20 amusing paradoxes and dilemmas to ponder

I can’t access Cracked at work, but is this one of their photoplasty contests?

If so, then yes that’s right, and probably 60% of the entries are by one person.

The key thing that most people miss is that Zeno’s paradoxes aren’t intended to be paradoxical. They were intended to be lessons for his contemporaries in the fault of hypothesis over empiricism - ie. they’re supposed to be obviously wrong.

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They’re both wrong. And they’re both dead. bwa-ha-ha-ha-aha

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I hate to break it to Derek Parfit, but James Blish wrote the teleporter conundrum, back in the early 70s, in one of his Star Trek adaptations. The TV show implies that a person’s matter is turned to energy, and somehow transferred to the target and reconverted back to matter. But in Blish’s authorized books, a person is transmitted as information, and the original is destroyed. In the book, Bones questions whether or not a person has a soul once they’ve been through a transporter.

And as for #10, the motion paradox, there is a different conclusion to be drawn - that is, you can’t stop time.

#7 is just semantics. If the “edge of the universe” is defined as the point beyond which there is no matter or energy, it is by definition impossible to extend your hand into that void, as moving your hand has changed the boundary.

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I’ll take a stab:

  1. Sounds like math, which I leave to experts.
  2. Yes. Duh.
  3. Probably dead, and then not dead. Really, this is like asking if the copy is the same as the original.
  4. No, he was not. He should have found the farmer and apologized.
  5. Archosaurs don’t care about the outcomes of paradoxes.
  6. I skipped this one for being dull.
  7. I’ll need to find someone who always tells the truth to suss this one out.
  8. That is pretty crazy, but it’s about a hot dog, and I hate hot dogs. Pass.
  9. Derail the trolley. There’s a good chance the engineer will not be killed. LATERAL THINKING!
  10. Derail the Doctor.
  11. Still have no idea how this could be called a paradox if things still always managed to arrive at their destination. Or were the Greeks just really bored?
  12. What do atoms have anything to do with free will? Or are emergent properties not part of the paradox here?
  13. I think better questions here are how I became a judge in this scenario, who appointed me, and why? I have no qualifications to be a judge.
  14. We are starstuff.
  15. Yes, she will. Color imparts meaning and other stuff I’m too tired to remember.
  16. Skipped.
  17. Why is the man floating?
  18. If repair includes repainting the ship’s name as needed, then yes it is.
  19. Skipped for being exasperating.
  20. Drinking poison sounds like a bad way to earn money. At the very least, I’d negotiate for $500 million so the billionaire doesn’t do this again.
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It’s not that bad, but maybe half of the accepted submissions are from just a few people.

But how can mirrors be real if our eyes aren’t real???

Aw, Cracked is such a sad mockery of its former self.

Yeah, I once bought a book of folk tales, and it turned out nearly all of them were written by this guy named Traditional.

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Cracked was what you bought when they were sold out of Mad.

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I think you’re thinking of CRAZY. Besides, I kinda liked John Severin’s drawing style better than any of MAD’s artists. And think that MAD was targeted at an older crowd than CRACKED. I think I was maybe just the right age for CRACKED when it was at its peak.

an excellent description. do you know me?

20,14,8,and 4 all seem to be variations on the same divide by zero error. For a statement to be falsifiable, it has to be about something. All 4 of these have no referent outside themselves, so they’re not even wrong.

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Color is an experience. Signal transduction in response to certain wavelengths of light entering the retinal layer is a process.

Here’s another example: pain is an experience. Nociception is the chain of physical events that lead to efferent nerves mediating an automatic, evasive response to the aversive stimuli.

So this really isn’t a paradox or a dilemma. It is, however, an excellent illustration of perception as a distinct component of cognition.

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