6 Paradoxes So Strange They Rewrite Logic Itself

Comments · 37

• PR

  @Prof-Explains-It · 11 days ago · pinned

  Do You Guys Agree ?

  2

• DO

  @DoubleSlashCJ · 2 days ago

  There's no debate about the box one. You clearly always take box B because if the machine already knows that you would take box B then it would have the million in it.

  3

• DA

  @daviddurbin7682 · 3 days ago

  I always go to my favorite tailors for my clothes: Euripides and Eumenedes🎉

  2

• ST

  @stefanmullerbecker3536 · 7 hours ago

  Newcombs paradox just shows that there can be no accurate predictors in the first place, all the less so if you also want to have free will afterwards. Of course this cannot be resolved.

• MC

  @McGriffman · 7 days ago

  If you take both boxes you take A AND B.  If you take either box you take A OR B...

  1

• ID

  @ido2267 · 11 days ago

  Paradox 1 and 2 are essentially the same paradox

  2

• TA

  @tasilovonheydebrandtundder6851 · 11 days ago

  Keep in mind first, that there are veridical and falsidical paradoxes, and only the veridical are "true" paradoxes. The whole "This sentence is false" and its variants are really not paradoxes; they merely point to the impossibility of true external and objective self-referentiality. With regard to Russell's Paradox, I have always felt that the initial premise was flawed; we cannot with inner consistency conceive of a set and its members that do not include themselves. One way to know this is to suggest that there is somehow a lack of equivalence between 2+2 and 4; if so, one could say that 4 "includes" 2+2, but that sparks problems of equivalence. See e.g. the problem of the ball and the sphere, and the supposed equivalence between .99999...and 1. If 1 contains .9999...(as I believe it does) then the two cannot be equivalent. Godel basically put all this nonsense to rest in the 1930s. Moving right along... With regard to Newcomb's, we are missing important data, and that data is the time-corrected track record of the Predictor. It is one thing to say the Predictor has only very rarely been wrong; it is another to examine the processual count of errancy over time. Without this knowledge, one has to speculate as to the motives of the other risk takers. Further - and I'm sure this has occurred to people - the financial circumstances of people would affect their choice, unless we're assuming some sort of angelic gambling host of perfectly financially equivalent bettors. This is not a red herring, since fiinancial considerations would surely also affect the Predictor in his ruminations. Finally, is the $1000 subject to inflation (or deflation)? Is a choice made today precisely the same in terms of accrual of income as it was or would be in another time period? Again, this is not a trivial consideration. With regard to the two envelopes, I am making the assumption that the envelopes themselves provide us with no prior evidence about the money inside. If so, we can't make any Bayesian calculations, because we cannot say "the odds of this are x, given y." But choosing to switch is in a sense trying to "Monty Hall" your way to greater wealth, but it is done, once again, without sufficient information. One twist you could propose is to ask both how many times the envelopes have been given to others and secondly, precisely what each person chose, historically speaking. There is a theory that even the sparsest prior information, when multiplied probabilistically like this might (and I do say "might") give you that card-counting-into-the-sixth-deck advantage over the house.

  5

• DE

  @demise0 · 10 days ago

  The Bootstrap Paradox is impossible for a physical object.  The problem is that objects age (atomic decay at minimum even with the utmost care otherwise), so it cannot be the same age at the end when it goes back in time as it was at the beginning of the loop.  Ergo, it is not the same object.  The Bootstrap Paradox can only exist for ideas and creative works, things without inevitable decay.

  2

• ZA

  @zanti4132 · 6 days ago

  The thinking for the envelope paradox is clearly fallacious. &nbsp;One envelope contains x dollars, and one contains 2x dollars. &nbsp;After your random first selection, there is a 50% chance you have x dollars, a 50% chance you have 2x dollars. &nbsp;By being given the opportunity to switch envelopes, there are now four possible scenarios:<br><br>You started with x dollars and didn&apos;t switch, leaving you with x dollars.<br><br>You started with x dollars and switched, leaving you with 2x dollars.<br><br>You started with 2x dollars and didn&apos;t switch, leaving you with 2x dollars.<br><br>You started with 2x dollars and switched, leaving you with x dollars.<br><br>The end result is that being given the opportunity to switch envelopes didn&apos;t change the probabilities - it&apos;s still a 50% chance you have the envelope with 2x dollars. &nbsp;No, this isn&apos;t a variation on the Monty Hall problem.

  5

• RO

  @romascesas8216 · 11 days ago

  The first one is nonsense. &nbsp;What about the sentence is false? &nbsp;It&apos;s an ambiguous statement that describes nothing. &nbsp;<br>The predictor is silly if the predictor is always correct on what you will pick it means there never will be a million dollars available because in both choices the predictor will be correct and there will be no lillion dollars.<br>The 2 envelopes is not even a paradox since it involve an extra variable. &nbsp;The odds that one envelope would have either half the amount of the other or double is a separate issue from the original choice presented. &nbsp;If you had 3 envelopes this would make sense but &nbsp;throwing in an unknown makes it totally illogical.

  2

• AL

  @Alex1Alex1-c2y · 1 day ago

  IF the predictor WAS always right, you MUST take box 2. Except there is no such predictor. And cannot be.<br>What is an onvelope? Silly ai voice... Calculate the loss you get by not switching, and will also get 1.25. It´s NOT the goat problem with the three doors and two goats.

  1

• TR

  @Troubleatmill-h6d · 6 days ago

  Sometimes I think that some people have way too much time on their hands.<br>Get outside and do something useful! As my old dad would say.<br>Greetings from Yorkshire.😁

  2