An arrow cannot move in a place it is not. Nor can it move in a place which it is. Therefore it is always at rest

This is an interesting paradox, as it raises questions of how we percieve movement and time. Any thoughts?

Your paradox ignores what movement is - the transition of an object from where it is to where it is not.

One cannot measure movement by where something is not however, the arrow is always somewhere, therefore always at rest.

Or so a defence of the paradox would sound

Zeno's Paradox (another one)

I intend to walk a metre. Logically, I first have to cover the first half of this metre. To do that, of course, I have to cover the first half of that - the first quarter-metre. But to do that, I have to cover the first eighth. For that, I have to cover the first sixteenth. And to do that, I have to cover the first thirty-second. The first sixty-fourth. The first one hundred and twenty-eighth. The first two hundred and fifty-sixth...

In short, logically, I cannot cover any distance - it's simply too far.

No, one measures movement by where an arrow was compared to where it is now.

Which leads us nicely onto the other one of Zeno's you introduced

But neither of those paradoxes work because people do travel and arrows do move!

Try this one

If a time machine was ever invented, it would have to exist throughtout all time, past present and future. If this time machine always existed, it would never need to be built and if it wasnt built it couldnt exist..

The best one comes from the simpsons.

"Is Jesus so powerful that he can microwave a burrito so hot that even he cannot eat it?"

The purpose of the paradox is not to proove that arrows don't move, or that people don't travel, their purpose is to challenge the way we percieve movement.

i always thought a paradox was something that cannot be answered or has no beginning or end.

what you said was more along the lines of 'if a tree fell in a forest..' which i dont think of as a paradox.

meh.

It's a paradox because it shows that, logically, we cannot move from one place to another. But empirically, we can. They cannot both be true.

That's why they have limits in math, and why 0.9 (with that little bar thing over the 9 that means it infinitelly repeats)=1.

So no, your paradox is wrong. Yes, it's not only not a paradox, it's just plain WRONG. So there.


What you're really doing is travelling an infinite number of fractions of a meter in a second (or however long it takes you to walk one meter).

Well things like Zeno's paradox are designed to seem as such, to provoke thought.

Logical purists of course, would find the term too loosely applied here.

Paradox sounds slightly better than "The Impossible Puzzle That Is Actually Possible And Will Make You Think!"

No, 0.9 recurring does not equal 1. For all intents and purposes it can be treated as equalling 1, but it doesn't. My math tutor explained this to me a few years ago. In the same way, 0.3 recurring does not equal 0.4, 0.34, 0.33333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333334, or indeed anything other than 0.3 recurring (if it did, three thirds would equal more than one, which makes no sense).

1. Me too
2. No, it isn't, that has to do with waves, vibration and vacuums!

The following statement is true. The previous statement is false.

Maybe the first statement isn't entirely true...or both aren't entirely true...aaaaghh

The only philosophical truth is that there is no philosophical truth

Now that's a paradox for ye.

now that, is a good one...much like
"can God make something that is too big for him to move?"

i love these

That's not a paradox I've ever found particularly convincing. The counter-argument, as I see it, would run:

God's power is innately paradoxical. Yes, he can make a boulder too heavy to lift, and yes, he can lift it. God created all the natural laws, including the Law of the Excluded Middle*, and thus is not subject to them.

*The law of logic that states "A statement or its opposite must be true." For example, the statement: "This chair is blue." The chair can either be blue (the statement is true), or not blue (the opposite is true). It cannot be both and it cannot be neither.

Couldn't God purposely make something he couldn't move? Wouldn't he know his boundaries, or is he all powerful, or maybe I don't know what I'm talking about so I should shut up...

No one knows what they are talking about when they talk about god, it's too abstract an idea to debate. Personally if there is a god, I see him as a very bored ultra-dimensional being who wanted The Sims: Universe game but had to make do with us instead.

But, if it was priced too high, can corporations become more powerful than supposed god?

I'm going under the bed with knives and a few matches.

Lets say...

x=.999999 repeating

so, 10x is 9.999999 repeating, right?

and of course 10x - x = 9x

so 9.999999 repeating - .9999999 repeating = 9x, which is 9.

9x = 9... x=1.

Here's something which is not so paradoxical as it is dichotomous.

Human imagination. Without it we would be extinct. It will also be our eventual destruction. It has produced the bomb, the gun, torture, etc has come from imagination. Our savior and our destroyer. Yum.

There are two types of knowledge, knowledge itself, and the knowledge of how to use that. Imagination can indeed be our saviour and our destruction, but it is our will that can change which way it sends us

and you just know people are going to think of things that aren't going to do any of us any good

Argh, no! Not that one! That one makes my head hurt...

I don't think of it as a paradox either. It sort of goes back to Plato's concept of form. Everything that does exist has always existed, and this doesn't simply mean the physical world, because that's changing and insubstantial, but rather laws of nature and their ilk. All knowledge is innate and all things that are discovered were already there. For example the principles of flight. The principles of flight have always existed since it was physically possible for someone or something to take advantage of them, but humans only discovered the principles of flight a hundred or so years ago. Before humans or birds discovered how to fly it doesn't mean that it wasn't possible for them to fly, it just means that no one had thought about it before..

So if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, it doesn't mean that the tree has not made a sound, it only means that the tree has made a sound which has not been discovered by anyone.

I dealed with this

EDIT: wooooo you have tree spirits

I'm sure I've argued this before on the forums...

Anyway. The paradox of the falling tree is intended to question how we define "sound". You use a scientific definition, which I take issue with. I prefer to define "sound" as "that which is heard", in which case my answer is "no".

We own Commie *cracks knuckles*

The underlying question is "Could God defy logic?". Now there's a puzzler.

So, no. God is not bound by the laws He created. Why would He be?

What a beautiful, more philosophical way to put it.

But also, when it falls, it makes vibrations and sound waves. The waves and vibrations are what are picked up by our ears. So it would make sound, people just wouldn't hear it.

Which doesn't work with Commie's theory.

But is logic really a God-created law, or is it an underlying law? Can God really not make sense?

Yeah, read a bible that hasn't been edited over. God is preaching this and doing that and...yeah...contradicting himself constantly.

God is by definition the highest authority. If there are laws He must obey, then He is not the highest authority, the laws are, or whatever created them. He would not be God.



But are the waves and vibrations sound, or are they what causes sound in our sense apparatus? I would say the latter.

hmmm... or you could always use "double think" and then your all wrong... go george orwell...