The Truth (As I see it)

How can you say paradoxes don't exist in nature? If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it does it make a sound?

 

If there were paradoxes in nature, they wouldn't be paradoxes.

 

Run out of things to say Wayne? Also just after I posted the tree paradox Cheers just started and they talked about that every same paradox. Fate?

 

Magic!

Anyway, according to that wheelchair guy, there are tiny wormholes in the quantum foam between different times and places which destroy themselves by creating paradoxes all around us, all the time.

He also keeps saying, "it may seem far-fetched, but trust me, it's true."

So there ya go, it's a fact.

 

Are you trying to say that the tree thing is a paradox? Where's the contradiction? Imagine that a tree fell in the forest with no-one around to hear it. Either it makes a sound, or it does not; just because it's a situation which is indeterminable, doesn't make it a paradox. The paradox would be if the tree fell in the forest and did and did not make a sound, and even that is accounted for by superposition.

 

Infinite cycle loop: The universe expands, stops expanding, starts contracting until it once again explodes repeat ad infinitum.

Time travelling ain't an infinite cycle loop, it's a self-sustaining time loop, the difference is that after the point where the time traveller starts time the universe goes on in a different direction.

...

About the "tree paradox", it's just being iffy with language. The answer is yes, and it'll be refuted by people who abuse the meaning of the statement.

 

And that, of course, is a fine explanation.

I must have been distracted by the infinitely cyclical nature of the self-sustaining time loop, causing me to see the enormous similarities with the bouncing universe, and to say that they work from different premises, but the same basic principle.

Not necessarily.

And what kind of paradoxes are created? I'd be interested in even a single legitimate example!

 

Both "chicken" and "egg" are man-made descriptions of organisms on a continuum, so really it's up to us which came first.

If you define "chicken" as "the modern day concept of a chicken" and "egg" as "a hard-shelled egg" then the egg came first, because the ancestors of chickens also laid hard-shelled eggs.

If you define "chicken" as above, and "egg" as "an egg which hatches into a chicken", then if you trace back the lineage of the chicken, at some point you will find one whose parents were something we would not define as chickens. So the not-quite-a-chicken would have laid an egg which hatched into a chicken. In that sense, the egg still came first.

However, if you define chicken as "a creature who lays hard-shelled eggs" then the not-quite-a-chicken would have laid a soft-shelled egg, because the shell-hardening mechanism is part of the mother rather than the egg itself. Then the soft-shelled egg would hatch into a creature who lays hard-shelled eggs. In that sense, the "chicken" came before the "egg".

Finally, if "chicken" represents "organisms in general" and "egg" represents "a specific way of reproducing" then the chicken pre-dates the egg by a few billion years.

Doh!

 

Zanza, I tip my hat. It's like watching a master plate-spinner.

How do you provoke so effortlessly? With your expertise I'm sure this thread will spin into 20 pages.

Smuel, are you or are you not an Englishman? Well?!

 

Again, this is just down to definitions. If you define "sound" as something like "travelling air compressions" then the answer is yes. If you define "sound" as "the perception by a human being of a noise brought about by stimulation of nerve endings in the ear", then the answer is no.

P.S. I'm posting this after one of ytzk's posts. So if he deletes it, it will look like I double posted. But I am innocent. Innocent, I say!

 

Legitimate example? I told you already, the wheelchair guy said to trust him, it's true. That's legitimate!

Of course, to be fair, it was his wheelchair that said it.

future future ytzk here, just testing the theory.

 

We having a four dimensional conversation right here, with links to past posts, now edited because of future posts.

Totally quantum, dudes. Right now, I'm going to post in the expectation that I won't be double posting even though I am, in my relative time reference. Whoa.

Future ytzk here, I've come back in time to tell you that the quantum probability field has collapsed! You're double posting right now!

 

Typical British behaviour!

 

I assume you're referring to Smuel, there.

Let the record show he has still not answered the question.

Your silence condemns you, sir!

 

Man, you have a problem! Just let the posts be!

 

I answered the chicken/egg paradox in my paradox thread! Can't you insufferable lot read? The eggshell hardening protein, ovocleidin-17, did not exist until Chickens did. Therefore, the chicken came first. Even if you want to get anal about it, the grey and the red junglefowl, the two birds closest in relation to the chicken, are both subspecies that can interbreed and prodice fertile offspring that are nearly identical to chickens. The junglefowl itself can breed with chickens and produce viable offspring. This paradox is no more! It has ceased to be! Modern science has stepped in and saved the day.

 

Anyone who quotes Monty Python is OK in my book.

 

Let us not go to the House of Lords. It is a silly place.

 

Light is both a wave and a particle. That is not a paradox?

Here is how my understanding works: If the proper solution to the question of whether light is a particle or wave is to combine both theories into a theory of duality, the proper solution to the majority of scientific arguments is to do likewise to every question.

Therefore if you combine the understandings that space and time are combined with the idea that they are seperate, you will come up with an idea that closer appromixates reality than either theory does alone.

This is wisdom: Be not wise in your own understanding.


// "Yip! Yip!" says the puppy.

 

Light is a quantum vector field, not a wave or a particle. It defies picturing, despite being used to make pictures. It has qualities of particles under certain circumstances, and qualities of waves in others. It is both and neither at the same time. This is no paradox, it's simply the way things are.
Regarding space-time;
It takes time to get through space, that's all you need to know. Time is relative to space, every space has its own time. There is no universal moment, as everything is relative in space-time. The stronger the gravity in any given space, the more space-time curves, and the slower time passes. However, if you're in that space, you'll perceive time as you would normally, as it's your relativity now. Everyone experiences a slightly different passage of time, just as everyone is in a slightly different space.