Paradoxes That No One Can Solve

this video is sponsored by the book summary service blinkist the first 100 people to use the link in the description will receive one free week of unlimited access and 25 off a full membership whether it's some sort of brain teaser a personal observation a visual or sound or a seemingly unresolvable problem within math science and philosophy every time we try to make sense of something through accurate consistent premises and logic but no matter how hard we try fail to do so we encounter what is known as a paradox these strange intersections of knowledge and ignorance

absurdity and simplicity intuitively true yet apparently false can not only bend the mind in harmless brain teasers and puzzles but can also reveal hugely significant insights into the nature of human thinking and its limitations the word paradox originates from the greek word paradoxin which translates into distinct from our opinion nowadays the term is often applied to a variety of things in a variety of contexts be it literature math science philosophy logic economics perception as well as many other looser pseudo applications in terms of a more complete contemporary philosophical definition a paradox occurs when you start

out with a set of premises that are understood to be true or at least believed to be you evaluate and follow the premises through accurate consistent logic and then determine their conclusion however despite this despite everything else being true and in the right order the conclusion appears false impossible inconsistent or absurd however despite all appearing under the same umbrella not all paradoxes are equal and not all paradoxes are actually paradoxical in his book the ways of paradox and other essays philosopher and logician willard van orman kwine explores into the nature of paradoxes and standardizes three

separate distinct categories what he would classify as falsitical veritical and antinomy to help illustrate the first category falsitical consider one of the classic motion paradoxes from 400 bc greek philosopher xeno of alia known as the arrow paradox the arrow paradox argues that an arrow flying through the air is at rest xeno argues for this by claiming that in each single isolated instant of time that the arrow is flying it is in one specific isolated position in space unmoving in this moment the arrow cannot be moving to where it is because it is already there nor

can it be moving to where it is not because no time has elapsed in this isolated moment thus xeno concludes in every one of these individual moments no motion is occurring and since time is composed of a string of all these individual moments then no motion is ever occurring at all thus the flying arrow is at rest at first and at the time of zeno this argument might somehow sound correct but of course in reality we know that the arrow is in motion this is what makes it initially paradoxical however this particular paradox is considered

falsitical which are according to quine paradoxes that appear to be true based on a certain logical assessment within a certain state or condition of knowledge and understanding but said state is fallacious in some sense lacking the necessary insight to resolve the paradox the paradox however is capable of being resolved and made non-paradoxical in this particular case xeno's argument is falicious because it assumes at least one or more false premises to be true firstly it assumes that an instant of time can be divisible into a finitely small moment or chunk that can last zero units of

itself but time cannot be made into non-time if time is made of units equal to zero and you multiply or divide any measure of time by this you would simply always have zero time this would essentially render time inexistent and if we are to agree that time in at least some sense does exist then this premise would be false rather time must be infinitely divisible into instance that still contains some vanishingly minute degree of elapsing duration secondly motion is improperly defined by zeno as well motion is not measured in abstract isolation and singular dimensionless moments

rather motion necessitates that an object is in different places at different times xeno's arrow perhaps brings up some metaphysical questions about time but in terms of physics with the right sufficient information considered from the correct angle the paradox is understood to be false or falsitical quine's next category veritical are paradoxes that also appear false at first but in this case not because they are made by false premises or faulty logic but rather the premises are in fact true the logic used is in fact correct and the conclusion is in fact also true it only appears

false however because its truth runs counter to our initial intuitions this can be exemplified most simply by one of bertrand russell's paradoxes the barber paradox in which imagine a small town with only one barber this particular barber shaves all and only men who do not shave themselves initially this seems fairly straightforward but the paradox is such a barber can never exist this might sound like an extreme jump or false claim at first but it's true which is what makes it vertical when considering the following question it becomes clearer does the barber shave himself if he

does not then he is part of the group which he does shave since he shaves those who do not shave themselves but if he is in this group then he does shave himself but if he does shave himself then he cannot be the barber since the barber only shaves those who do not shave themselves thus we have an inescapable contradiction and no barber can ever exist in such a condition the important part of this paradox being vertical is not merely the inescapable contradiction but that taken from the position that no such barber can exist the

paradox simply demonstrates that an initially obvious or simple seeming statement can be logically impossible upon further consideration the third and final category from quine's analysis is what he classified as antinomies this category is what we most likely think of when we think of a paradox and arguably this is by far the most interesting and relevant kind according to kwine antinomies are paradoxes that achieve a contradictory or absurd conclusion even by correctly applying true premises and consistent logic they defy all accepted laws of logic and information and for some don't even appear to be resolvable by

any conceivable information at all they create in quine's words a crisis in thought and ironically they can come in as little as a three to four word statement consider the following this statement is false this forward statement implodes all logic if the statement is true then the statement is false but if the statement is false then the statement is true for the statements claim that it is false to be true necessitates it being false and vice versa add infinitum there is no way out no rope of logic to escape with another similar example includes the

statement there is no truth likewise this statement is inescapably self-contradictory if there is no truth then this statement itself cannot be true and therefore must be false but if the statement is false it must be true that there is no truth and the statement is true but if the statement is true there must be no truth and again it must be false and then repeat over and over other antinomy paradoxes that are a bit more involved and seem to imply different sorts of gaps between their conclusion and reality include problems like the fermi paradox which

reveals the contradiction between the strong logic that there are exceptionally high odds for there being other advanced extraterrestrial life scattered throughout the galaxy and there being no signs of any also the faint young sun paradox which reveals the contradiction between astrophysical understandings that the output of earth's sun would have only been about 70 percent as intense during earth's early history while simultaneous evidence shows that earth had the presence of liquid water and life during the same time with relatively consistent temperatures which would be impossible if the sun's output was that low one could also go

so far to include problems like the entire origins of the cosmos often summarized by the question why is there something rather than nothing as in how did something apparently come from nothing or how has something always been this appears absolutely inconceivable to answer in any way that makes any sense also the very nature of our personal subjective experience as self-conscious beings at the very least has strong traces of an antinomy paradox summarized by the hard problem of consciousness how does physical activity in the brain equate to a subjective felt state of being arguably there appears

to be no concept or evidence that could ever really answer how this is possible antinamis paradoxes of this broader form seem to exist at the very foundation of our being from the origins of the cosmos all the way down into the very core of our consciousness existence as a whole is perhaps the greatest unresolvable paradox throughout different periods of history and for different people like zeno and his cohorts in 400 bc paradoxes that were once believed with conviction to be antinomies have since become falsitical with the advent of new knowledge and understanding we now know

how and why zeno's math and arguments were wrong in his motion paradoxes and so it is fair to assume that this will also occur for some portion of what appear to be antinomies today sometime in the future however arguably it is overzealously romantic to assume that all or even most will and more yet will not other new paradoxes emerge in time alongside old ones being resolved creating an endless loop never really allowing for the resolution of man's intrinsic relationship with paradox ultimately no paradox is ever resolved without some cost something must be broken our current

knowledge must reveal faulty or our ability to ever really think consistently and accurately about reality must reveal incompetent in cases like this statement is false what information could possibly be missing that would resolve this paradox or in the cases of perceptual paradoxes and so on perhaps some paradoxes are more like shorts in the wiring of our brain and our language rather than some missing information what we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence wrote ludwig wittgenstein although the human mind is the most powerful and impressive thing that it itself is aware of it

can only visually perceive about .0035 percent of the electromagnetic spectrum can only hear between 20 hertz to 20 kilohertz of all possible audio frequencies and can only know what it thinks it knows paradoxes at least of a certain kind perhaps situate themselves at the outer perimeter of our minds abilities revealing to us what we cannot comprehend within the limits of the comprehensible on these paradoxes we seemingly stand on the cliff of our understanding knowing where we are while looking out at a vast looming valley covered in fog paradoxes challenge us to continually explore this valley

to fill it in with new checkpoints and create new maps of understanding but perhaps there are simply unresolvable paradoxes within this valley areas we can likely just never see or discover or perhaps antinomies don't even really exist at all and all paradoxes are merely created by human fallacy that can be resolved or perhaps the opposite all things are fundamentally paradoxical and all resolutions are contrived by false human meaning whatever the case may be the valley is likely far too big and we are likely far too small to ever know for sure ultimately the fact that

any amount of our existence can make any sense and that any amount of paradoxes past or present have and can be resolved by us it's a paradox in it of itself [Music] this video was sponsored by blinkist consider one more following paradox a woman named sarah has just discovered the book summary app blinkist on which she can read or listen to thousands of complete non-fiction book summaries each summary being just around 15 minutes because of this convenience she plans on reading and engaging in more books on a regular basis the first book summary she listens

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the total sum of all the books at the end of the year she felt like a completely different person at what point then did sarah become a different person can it be pinpointed if not how did she become a different person or did she at all this is a reinterpretation of the paradox known as the ship of theseus with over 27 categories and thousands of titles blinkist makes it easy for just about anyone to become a new improved version of themselves even if you can't be sure exactly when and how you became it the first

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