Are you ready for a fun intellectually stimulating trip aka food for the bored brain

Let's begin by looking at some darn good philosoraptor memes, starting with the paradoxes:

 

And that's why there are definitely absolutes.

I seriously don't know this one.

So sometimes talking to strangers is necessary. Don't be so anti social dude.

Interesting paradox here...if time gets frozen, then notion of time will not exist until it's reactivated. 

This is like the pinocchio paradox.

Now, some really wise words from the philosoraptor:

 

Sometimes, too many choices will lead us to the wrong decision.

How true, so live the life the way you want it.

Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like bananas.

Exactly, so absolute knowledge corrupts. It thus suggests that most knowledge may not be absolute.

And now, the biggest unanswered questions of all times:

The question whether there is free will has been bothering philosophers since the birth of philosophy. And we'll never know.

Another big question on perception. I can never creep into your conscious and experience what you experience. Vsauce has a very good video on this:

And lastly a teaser:

Politics, it gets nothing done.

The above philosoraptor memes can all be found at http://www.geekosystem.com/50-best-philosoraptors/ which kindly compiles good philosoraptor memes for us


There are just so many good old interesting paradoxes and thought experiments there I can't possibly list all of them. I shall just list some paradoxes that I find rather interesting.

First, let's start with science paradoxes. I've read a book titled "paradox" by the author Jim Al-Khalili and it's very mind stimulating. In it are "9 greatest enigmas of science". To keep you waiting no longer, they are

1. Zeno's paradox - The paradox of infinity; it's known that there are infinitely small steps to completing something yet we still complete it somehow.

2. Olber's paradox - Why is the night sky dark, since you will certainly hit a star (source of light) somewhere in whatever direction you point to.

3. Maxwell's demon - It appears by simply knowing information you can violate the second law of thermodynamics.

4. Grandfather's paradox - How can you go back in time and kill your grandfather if that will deny your existence and hence your action of killing him?

5. Pole-barn paradox - It appears by theory of relativity, when you hold a pole the same size as a barn and run through it at speed closing to light, the size of the two doesn't agree on each other from different frames of reference.

6. Twin's paradox - Another paradox generated by relativity. If all motions are relative, then why only does one of the twins on earth age while the other travelling in spaceship doesn't?

7. Schrodinger's cat - Why doesn't quantum weirdness apply to the macroscopic world?

8. Laplace's demon - Is our universe deterministic?

9. Fermi's paradox - Are there extraterrestrial life out there? Why would they not make contacts with us if the possibility of their existence is high?

(Note: I read the book quite a long time ago so I may get some parts wrong)

I can't explain each in detail or I'm never going to finish this blog post. Each of them is very interesting and the author also proposed very sensible yet counter-intuitive solutions. Some of the science paradoxes here are very philosophical if considered from a different perspective. Great book, I'll say.


Okay and now some great philosophical paradoxes.

Ship of theseus: A paradox on identity. I made a blog post about it some time ago - http://rainbowishsmiley.blogspot.sg/2013/11/how-do-you-define-person.html

Irresistible force paradox: What would happen if an unstoppable force hit an immovable object?

Omnipotence paradox(similar to the above): Can an omnipotent being create a rock too heavy for itself to lift?

Sorry for the lack of philosophical paradoxes here. Maybe I should put in some famous thought experiments to make up for it. I just saw a very good website and I think it's better for you to look at it than me reposting everything here because the information is succinct and organised enough.

http://io9.com/9-philosophical-thought-experiments-that-will-keep-you-1340952809


Interesting mathematical paradoxes (not really paradoxes, just counter-intuitive)

Potato paradox (yay potato): If you have a 100 pound worth of potatoes which consists of 99% water by weight and you allow them to dehydrate until they have 98% of water, their weight becomes 50 pounds.

Sum of all the natural integers till infinity = -1/12
(Numberphile video here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-I6XTVZXww)

The monty hall problem: you are in a game show and you are to choose a door out of the three in which one contains a car an the other two, goats. After you make your decision the game host offer you an opportunity to change your choice. Changing your choice will always make your probability of winning larger.

Birthday paradox: The least number of people in a room for the chance of two people in room having the same birthday to be bigger than 50% is 23.


I have to be honest, I cheated a bit by wikipedia and googling most of these paradoxes, just to ensure accuracy in my description.

Of course there's so many things unexplored here. Like there's a thought experiment I wanted to post before I write this but I forget it now. This is such a long post but I hope you have fun reading and getting intellectually stimulated.

Oh yes now I remember the question. If the total entropy of a closed system increase with time, and in absolute zero entropy is zero, then will time stop when it reaches absolute zero?

Okay bye.