Paradoxes -

[Bob's Fries]

Ah that classic Pinocchio one. It's been a while. *sighs*

 

[QI 541]

Here's another one:In a certain town, there is a barber who shaves every man who does not shave himself. Who shaves the barber? (and no, the barber is NOT a woman/transvestite/tomgirl)

The barber shaves himself. The riddle never said he only shaves men who do not shave themselves.

 

[Smokedaddy]

How is Scheoedinger's cat a paradox? I am keen to know.

I don't know. I just wanted to contribute!

Edit: Then again, you can't have a cat that's both alive and dead. Can you?

It's a quantum cat, not a paradoxical cat. Argue with the transistors in your computer. On a physics test in college, one of the questions was to figure the quantum uncertainty of a baseball. It is very small, but positive.

The quantum uncertainty of a cat is also very small, but still. It's not the same thing as "Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation" yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation. That's a paradox, the other is a reality.

Everyone should read Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid if you want to get into the nature of paradox and its inseperatability from logic.

 

[Blue Max]

One thing that always messes with me is a good paradox. I just learned about Zeno's Paradox anyone have thoughts on that?
Here's another one:In a certain town, there is a barber who shaves every man who does not shave himself. Who shaves the barber? (and no, the barber is NOT a woman/transvestite/tomgirl)

Zeno's Paradox can be solved by using calculus, but there's an easier way to do it:
Functionally, it its the story of the turtle that runs 1 km, then 500 m, then 250 m, etc.

Or, First Term in Series
1/ Term Divisor

So, in this case:

1 km = 1 * 2 KM = 2 KM
1/2

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Self Reference Problems are often a question of phrasing. In the barber example, it never explicitly says he can't shave himself (he just does it in addition to everyone else), or you can throw in loopholes like he doesn't live in town, he is naturally bald/fuzzless.

That said, there are some brilliant paradoxes, such as:

A contest between two men, where a judge must decide which of the men is wearing the worse tie, and give the winner the other mans tie. Supposedly, this means that both men can both wear ties they don't like and potentially win one that they do like, so the odds are favorable, right?

Or a Factory with a payout of:
CEO: $25,000/ Month
VP of Operations: $15,000 / Month
8 salesmen: $3,000 / Month
10 Technicians: $2,000/ Month
20 Assembly Line: $1,500 / Month

They can then claim that the average wage is $2,850 a Month, so they're a very well paying company, right?

How about one more.

You have a Bakery
You sell a Dozen Muffins for $6, and stock 20 of them. =$120
You sell 20 servings of cake for $15, and stock 10 of them. $150
You get $270 total
But if you get lazy, decide to average both numbers and sell everything piecemeal:
360 servings of deserts @ $0.63 each, and get only $226.80

Paradoxes are a lot of fun.