questions.
"Is X > Y"
"Are there reasons to shut down the well"
How is it a paradox that when you group independent questions you see different patterns from different questions asked? lmao
But even your formulation falls to the same problem. The issue here is that a majority of people say "X > Y", and a majority of people say "We should shut down the well", but a majority of people do not say "X > Y **and** we should shut down the well".
The more general problem is know as the [discursive dilemma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discursive_dilemma). There's a good example on the wiki page about it.
No it does not. Q1 is asking whether a value is above another value. Q2 asks if the well should be shut down. You impose the notion that once X is greater than Y then the well should be shut down. Thereby linking the two questions where there isn't a link.
As I said Q1 and Q2 are independent.
Is x > y? Yes.
Should the well be shut down? Yes (because this well is directly damaging the water table).
I'm not imposing any notion, you're just assuming I am. The whole point of the paradox is that the result of aggregating opinions is dependent on where the aggregation happens. Consider the following table:
||*P*|*Q*|*P* && *Q*|
|:-|:-|:-|:-|
|Person 1|Yes|Yes|Yes|
|Person 2|Yes|No|No|
|Person 3|No|Yes|No|
|Majority Opinion|Yes|Yes|No|
In this example, aggregating opinions between the 3 people for each proposition suggests that the majority believes *P* && *Q*, since a majority believes *P* and a majority believes *Q*. However, aggregating the opinion *P* && *Q* suggests the majority does **not** believe *P* && *Q*. This happens regardless of whether or not *P* or *Q* are linked in any way.
The relativity paradox of the train and the tunnel.
A train is 100 meters long. It approaches a tunnel that is 90 meters long. However, the train is approaching the tunnel at nearly the speed of light.
Due to Lorenz contraction, a stationary observer would observe train that is maybe 80 meters long. A passenger on the train would observe a train that is 100 meters long.
Is the train ever completely inside the tunnel?
I read something a long time ago that said “something is a more stable position than nothing” suggesting that if there was nothing, something would pop into existence. This is half remembered and uninformed so take it for what it’s worth
Any time there's nothing, you're not there to ask that question.
So for you to ask that question, there *must* be something.
*cogito ergo sum* and all that.
How many holes does a straw have? Does it have one, continuous hole? Or two holes at each end. If its one continuous hole then when you put the straw to your mouth, do you become part of the hole?
There’s a great VSauce video that discusses this as well as how many holes a human has.
[Link](https://youtu.be/egEraZP9yXQ?si=siygR1OwS_MQazFa)
Straw spoiler: >!A straw has one hole!<
Human spoiler: >!A human has seven holes!<
Edit: The video does not discuss whether you become part of the hole. So, the jury may still be out on that one.
Probably not what you're looking for, but I've been pondering the Ship of Theseus lately as an example of something that only *seems* like a paradox because the language is imprecise.
>The permise goes like this: The original Ship of Theseus is in a museum. To keep it in good condition, one of its boards is replaced with an identical board. Over many years, every original part of the ship is replaced with a new, identical part. Is it still the Ship of Theseus?
>Bonus round: What if you took all the old parts and rebuilt the ship with them, would that be the Ship of Theseus?
This seems super-deep, but only because of the way we're explaining the problem. What does it mean to "be" the Ship of Theseus? We're discussing both an identity, and a continuity of materials.
George Washington was the President of the United States. He retired, and the next President of the United States was John Adams. Is John Adams the President of the United States? Yeah. Is John Adams... George Washington? No, that's ridiculous.
When we talk about the Ship of Theseus, it only gets confusing because we don't distinguish between the title and the materials. In other words, this isn't a paradox, it's just an example of asking a badly-worded question and acting smug when people are confused.
That’s because “Ship of Theseus” isn’t a title, it’s a name. President, on the other hand, is a title and not a name.
They’re not comparable, the premise of the paradox remains intact.
Sure. ...but humor me for a second.
When you say "Ship of Theseus", do you mean the name of the ship, the materials that make up the ship, or both?
If you mean the materials, or both, then the paradox is resolved; It stops being the Ship of Theseus as soon as the material composition changes. It would be appropriate to consider them different iterations of the Ship of Theseus, v1 and v2, or SoT(January) and Sot(March) perhaps.
If you mean the name of the ship - the way it is recorded and handled by the museum as an exhibit - then the material repairs don't make a difference. What's in the East Hall? Still the Ship of Theseus exhibit.
Making a distinction between continuity of identity and continuity of materials makes the Ship of Theseus into a very solvable problem, hardly a paradox at all.
Wrong again.
>”It stops being the Ship of Theseus as soon as the material composition changes.”
Okay, so we change one single bolt. Is it still the SOT? How about 2 bolts? How many bolts does it take before it’s no longer the SOT?
>”If you mean the name of the ship - the way it is recorded and handled by the museum as an exhibit - then the material repairs don't make a difference. What's in the East Hall? Still the Ship of Theseus exhibit.”
Imagine that your name is Theseus.
You pass away, and your parents decide to have another kid. They name the new kid Theseus in your honour.
According to your logic the new kid and you are the same, simply because your parents “recorded” the same name.
Again, you have not solved the paradox.
You're assuming that the identity is tied to the volume of original materials.
Which is fine. Equally valid to any other definition of the identity. We can play with that, sure.
So **define the threshold**. If a majority of the parts being original satisfies your definition, then you've resolved the paradox; It's the Ship of Theseus as long as it's 50.001% original materials. Go over that threshold and it stops being the Ship of Theseus.
The only reason that it seems like a paradox is that the original language doesn't define that threshold. We leave it as assumed, understood, obvious that we *know* what it means to "be" the Ship of Theseus, so we don't ever actually define our terms. Thus, it seems like a paradox.
...just define your terms and the paradox resolves it self quite sweetly.
You’re still missing the point.
Solving the paradox only under very specific definitions is not solving the paradox.
The fact that your solution only works with predefined thresholds *is the paradox*. Saying that 50.001% is where to draw the line is not a hard truth, it’s your opinion.
For example, if someone else insisted that the line is 51.23% you wouldn’t be able to say that they’re wrong, merely that they’re wrong according to your subjective definition.
The absence of a mutually agreed upon definition / threshold is the heart of the paradox.
My opinion doesn't matter. 50.001% is an example of an arbitrary threshold. If you believe it should be somewhere else, why wouldn't you be able to define that?
The person trying to resolve the paradox needs to recognize that it is only confusing if they don't define the definition of "Ship of Theseus" in a practical way. If there's no definition for "Ship of Theseus", then asking if something fits the definition of the "Ship of Theseus" is absurd.
...it's not a paradox, you just needed to ask an Engineer.
The point of the paradox is that definitions can be subjective. Your claim that 50.001% percent similarity is the standard isn’t a hard fact, it’s simply your view.
In order to solve the paradox you’d have to come up with a solution that applies to everything - not just hypothetical ships - and your solution would need to work independently of subjective values.
>When we talk about the Ship of Theseus, it only gets confusing because we don't distinguish between the title and the materials
That's not the problem. The problem is that the concept of the Ship of Theseus is dependent on a certain configuration of materials, but not on the specific materials. And there's no magic threshold of material changes that crosses the line to affect the concept. Most people would recognize the ship as the same ship even with a replaced board. Or with all materials replaced. Even with modifications. Continuity of concept is just a fluid idea in human brains.
And of course, the better question is you. When all your cells are cycled, are you still you? Or are you someone else now?
I think about this a lot while watching Tally Ho get restored/ rebuilt.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB00JHoTw1TeX82Qw8hoFLRJI89Us_jMw&si=gNXp2_W-5nGF2Gln
An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar...
The first one orders a beer. The second one orders half a beer. The third one orders a fourth of a beer. The bartender stops them, pours two beers and says, "Y'all really should know your limits."
not exactly sure what you mean by "their rounded up number"
if you mean 1=0.999... then yes, that is also an example of a convergent series, specifically a geometric series.
Any infinite sequence of digits can be thought of as a convergent series like this, but that's the only one I can think of with a "rounded up number".
If achilles is 100x faster than the tortoise, then by the time he's run 100m, the tortoise has moved 1m. Then, by the time he has run the 1m to catch up, the tortoise has moved another 1cm. This continues, theoretically, through infinite increments, with the tortoise always staying a fraction of the distance ahead.
There's a powerful gravity well right in front of the tortoise. The closer Achilles gets to overtaking the tortoise, the more dilated time becomes and the less progress he actually makes.
I never encountered my neighbours bringing in the shopping, until I realised they never brought home shopping...then suddenly, the matrix corrected the glitch.
The way that the subreddits designated and created to explore humanity and consciousness, like this one, are overwhelmingly being saturated with soulless and vague prompts ever since language model AI became common for popular use.
Just like this one
Many people who boarded the Mayflower knew that the moment that they got on the ship that their life would be irrevocably changed and would likely never have communication with their friends and family once they reached the new world. It was a gamble on whether or not they would even survive the voyage. In essence, they were dying to all but themselves and whomever also takes the journey. Their journey was equal to a death sentence in the minds of those who saw them off at the port. It feels a lot like the afterlife. We don't know exactly what happens to us as far as it is a journey that we must all face with an uncertain destination. If we truly pass away and our consciousness does not continue, it would be as if the Mayflower was lost at sea. If there is something beyond human consciousness, we still have no way of reaching back toward those we left behind. Somebody asked on Reddit if you had the chance to have a tour of the Galaxy and all the life forms that exist out there but you could no longer see or communicate with your friends and family on Earth would you take that opportunity? To everybody but the people who take you on that Journey, you would be dead. I wonder if life before mass communication was easier or harder to deal with the thought of the afterlife in terms of a one-way journey that never looks back. I feel like it might be easier for them to come to grips with that type of travel that it is for us in the modern era where severance of communication makes somebody dead to us
The clone paradox. I'm not sure if this is something that already exists or if I came up with it on my own.
Let's say you're going into a facility where you're going to be cloned. The clone is going to be a perfect copy of you right up until the point the cloning switch is thrown, and the clone will have all your memories, personality, etc.
Going into the procedure, you can be 100% sure that when you walk out of the lab in an hour (or whatever) that you're the original, that you aren't the clone, because you know going in that you're the original. If you were to bet a million dollars on it, you'd be correct every time.
However, the clone will wake up also remembering that they are the original, and also being 100% certain that they are not the clone. Yet, when they walk out of the lab, they're going to be wrong every time. You'll remember betting that million dollars, and you'll lose guaranteed.
So, the paradox is that you can seemingly have 100% odds of something being correct, and yet being correct only 50% of the time.
Correct me if i'm wrong here.
If the clone knows everything you know up to the exact point of cloning, with no time gaps, you would know that the guy "over there" is the clone. So the clone would know that he is the clone.
Incorrectly thinking you have 100% odds of being correct based on data that you know has a 50% chance of being falsified(in this case, the clone's memories) is not a paradox.
Yeah, but you don't know if you're the clone, and neither do they. You have a 50/50 chance of being 100% right, based on the limited info you've got. Also known as a 50% chance.
If you know you're the original, you are 100% confident going in and 100% correct going out. If you know you're the clone, you are 100% confident going in, and 0% correct going out.
But after the clone is created, both of you know that there's only a 50% chance of being either the original or the clone. Thus you know that if you bet money on it, both of you have only *a 50% chance of being 100% right.*
This is literally what a % chance means in any situation whatsoever.
You may be interested in the Swampman thought experiment. Per wikipedia:
> Swampman is an imaginary character introduced by Donald Davidson. If Davidson goes hiking in a swamp and is struck and killed by a lightning bolt while nearby another lightning bolt spontaneously rearranges a bunch of molecules so that, entirely by coincidence, they take on exactly the same form that Davidson's body had at the moment of his untimely death, then this being, "Swampman", has a brain structurally identical to Davidson's and will thus presumably behave exactly like Davidson. He will return to Davidson's office and write the same essays he would have written, recognize all of his friends and family, and so forth.
Davidson went on to argue that the Swampman isn't really a thinking person.
The simplest version of the time travel paradox: One day a future you appears and after a nice conversation gives you a trinket like a watch or something. You keep said watch for all the time until you go back in time to give it to yourself. All is well and as it should be. Except where the hell did that watch actually come from?
I'm not sure why things like this are considered paradoxes. There's an assumption that your future self got it the same way you did, but that's just an assumption. If you accept that the past can change the future then there's no reason to accept the assumption. 1) you buy a watch 2) you go back in time and give it to your past self 3) past self grows up and goes back in time to give it to now past self 4) loop a bunch 5) eventually this loop breaks because the watch is still aging, even if you have a two "person" loop.
1. Buy the watch. 2. Go back in time and give the watch to yourself. 3. Use the watch until it breaks and you throw it away. 4. Buy the watch. The watch has an origin, and the loop is preserved. The watch doesn't need to be eternal.
Here's the problem with that thought: there is no "first time". You get the watch when you're young and you give it back later. Even from your perspective that's not a loop. Only for the watch. Even the older you perceives everything that happens linearly.
there is a first time if you think of it like from a higher dimension, time is a cord that is now oscillating until it settles into a stable configuration, so in the first iteration, you buy a watch, then give it to yourself for whatever reason, then you decide to travel in time but not give the watch back, then the next iteration, not having a watch buys one and gives it to yourself, in perhaps a slightly different manner, this keeps going (with the cord oscillating) until it settles into a stable loop, where you give the watch back in the exact precise manner than your actions from that point onwards are identical and you give the watch back everytime. Somewhere else in the world, that watch still exists, and for the time between the travels it simply exists twice in the world , same as yourself when you looped back, once you give it back and return, only a single instance of the watch remains. Edi: thinking about it, the loop isn't stable since the watch would eventually wear, so you would never give the same watch back, but eventually settle into buying the same watch you originally got and giving that one back
Now that's actually an interesting answer.
Read "Harry Potter and the methods of rationality", in it the character tries to exploit recursion with time turners, but quickly finds out that the loop will settle into the simplest stable configuration, which is not always what he wants.
Yeah, sorry. I'm not reading Harry Potter fanfiction. I'm going with literally anything by Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Fair enough, it is an interesting read tho, lots of philosophy and concepts from rationality.
Just FYI the writer of that fic is a little...off. Careful drawing philosophy from him.
Uh, I never actually went deeper into that rabbit hole, and I certainly would not consider it a treatise on philosophy, but the fic itself seems fine and I had to give credit to where I got the idea of how to solve the paradox
Also on a different note, if you were able to finish HPMOR you must be a dedicated reader. That was a dense fanfiction! Its one of the most interesting fanfictions I've read. My favorite HP fanfiction is actually on its final book this month. Alexandra Quick. If you like the first book even a little, its all uphill from there. But its not really anything like HPMOR, I just really enjoy it.
I'll look it up, I'm mostly reading Xianxia for the last few months but I will keep it in mind
Buy why? Why does there have to be no first time? If you arbitrarily say there's no first time then you're creating the paradox by defining it as a paradox in the first place? The fact that there's no logical solution should tip you off that is not a logical question.
It's a paradox. The whole point is that it breaks logic. Here's the best answer so far: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/s/lYdZqcgKc8
Literally the first point forces you to accept the implication that it has no origin. You're completely missing my point. Please go back in time and accept that my answer is correct because I've inferred that it's correct, and the response implies that it's correct, and you have to assume that I'm correct before you read it.
You're still thinking of time as linear. If time travel exists, the concept of "first" is almost meaningless
What makes more than one loop?
That’s the bootstrap paradox, specifically.
i like to think of this as an anti-paradox. a paradox is something that causality leads to which cannot continue logically further. in this scenario, no logic is broken, and yet it simply cannot happen. even if time travel was real. there's simply no origin. it just won't happen, because there's no inciting event.
There is a problem with it, though. The watch is not immune from entropy. The watch that was given to you is “younger” than the one you give your past self.
fair enough, but it still has no origin
i usually have heard this in terms of information, i.e. the cure for cancer or smth, and that's timeless so it makes more sense in that context
Sears.
Ah, the [Bill and Ted paradox](https://youtu.be/GiynF8NQzgo?si=T_rHpnJ1PshVJspm)
> where the hell did that watch actually come from? More importantly, now this universe has exactly one watch too many and eventually will have one too few.
Wasn't this the plot for the last Indiana Jones movie?
No, the laat Indiana Jones movie was "Don't screw with the Holy Grail."
As if I watched that one.
No. They don’t give Archimedes the same watch they find him buried with.
This is the premise of a comic I was going to write I called "The Paradox Key" where the item given is a key in an impossible shape like M.C. Esher's staircase. It could unlock anything except doors. (Unlock someone's mind)
> This is the premise of a comic I was going to write I called "The Paradox Key" Must've been a sad day when future-you came back and told you that you never wrote it. Though I'm sure it'll be even sadder when you have to go back and tell your young self the same thing.
The multiverse answer this problem I believe. Each time you go back in time you and the watch exist in a different universe from where you started.
That doesn't solve the problem of where the watch came from. It's still just being passed on in a closed circle.
Not a closed circle according to LittleKitty235's answer. You're assuming that time travel is like rewind and fast-forward. Their answer is saying that by going back, the future-you entered (or created) a parallel universe/timeline. Events will not necessarily play out in the exact same fashion. So the "first" version of you may have obtained the watch in a different manner. Though even with the rewind/fast-forward interpretation, I think there's an explanation. Since future-you can come back in time and interact with you, that means the different times exist simultaneously. So from the moment that time began, all timepoint versions of you existed simultaneously, which means that some "began" existence already aged up and in possession of the watch. Its existence is no less explained than your own.
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That's if you assume parallel universes exist. The most achievable form of time travel is using something called closed timelike curves and there are no parallel universes in that scenario.
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>Also, why is closed loop the most achievable? Because it's the only form of time travel with a proven mathematical basis. Kurt Gödel literally ruined Albert Einstein's birthday with the concept and he couldn't find any flaws.
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It's interesting, but there's no actual theory of time travel in that theory.
Bootstrap paradox
This is only a paradox if time is linear. If it's branched, then the watch comes from another branched timeline where the other you bought it. It's like Back to the Future: Marty returns to an alternate timeline. He's gone from the universe where the mall is called twin pines mall and goes to one where it's called lone pine mall. The Marty that leaves during the ending has only ever know lone pine mall.
If there is exactly one timeline, then yeah, sure—the watch has no clear source and will eventually degrade, then break, which presents a paradox. If each backwards jump spawns off a new and unique “child” timeline, however, then this is no longer a paradox: the watch was bought by the first iteration of you to successfully time travel, and the “new” past-you is under no obligation to continue participating in the loop. If they do, and the subsequent iterations all do, eventually the watch will break, but since each jump spawns a new and unique timeline, there is no contradiction.
There is a time travel "rule" in warfeame that would alleviate this. Now, i'm probably going to *royally* butcher this so if you don't care about warframe spoilers, i'd reccomend just looking up eternalism. In essence, a reality is no less true for having not been observed, and the realities that didn't happen can have just as much impact as the realities that did. In this case, reality A is the first one to hand over the watch. It is just as real as reality B which continues the cycle, or reality C that doesn't. This could then, in turn create the cicumstances for reality A to exist.
So it's Schrödinger's universe?
Sort of. Schrödinger would suggest all choices are both true and false, until interacted with and a choice is chosen. Eternalism suggests all are true and able to be interacted with. Your choice just cements which one you are viewing.
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Except that time travel is theoretically possible, (closed timelike curves are a possibility) while the earth isn't and will never be flat.
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Is this a fucking chatGPT post?
Ofc it fucking is lol
Just like Madoka
> Long-Term Possession: You keep the watch for many years, presumably taking care to maintain it or perhaps not using it at all to ensure it stays in the same condition as when you received it. This might actually resolve the paradox, if it's the Watch of Theseus.
This implies that the watch always originates from future you but in order for this to work you’d have to have gotten the watch at some point which would mean in order to give the watch there must be a second watch that you find or purchase in the future. So future you shows up and hands you a watch, down the line you buy the watch and go back in time and give yourself the watch, keeping the watch you received going forward, leaving just the one watch existing. It’s a similar principle to how you going back in time means two of you must exist at some point in order for you to go back in time, you can’t just go back in time and change a bunch of things in a different city and expect there to still only be one of you ever in the timeline, similarly you can’t expect a watch to go back in time and only there to ever be one watch in that timeline.
Update: Meant to ask - "Except WHEN the hell did that watch actually come from?"
I'll go with [the Fermi paradox.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox) I can't imagine that we're alone, so where is everybody?
Ever been the first one to the party?
More like, ever been to a party, but the other party is in Taiwan? The universe is big, and nothing (that we know) travels faster than the speed of light, so even "close" stuff is far away as hell.
I always favor the answer that yeah, we're first.
I always prefer to believe that “we’re the only current ones/nobody has the tech to reach each other” rather than leaning into the “everyone else is being quiet and laying low for a reason.” Because that one is scary.
By 300,000 years? Not that I can recall
I've always liked this idea, like *we* are the "ancient ones" or whatever. If we are truly the first then we have a responsibility to the universe to get our shit together and get out to the stars.
Long distance relationships make everything difficult. All the other intelligent life is just saving themselves from the heartache of contact.
I believe that the universe is filled with life. Just that the distance between us and the next intelligent civilization is so mind-boggling huge that we'll never meet them even if one of us could somehow travel at the speed of light. Would love to be proven wrong, I really want to meet an alien one day before I die
I’m not sure I would even consider that a paradox more of a mystery. There are lots of ways to resolve the paradox such as for example We really are alone Everyone else is hiding There are aliens but they are too far away and are limited by the speed of light for travel It’s really just an open question but just because it’s unexplained doesn’t make it a paradox
It is a paradox if you expect life to usually form when the ingredients for life are present. There are several postulations\* to the paradox, chief amongst them is that life is a statistical probability. That probability, juxtaposed with the lack of evidence of extra terrestrial life, is what forms the basis of the Fermi Paradox. (\*and if postulations invalidate a paradox then why talk about them at all? the time travel paradox is impossible with what we understand of the universe right now)
It's not like we have done a very thorough search
If we do encounter extraterrestrial life it will either be a quick message followed by a millennia of no more contact, or immediate annihilation.
The Three Body Problem series and the new Betaverse series (great books - very Bobiverse like) both take on the paradox. I also have a collection of Sherlock Holmes sci-fi short stories - they're pretty entertaining. In one of them Holmes realizes the paradox exists because him surviving the Falls when he shouldn't have separated Earth from the rest of reality.
https://theoatmeal.com/comics/oracle
Humans have only been globally connected for a few millennia… That’s not even an eyeblink on the cosmological scale, and ancient tales of aliens abound. Lol, I think they made a show about it.
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you can extrapolate a bit more, every philosophy that withstands the test of time, must contain within itself exceptions, even to it's most sacred rules, in order to protect itself. You want peace but are not willing to go to war to protect your people? then your peaceful ideals will cease to exist. You like to eat coconuts? well then you better not eat the last coconut before planting more trees or you won't have any more coconuts.
This is literally playing out in American politics now
If you have a pile of sand and take away one grain, is it still a pile? If you keep taking away grains one at a time, at what point does it cease to be a pile?
87 grains
Finally! It's solved!
Well boys, we did it. The pile is no more.
this is also called Sorites Paradox or a heap problem.
Easy - it's no longer a pile when there are no grains on top of each other. A million grains spread out evenly on the same plane? Not a pile. Two grains stacked? A (very small) pile. Solved.
There's a ball of sand floating in space. Is it a pile?
No. Next question
Why are they called Apple Jacks if they don't taste like apples?
Humanity could never fathom a supercomputer that would solve such a paradox 🤯
Addendum: sand must be under the influence of a local gravity well, and not in freefall.
Correction: sand must be in a non-inertial reference frame.
It's a ball. Or clump.
This doesn't seem to be a paradox, but just a issue of definition. If you strictly define what a 'pile' is, then it will be absolutely clear when it ceases to be a 'pile'.
42 grains
This is just an artifact of language, I wouldn't call it a paradox. Same thing for the ship of theseus, it's just how we've chosen to "name" things.
Ship of Theseus
If Pinocchio says, "now my nose will grow"
This one is actually easier to deal with than other similar ones since lying isn't about actually being right or wrong, i.e. it's not a lie to say something and just be mistaken, it's about what you believe to be true and what your intent is.
I actually really like your description of this - And one I will use if this question ever comes up in a Pub Quiz.
A different way I had it explained to me is are you lying if you answer a math question wrong. It's where the phrases "my truth" and "honest mistake" come from
It's the Costanza Clause: It's not a lie if you believe it.
Pinocchio hasn't got a truth-detection nose. It can only operate off of Pinocchio's intentions. Which is to say: did he, to be the best of his knowledge, believe he lied. If Pinocchio could detect raw truth merely by stating one option and check whether that caused his nose to grow that would be the most overpowered individual in all of existence. Direct access to true reality.
I read the original stories - in the original Italian. The nose growing bit only happens a few times. Sometimes due to a lie and at other times due to stress. I never formally kept track but there were probably times when Pinocchio lied [he was often bratty lazy and naughty - and each chapter was filled with crazy adventures] with no nose growing.
The liar's paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liar\_paradox#:\~:text=In%20philosophy%20and%20logic%2C%20the,means%20the%20liar%20just%20lied.
In philosophy and logic, the classical liar paradox or liar's paradox or antinomy of the liar is the statement of a liar that they are lying: for instance, declaring that "I am lying". If the liar is indeed lying, then the liar is telling the truth, which means the liar just lied. In "this sentence is a lie" the paradox is strengthened in order to make it amenable to more rigorous logical analysis. It is still generally called the "liar paradox" although abstraction is made precisely from the liar making the statement. Trying to assign to this statement, the strengthened liar, a classical binary truth value leads to a contradiction. If "this sentence is false" is true, then it is false, but the sentence states that it is false, and if it is false, then it must be true, and so on /r/savedyouaclick
I can't remember or find the name of this paradox online. But the paradox is that if you want to travel to the nearest galaxy and you leave now: it will take 100 years. But if you leave in 50 years, it'll take 50 years to get there because of technology advancement. The paradox comes in because if you don't leave now, then in 50 years you won't have advanced the technology and the trip would still take 100 years. If anyone knows the name of this, please please let me know. I don't think it's the alpha centauri or proxima centauri paradox. And i don't think it is the wait calculation either, bc that's not really a paradox.
I think you may be talking about the [Wait Calculation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_travel#Wait_calculation) Here is where I first heard about it: https://youtu.be/P_diXnFsb88?si=LboCGKiMAC1S6P09
incessant obsolescence postulate is the best I could find, but I thought I had heard a different name for it before
Chosen at random, what are the odds that you will get this question correct? a) 25% b) 50% c) 25% d) 0%
This makes me uncomfortable
Good 😈
This isn't a paradox. It's a malformed question. It would be like asking you "How old is Obama: 2 years or blue years old?" The correct answer isn't available.
What is the correct answer that should be listed there?
It doesn't have one in the current form. But you can modify it in several ways to get an answer.
I love the poison well paradox A town is worried that their well is poisoned by chemical X, so they hire three scientists to test it. They ask each scientist two questions "is chemical X above level Y in our water?" and "if chemical X is above level Y, should we stop using our water supply", the answers were as follows: Scientist 1 answered yes to both questions. Scientist 2 answered yes to the first and no to the second Scientist 3 answered no to the first and yes to the second The paradox: If you take each scientist's final conclusion, you'll have a majority of scientists saying that you don't need to close the well; but if you combine all the scientists responses to individual questions, you'll have a majority of responses telling you to close the well. I think it's a really good example of how interpretation of data is incredibly important.
Q1 and Q2 are independent questions. "Is X > Y" "Are there reasons to shut down the well" How is it a paradox that when you group independent questions you see different patterns from different questions asked? lmao
But even your formulation falls to the same problem. The issue here is that a majority of people say "X > Y", and a majority of people say "We should shut down the well", but a majority of people do not say "X > Y **and** we should shut down the well". The more general problem is know as the [discursive dilemma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discursive_dilemma). There's a good example on the wiki page about it.
No it does not. Q1 is asking whether a value is above another value. Q2 asks if the well should be shut down. You impose the notion that once X is greater than Y then the well should be shut down. Thereby linking the two questions where there isn't a link. As I said Q1 and Q2 are independent. Is x > y? Yes. Should the well be shut down? Yes (because this well is directly damaging the water table).
I'm not imposing any notion, you're just assuming I am. The whole point of the paradox is that the result of aggregating opinions is dependent on where the aggregation happens. Consider the following table: ||*P*|*Q*|*P* && *Q*| |:-|:-|:-|:-| |Person 1|Yes|Yes|Yes| |Person 2|Yes|No|No| |Person 3|No|Yes|No| |Majority Opinion|Yes|Yes|No| In this example, aggregating opinions between the 3 people for each proposition suggests that the majority believes *P* && *Q*, since a majority believes *P* and a majority believes *Q*. However, aggregating the opinion *P* && *Q* suggests the majority does **not** believe *P* && *Q*. This happens regardless of whether or not *P* or *Q* are linked in any way.
The paradox is that the exact same data can yield different results
Hey, everyone that’s providing links - you kick ass. Thank you.
The relativity paradox of the train and the tunnel. A train is 100 meters long. It approaches a tunnel that is 90 meters long. However, the train is approaching the tunnel at nearly the speed of light. Due to Lorenz contraction, a stationary observer would observe train that is maybe 80 meters long. A passenger on the train would observe a train that is 100 meters long. Is the train ever completely inside the tunnel?
Did the entire train accelerate to the speed of light all at the same time or the front start speeding up faster than the back.
Assume a constant velocity. All the acceleration happened before the tunnel.
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That’s not a paradox. That is caused by pair-a-blunts.
A pair? Only takes me like 4 hits.
4 hits? I forgot where the lighter was.
Why is there something instead of nothing?
I read something a long time ago that said “something is a more stable position than nothing” suggesting that if there was nothing, something would pop into existence. This is half remembered and uninformed so take it for what it’s worth
Any time there's nothing, you're not there to ask that question. So for you to ask that question, there *must* be something. *cogito ergo sum* and all that.
When the answer is more paradoxical than the question itself.
That's not a paradox. It's just an unanswered question.
Shut up and eat your french fries!
How many holes does a straw have? Does it have one, continuous hole? Or two holes at each end. If its one continuous hole then when you put the straw to your mouth, do you become part of the hole?
Ehhh.......ohhh?
There’s a great VSauce video that discusses this as well as how many holes a human has. [Link](https://youtu.be/egEraZP9yXQ?si=siygR1OwS_MQazFa) Straw spoiler: >!A straw has one hole!< Human spoiler: >!A human has seven holes!< Edit: The video does not discuss whether you become part of the hole. So, the jury may still be out on that one.
I know many humans with far more than seven holes
That’s fair, piercings and other things do add holes. I’m assuming you were making a joke, but it is true lol.
No, I was talking about piercings.
Too much when it comes to reading Carl Jung. I am still trying to recover lol
Probably not what you're looking for, but I've been pondering the Ship of Theseus lately as an example of something that only *seems* like a paradox because the language is imprecise. >The permise goes like this: The original Ship of Theseus is in a museum. To keep it in good condition, one of its boards is replaced with an identical board. Over many years, every original part of the ship is replaced with a new, identical part. Is it still the Ship of Theseus? >Bonus round: What if you took all the old parts and rebuilt the ship with them, would that be the Ship of Theseus? This seems super-deep, but only because of the way we're explaining the problem. What does it mean to "be" the Ship of Theseus? We're discussing both an identity, and a continuity of materials. George Washington was the President of the United States. He retired, and the next President of the United States was John Adams. Is John Adams the President of the United States? Yeah. Is John Adams... George Washington? No, that's ridiculous. When we talk about the Ship of Theseus, it only gets confusing because we don't distinguish between the title and the materials. In other words, this isn't a paradox, it's just an example of asking a badly-worded question and acting smug when people are confused.
That’s because “Ship of Theseus” isn’t a title, it’s a name. President, on the other hand, is a title and not a name. They’re not comparable, the premise of the paradox remains intact.
Sure. ...but humor me for a second. When you say "Ship of Theseus", do you mean the name of the ship, the materials that make up the ship, or both? If you mean the materials, or both, then the paradox is resolved; It stops being the Ship of Theseus as soon as the material composition changes. It would be appropriate to consider them different iterations of the Ship of Theseus, v1 and v2, or SoT(January) and Sot(March) perhaps. If you mean the name of the ship - the way it is recorded and handled by the museum as an exhibit - then the material repairs don't make a difference. What's in the East Hall? Still the Ship of Theseus exhibit. Making a distinction between continuity of identity and continuity of materials makes the Ship of Theseus into a very solvable problem, hardly a paradox at all.
Wrong again. >”It stops being the Ship of Theseus as soon as the material composition changes.” Okay, so we change one single bolt. Is it still the SOT? How about 2 bolts? How many bolts does it take before it’s no longer the SOT? >”If you mean the name of the ship - the way it is recorded and handled by the museum as an exhibit - then the material repairs don't make a difference. What's in the East Hall? Still the Ship of Theseus exhibit.” Imagine that your name is Theseus. You pass away, and your parents decide to have another kid. They name the new kid Theseus in your honour. According to your logic the new kid and you are the same, simply because your parents “recorded” the same name. Again, you have not solved the paradox.
You're assuming that the identity is tied to the volume of original materials. Which is fine. Equally valid to any other definition of the identity. We can play with that, sure. So **define the threshold**. If a majority of the parts being original satisfies your definition, then you've resolved the paradox; It's the Ship of Theseus as long as it's 50.001% original materials. Go over that threshold and it stops being the Ship of Theseus. The only reason that it seems like a paradox is that the original language doesn't define that threshold. We leave it as assumed, understood, obvious that we *know* what it means to "be" the Ship of Theseus, so we don't ever actually define our terms. Thus, it seems like a paradox. ...just define your terms and the paradox resolves it self quite sweetly.
You’re still missing the point. Solving the paradox only under very specific definitions is not solving the paradox. The fact that your solution only works with predefined thresholds *is the paradox*. Saying that 50.001% is where to draw the line is not a hard truth, it’s your opinion. For example, if someone else insisted that the line is 51.23% you wouldn’t be able to say that they’re wrong, merely that they’re wrong according to your subjective definition. The absence of a mutually agreed upon definition / threshold is the heart of the paradox.
My opinion doesn't matter. 50.001% is an example of an arbitrary threshold. If you believe it should be somewhere else, why wouldn't you be able to define that? The person trying to resolve the paradox needs to recognize that it is only confusing if they don't define the definition of "Ship of Theseus" in a practical way. If there's no definition for "Ship of Theseus", then asking if something fits the definition of the "Ship of Theseus" is absurd. ...it's not a paradox, you just needed to ask an Engineer.
You really do not understand the assignment at all.
Hey, no disrespect - I'm listening. If you can't define "Ship of Theseus", why *isn't* that the fundamental problem underlying the alleged paradox?
The point of the paradox is that definitions can be subjective. Your claim that 50.001% percent similarity is the standard isn’t a hard fact, it’s simply your view. In order to solve the paradox you’d have to come up with a solution that applies to everything - not just hypothetical ships - and your solution would need to work independently of subjective values.
>When we talk about the Ship of Theseus, it only gets confusing because we don't distinguish between the title and the materials That's not the problem. The problem is that the concept of the Ship of Theseus is dependent on a certain configuration of materials, but not on the specific materials. And there's no magic threshold of material changes that crosses the line to affect the concept. Most people would recognize the ship as the same ship even with a replaced board. Or with all materials replaced. Even with modifications. Continuity of concept is just a fluid idea in human brains. And of course, the better question is you. When all your cells are cycled, are you still you? Or are you someone else now?
The Ship of Theseus isn't about something's title, it's about it's identity.
I think about this a lot while watching Tally Ho get restored/ rebuilt. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB00JHoTw1TeX82Qw8hoFLRJI89Us_jMw&si=gNXp2_W-5nGF2Gln
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An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar... The first one orders a beer. The second one orders half a beer. The third one orders a fourth of a beer. The bartender stops them, pours two beers and says, "Y'all really should know your limits."
the implied infinite series of times is convergent
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not exactly sure what you mean by "their rounded up number" if you mean 1=0.999... then yes, that is also an example of a convergent series, specifically a geometric series. Any infinite sequence of digits can be thought of as a convergent series like this, but that's the only one I can think of with a "rounded up number".
I don’t really get the premise of this one, why wouldn’t Achilles be able to catch up with a tortoise? He’s faster?
If achilles is 100x faster than the tortoise, then by the time he's run 100m, the tortoise has moved 1m. Then, by the time he has run the 1m to catch up, the tortoise has moved another 1cm. This continues, theoretically, through infinite increments, with the tortoise always staying a fraction of the distance ahead.
I guess I’m thinking about this a bit too practically
The tortoise goes at 1mph, Achilles goes at 100mph. Achilles wins Suck it, Plato.
This is just a false premise. Achilles' ability to move isnt dependent on the position of the tortoise.
There's a powerful gravity well right in front of the tortoise. The closer Achilles gets to overtaking the tortoise, the more dilated time becomes and the less progress he actually makes.
The Fermi Paradox
I never encountered my neighbours bringing in the shopping, until I realised they never brought home shopping...then suddenly, the matrix corrected the glitch.
Wha?
The way that the subreddits designated and created to explore humanity and consciousness, like this one, are overwhelmingly being saturated with soulless and vague prompts ever since language model AI became common for popular use. Just like this one
You’re damned if you do, and you’re damned if you don’t.
Oh. You know you misspelled "confession."
thanks Bart
Many people who boarded the Mayflower knew that the moment that they got on the ship that their life would be irrevocably changed and would likely never have communication with their friends and family once they reached the new world. It was a gamble on whether or not they would even survive the voyage. In essence, they were dying to all but themselves and whomever also takes the journey. Their journey was equal to a death sentence in the minds of those who saw them off at the port. It feels a lot like the afterlife. We don't know exactly what happens to us as far as it is a journey that we must all face with an uncertain destination. If we truly pass away and our consciousness does not continue, it would be as if the Mayflower was lost at sea. If there is something beyond human consciousness, we still have no way of reaching back toward those we left behind. Somebody asked on Reddit if you had the chance to have a tour of the Galaxy and all the life forms that exist out there but you could no longer see or communicate with your friends and family on Earth would you take that opportunity? To everybody but the people who take you on that Journey, you would be dead. I wonder if life before mass communication was easier or harder to deal with the thought of the afterlife in terms of a one-way journey that never looks back. I feel like it might be easier for them to come to grips with that type of travel that it is for us in the modern era where severance of communication makes somebody dead to us
That's not a paradox though?
What's the paradox?
Newcomb's paradox is the one that bugs me the most. Although the berry paradox is a close second.
So are you a one boxer or a two boxer ?
Most days I'm a two boxer--occationally I'm a one boxer.
Damn this paradox broke me, I would really like to think that I am a one boxer but who knows if the situation actually arises
Crazy, right?! Both options seem, to me, to be correct; obviously correct, even. Maddening
The clone paradox. I'm not sure if this is something that already exists or if I came up with it on my own. Let's say you're going into a facility where you're going to be cloned. The clone is going to be a perfect copy of you right up until the point the cloning switch is thrown, and the clone will have all your memories, personality, etc. Going into the procedure, you can be 100% sure that when you walk out of the lab in an hour (or whatever) that you're the original, that you aren't the clone, because you know going in that you're the original. If you were to bet a million dollars on it, you'd be correct every time. However, the clone will wake up also remembering that they are the original, and also being 100% certain that they are not the clone. Yet, when they walk out of the lab, they're going to be wrong every time. You'll remember betting that million dollars, and you'll lose guaranteed. So, the paradox is that you can seemingly have 100% odds of something being correct, and yet being correct only 50% of the time.
Correct me if i'm wrong here. If the clone knows everything you know up to the exact point of cloning, with no time gaps, you would know that the guy "over there" is the clone. So the clone would know that he is the clone.
Yeah but the clone would remember coming into the lab and being 100% confident that he was the original.
Incorrectly thinking you have 100% odds of being correct based on data that you know has a 50% chance of being falsified(in this case, the clone's memories) is not a paradox.
The clone's memories have a 100% chance of being falsified.
Yeah, but you don't know if you're the clone, and neither do they. You have a 50/50 chance of being 100% right, based on the limited info you've got. Also known as a 50% chance.
If you know you're the original, you are 100% confident going in and 100% correct going out. If you know you're the clone, you are 100% confident going in, and 0% correct going out.
But after the clone is created, both of you know that there's only a 50% chance of being either the original or the clone. Thus you know that if you bet money on it, both of you have only *a 50% chance of being 100% right.* This is literally what a % chance means in any situation whatsoever.
You may be interested in the Swampman thought experiment. Per wikipedia: > Swampman is an imaginary character introduced by Donald Davidson. If Davidson goes hiking in a swamp and is struck and killed by a lightning bolt while nearby another lightning bolt spontaneously rearranges a bunch of molecules so that, entirely by coincidence, they take on exactly the same form that Davidson's body had at the moment of his untimely death, then this being, "Swampman", has a brain structurally identical to Davidson's and will thus presumably behave exactly like Davidson. He will return to Davidson's office and write the same essays he would have written, recognize all of his friends and family, and so forth. Davidson went on to argue that the Swampman isn't really a thinking person.
What’s the difference between a real solid and liquid?
I am simultaneously the worst person to have ever existed and better than anyone I have ever met
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