r/paradoxes

I am starting, bit by bit to believe that this paradox is pretty unreal, can someone please help me see if I actually understood the paradox correctly?

1- Whoever explained the rules to me about the predictor, how do they know that such predictor is extremely accurate? if there is no answer to that then its unreal, and if they do, then its no longer a paradox because then people have been tested from before therefore there is a percentage that can be created mathematically (Exactly like how supervised training works with AI)

2- Regardless of point 1, The 2-Boxer argument is that the prizes are fixed, so the results wont change by your actions, but the paradox says otherwise because actions like changing your mind midway, trying loopholes (or fuck it even hypnotize yourself before you answer) is all already predicted therefore is there really a point to the paradox?

Edit: I am a one-boxer because I am told that it is extremely accurate (Also that thousands before me have been guessed correctly, therefore breaking the numbers to way over 1 in a 10^46, this number is basically what would happen if 1000 were guessed correctly with even a 90% chance (or well "accurate", just not "extremely". Still also too high if lowered to even 70% btw), which makes it almost impossible for our entire population to be guessed in a wrong way even once, therefore I 1 boxed because the predictor is definitely many many many decimals close to 100%)

If infinite luck causes every improbable event to occur, then infinitely lucky people must experience infinitely many catastrophic events. But if luck guarantees favorable outcomes, those catastrophes cannot harm them. Therefore, infinite luck cannot simultaneously mean "all improbable events occur" and "all outcomes are beneficial."

For people who are having difficulty understanding...

Say a man has infinite luck. Does having infinite luck mean, all rare things which happen being more common for that man? If that is so, then a meteorite falling or a thunder striking is very rare, so shouldn't such catastrophic events occur to him every second ? It would mean he dies, but if he is really lucky, he should be able to evade death...

So, how do we decide if something is lucky or bad luck ?

(p-s I believe I made this paradox, cus I was high and was taking a shower. Pls someone confirm it.)

Think about it: if you sit down right now and try to create a completely new letter for the alphabet, you will fail.

1. Graphically: Any new symbol you try to draw will either just look like a random messy scribble, or your brain will automatically copy existing shapes, making it look like a combination of letters that already exist (like crossing 'W' and 'X').
2. Phonetically: If you try to invent a brand new sound for this letter, your mouth and vocal cords physically won't be able to make it. Every sound humans can produce is already discovered. So your "new sound" will just end up being a tiny, short word made of existing sounds.

We are forever trapped inside our language system. What do you think? Try to invent one in the comments and prove me wrong.

In a town where loopholes are illegal, a man finds a loophole around said law. Should this man be arrested or not?

A smart person once said: if our minds were simple enough such that how they work could be explained then we would be too simple that we couldn't. There's an inherent paradox within human intelligence (unless someone comes up with a perfect explanation I guess) but - with AI- we can at least explain how they simulate intelligence. I thought this was worth pointing out.

If someone calls me Captain Obvious(CO), and I say "I am NOT Captain Obvious", that is a paradox. Because the statement is obviously true, because CO isn't a real person, so therefore, I CAN be called CO because I just made an obvious statement, but I just said that I am not CO. Thoughts?

So I was out trimming the trees that overhang the pool in my back yard. They have gotten pretty overgrown and need a good trim.

So I am out there surveying the work to be done I see them some of the branches that need to be cut are: (1) too large for the manual shears I have and (2) too high to reach without a ladder. I have available to me a ladder and a handsaw and chainsaw to assist with the task. There is now a decision point: do I tackle the job myself or hire someone to do so. This decision is predicated on two primary factors: (1) do I have the financial means to pay someone and (2) do I want to to accept the risk of getting up on a ladder and doing the job myself? There are other factors to consider like do I have gas and bar oil for the chainsaw, will the hand saw work, etc but I am keeping this simple.

The path forward turns out that I am going to do the work myself and I now realize that I cannot place the ladder where it is needed due to the rock feature on the pool. Now the ladder is out of play as are the chain and hand as options. However, a polesaw can be procured and utilized to get the job done which is what happens.

So now the question: were all the decisions, which were predicted upon the availability of tools and the potential risk of injury, predetermined? If so, then why has the universe aligned so that I have the tools and knowledge to do the work myself while my neighbor does not?

If I ask the universe when I will die and it said 2years or smth then I go die that's a paradox but if it said 2days or something just die before then would that create a paradox

General Relativity describes that as objects approach a black hole, their clocks slow down (relative to an outside observer's clock). This includes the velocity of objects. From an outside observer's perspective, the object can never cross the event horizon because its velocity will approach 0 as it approaches the event horizon, thus never actually adding mass inside the black hole.

The paradox is how can a black hole form in the first place? How can particles get close enough to first form the event horizon (observable to outsiders) if they slow down to 0 velocity as they approach each other?

Shouldn't it take infinite time for particles to get close enough to finally create a black hole?

Physics nerds assemble and take a shot at this please. New physics thought experiment alert, at least I think.

I just spent like 6 hours researching and formulating a seemingly paradoxical thought experiment that shows the utter non-intuitiveness of quantum mechanics’ non-locality, wave-particle duality of light and superposition.

I call it the Light-Year Fiber Paradox

Imagine a perfect one-light-year-long fiber-optic channel in empty space:

Three scientists conduct an experiment; A is at the start, B is halfway, C is at the end.

A sends one single photon with a one-light-year-long wave packet toward C. The photon does not interact with anything except detectors.

After one year as the photon is arriving, C secretly chooses either to put a detector in the path or leave the path open. One second later, at the mid point of the channel, B puts a detector in the path halfway down the fiber.

C and B are half a light-year apart, so any normal message from C to B takes six months.

QM states that if C detects the photon, the photon is essentially gone right, so B should detect nothing. But if C chooses not to detect it, maybe B can still have a chance to.

So it seems there’s a chance that B can learn what C chose to do before any light-speed communication about their choice from C could arrive 6 months later?

In other words:

Can C communicate faster than light by choosing whether or not to absorb the single photon?

(Obviously the answer is no, but I’d like to understand why it still feels off. Thanks :)

Either of the following:

If omniscient entity the seeker found the other entity the hider then that entity wasn't undectable.

But, if the seeker can't find the undectable entity then the seeker isn't omniscient.

The ultimate test of definitions.

like think about it

you are good at everything like EVERYTHING

so if ur good at nothing

then how are u good at anything

A few months ago, I read the manhwa called "Concubine Walkthrough," which created a question in my mind that hasn't been cleared yet.

Let's say we are advanced enough to create a god-tier computer with unlimited sources and math capability, in which we started a perfect big bang, creating a sub-universe (U1).

Our computer is good enough that it can accelerate time without skipping anything, so U1 is accelerated till it has the same advanced technology as U0. After that point, the time flows 10x faster in U1.

Then we sent an agent to the sub-universe, and he lived there for 1 year before they created their own simulation with the same exact features, creating U2.

At this point, we are bored and have accelerated the time of U1 once more in U0. The universe of U1 will end in, let's say, 1 week, when the universe of U1 reaches its end.

At this point, though, our agent is in U2, where he lives 1 year (1 year in U2, 0.1 year in U1, 0.01 year in U0) before the next simulation is created, and he enters U3.

Now, every time he enters a sub-universe, the time flows faster and faster, but he still experiences the normal time flow, even when U0 accelerates the time on U1 and all the sub-universes, consecutively.

At this point, the agent should enter the next simulation every year (in the current lowest sub-universe). So, the time will go infinitely faster before the 1 week on U0 is up, and the agent will enter a new sub-universe every year, infinitely.

Supposing nothing goes wrong, the sub-universe should end before the upper universe ends, meaning he needs to reach an end universe before the chain of "ends" starts from bottom up. However, since he is going infinitely down and there is no real "lowest universe" or a final transition from which the agent can say "I have now completed infinitely many universes", there also won't be an end. From his perspective, assuming he is immortal, in 10 years, he will have entered 10 universes. In a million years, he will have entered a million universes.

On the other hand, when we checked from the perspective of the agent living in U0, once the week ends, everything will be over.

Of course, since time doesn't stop completely, it feels like this should only be "close to infinity" and not really infinity itself, which also reminds me of "limit" in math, which I actually have no knowledge of apart from it turning fake infinity (yeah, I have no better term to describe it. I majored in language studies) into 1.

Still, an endless sum can diverge into infinity, while infinity shouldn't possibly be compressed into the finite interval of the upper universe. These also can't be like independent nested clocks since they are actually heavily dependent.

Is there any theory or something explaining this? I learned that a supertask is "infinitely many actions occurring within a finite amount of another clock's time", but I don't know if it is enough to explain this.

The numbers 1, 2, and π are all interesting. 1 is the first positive whole number, 2 is the first whole prime number, and π measures the circumference of a circle. If all of these numbers were not interesting, 1 would be the smallest uninteresting thing. But if it was the smallest uninteresting thing, it would be interesting, therefore making it impossible to have uninteresting numbers.