Post your favourite paradoxes

[Troll King]

But same chance remains for 2nd unopened doors - it was 1/3 too. By opening the doors both chances changes to 1/2 so why switch the doors?

It only switches to 1/2 if you picked the door after they revealed the goat in one of the other doors, as then you are then picking from 2 choices with the knowledge that the third door had a goat.

[Niceshot]

this thread has just proved that only nerds play subspace.

[ZeUs!!]

What were you expecting? Cheerleaders?

[Niceshot]

What were you expecting? Cheerleaders?

maybe one day lease:

:wub: :wub:

.... i still want to know if anyone has met through subspace and gotten hitched... i guess thats for another thread tho

[Niceshot]

hey i just realized theres a paradox in my sig.. also heres another:

If you strive to fail and you succeed, which did u accomplish?

[NaiLed]

this thread has just proved that only nerds play subspace.

Or, to put it another way, people who are cleverer than you.

[Epinephrine]

On quantum pairs:

While it is true that it is possible to induce a change in spin on quantum pairs so that the other one of the pair will instanteously change regardless of the distance, this does not in fact violate the theory of relativity. The simple explaination (the only one that I can give as I'm not a quantum physics major) is that the change induced on the other quantum pair has an equal probability of being in (I believe) four different states. So while you observe a change, it is one of three possibilities, so no actual information was passed on. The only way you can make sense of the change is if you had the information from the original pair that was acted upon telling you what the change meant.

I know you're now thinking 'wait, as long as you SEE a change, that's enough information', but it's not that simple. I've forgotten the explaination unfortunately, but there was a great article about quantum computing in Scientific American about 6-7 years ago that I read this from.



As for travelling faster than the speed of light, there's an interesting book I've read by Issac Asimov. I believe the name of the book is Nemesis, it's one of his very last books, published in the 1990s, about a hidden star or planet or whatever in our solar system which was causing some gravitational problems. Either way in the book they discovered how to travel faster than the speed of light. And the net effect was that travelling faster than the speed of light gave you inverted mass, so instead of having stuff gravitate towards you, you would repel stuff.

Great book, although probably not accurate scientifically.

Also for the record, tachyons are particles of infintessimal mass which travel at the speed of light (previously thought to be massless much like neutrinos until proven wrong).

-Epi

[Troll King]

And the net effect was that travelling faster than the speed of light gave you inverted mass, so instead of having stuff gravitate towards you, you would repel stuff.

Great book, although probably not accurate scientifically.

I see your research into why you repel women continues.

[Verthanthi]

this thread has just proved that only nerds play subspace.

If real nerds played this game, they'd know what a fucking paradox is. And the first thing about special reletivity.

[K2Grey]

It might not be a paradox, but I think it still fits within the thread. A certain degree of on-topic naziness is fine, but I think you're getting a bit spastic about it

[ConcreteSchlyrd]

The speed of light.

[Ezor]

A man walks on a path trying to get to Truth-land, and he sees a fork in the road. One way leads to (as kim says) Truth-land, and the other Liar-land. The man sees a person on the right and left path. One is from Truth-land, and the other is from Liar-land. He knows that the person from Truth-land can only speak the truth and the person from Liar-land can only tell lies. So he tells them to take him to his home town. That way, the liar would have to lie about his home town and take him to truth-land, and the truthful guy would take him to his home town.

Kinda late getting in on this thread, but oh well. I heard a different answer to that same thing. The man simply picked one of the people and asked them "Which road would the other man tell me to take?" He would then take the path opposite of what he was told. Pretty good stuff.

[Sleepy Weasel]

But same chance remains for 2nd unopened doors - it was 1/3 too. By opening the doors both chances changes to 1/2 so why switch the doors?

Consider 1000 doors instead of 3. Now you pick one. The probability you picked the right one is 1/1000. Now the host has to open 998 of the remaining 999 doors and he can't open the one with the prize in it. So you're left with 2 doors. The 1 you picked has a 1/1000 chance of having the prize behind it, the probability doesn't increase as he opens doors up because he isn't opening doors randomly, he CAN'T open up the door with the prize behind it. If he was opening doors up randomly and the prize didn't appear until you were left with 2 doors then yes it would be 50/50. Instead in this situation it's 1/1000 chance to be behind your door if by some miracle you picked correctly and 999/1000 to be behind the other one if you picked incorrectly and then he opened up every door except the one the prize was in, as he has to. You better switch.

[Bob (SRB)]

If time travel was invented, wouldn't we already know about it since we'd have been visited by those who invented it in the future?

(It's late, I may be talking crap if this makes no sense inform me tomorrow thanks)

well you can consider the multiverse theory. That there are an infinite number of universes, and an infinite number of realites, so it just so happens that nobody has travelled back through time and arrived in this universe. I forget why they came to this multiverse theory, but I think it had something to do with having a hole so small that only 1 photon of light can pass throught it at a time, which should make a single mark of light on the other side, but it doesn't. It actually makes numerous marks.. something to do with light travelling in waves, meh can't remember. Read the book timeline though, by Michael Crichton, it explains it well.

[Twerp]

I just read it. Awesome book :bigups:

He made it seem so easy to understand.

Oh, they came to the theory because the other photons in alternate universes kept on interferring with other single photons. That is how they weren't landing on the same spot every time.