The definition of a paradox: “a situation, person, or thing that combines contradictory features or qualities.”

Whether you realize it or not, you use them all the time and you hear them and read them all the time, too!

So we’re about to see all kinds of paradoxes!

Let’s have some fun with folks on AskReddit!

1. Hmmm…

“No one goes there because it’s too crowded.”

2. Sure ain’t.

“The future ain’t what it used to be.”

3. This drives me nuts.

“Entry level position requiring 5+ years of experience.”

4. You see this one quite a bit.

“I hate myself, but I think I’m better than everyone.”

5. Huh?

“Trust me when I say this, trust no one…”

6. A head-scratcher.

“The Paradox of Tolerance.

“In order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance.””

7. Dammit!

“Nothing is impossible.

If nothing is impossible it’s possible for something to be impossible.”

8. Deeeeep thoughts.

“If you enjoy being taken out of your comfort zone, you can’t be.”

9. I think I might be stupid…

“Berry Paradox: here’s a version from Wikipedia “The smallest positive integer not definable in under sixty letters” (which contains 57 letters) so haven’t you just defined that integer?

I find it interesting because I wrote a paper on parallels between it, compression, incompressibility, and Kolmogorov complexity. Language and symbolic representations are weird.”

10. Heaps of sand.

“The heap of sand one.

If you have what you agree to be a “heap” of sand, and remove one grain, then it’s still a heap, right?

So if a heap -1 is still a heap, you should logically be able to keep going until you have a “heap” of 1 grain of sand.”

11. Zeno’s Paradox.

“Zeno’s Paradox.

If you want to reach a wall and you’re 10 meters away, then travel half the distance. Then, travel half of THAT distance, and do it again, and again, and again.

Mathematically, you will never reach 0, thus you will never reach the wall, but physically, you will.”

12. Cannabis.

“The cannabis paradox.

Back in the early 20th century, when they were pushing to make cannabis illegal, the primary reason was to go after people of color. So they made a law stating that in order to legally possess cannabis (which they called marijuana for purely racist reasons), they had to have a valid license of ownership. In order to be able to apply for that license, they had to have cannabis in their possession.

So people of color, wanting to stay within the realm of the law, would go to the police station, with cannabis in their possession, acting in good faith to apply for a license to carry cannabis. And then they would subsequently be arrested for being in possession without a license.

I can’t say this is my favorite paradox, but it’s by far the most chilling example of how logic plays ZERO factor in institutionalized racism, and it never will.”

13. I’m freakin’ out!

“The grandfather paradox – if you travel back in time and kill your grandfather then you wouldn’t have been born.

But if you weren’t born then you couldn’t kill your grandfather  which means you did get born, etc…”

14. Swimming lessons.

“You shouldn’t go in the water till you know how to swim, but you cant learn to swim without going in the water.”

15. Let’s talk about Rick Astley.

“The Astley Paradox.

If you ask him to give you the movie UP, and he declines the offer, he will have let you down, but if he accepts, he has gave you up.”

16. Think about that one.

“Schrödinger’s immigrants.

Immigrants who are somehow lazy and leeching off social services while simultaneously stealing all all the jobs.”

17. Interesting…

“The Fermi Paradox is one of my all time favorites!

The Fermi paradox, named after Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi, is the apparent contradiction between the lack of evidence for extraterrestrial civilizations and various high estimates for their probability (such as some optimistic estimates for the Drake equation).

The following are some of the facts that together serve to highlight the apparent contradiction:

There are billions of stars in the Milky Way similar to the Sun.

With high probability, some of these stars have Earth-like planets.

Many of these stars, and hence their planets, are much older than the sun. If the Earth is typical, some may have developed intelligent life long ago.

Some of these civilizations may have developed interstellar travel, a step humans are investigating now.

Even at the slow pace of currently envisioned interstellar travel, the Milky Way galaxy could be completely traversed in a few million years.

And since many of the stars similar to the Sun are billions of years older, the Earth should have already been visited by extraterrestrial civilizations, or at least their probes.

However, there is no convincing evidence that this has happened.”

You know the drill…

Now it’s your turn!

Tell us your favorite paradox in the comments!

The post What’s Your Favorite Paradox? Here’s What People Said. appeared first on UberFacts.

Language can be fun! Especially when it comes to paradoxes.

Do you know what a paradox is? Just in case you don’t, it’s basically a self-contradictory statement. And there are a ton of them out there that we say all the time.

What’s your favorite paradox?

Here’s what the good people on AskReddit had to say.

1. Brain matter.

“The human brain paradox.

You see, our brains are so complex that we can’t fully understand how they work. If they were simpler, we totally could.

Except that if our brains were simpler, we’d be more stupid, and still unable to fully understand our own brains.”

2. The Cobra Effect.

“The Cobra effect.

During the British rule of colonial India the government was concerned about the number of cobras in Delhi. To resolve this, the British offered a bounty for every dead cobra brought in. While initially successful this resulted in people breeding the cobras to then slaughter them for the reward.

When the British became aware of this they stopped the bounty, resulting in many of the breeders releasing their now worthless cobras into the general population and thus overall increasing the population of cobras in Delhi.

Good anecdote to describe unintended consequences.”

3. A personal one.

“I work in IT and have no fucking clue what I have been doing for the past 20 years and am constantly panicked that it is all about to fall apart, I will be exposed as a fraud, fired, sued, shot, killed, burned, ashes scattered in a sewer in Scotland the morning after a Haggis cook off.

However, all the people I work with seem to have literally Never touched a piece of technology that didn’t baffle them like Australopithecus staring at a 2019 Peterbuilt, I swear they are all fucking morons, if I am the stupidest person I know then how are all of them so bad at their jobs?”

4. Bootstrap.

“There’s a version of the Boostrap Paradox I like from a novel called The Anubis Gates.

One of the main characters is studying the poetry written by an ancient Pharaoh. Time travel shenanigans ensue, and he comes to realize that he, in the past, is said ancient Pharaoh, and writes down the poetry from memory so it can be written when history says it is.

Now, he studied it in the future, where he memorized it. And he wrote it in the past from that memorization. But his future self could only study it because his past self wrote it, who only knew it because his future self studied it, and so on.

Who wrote the poems?”

5. Cheesy.

“Cheese has holes More cheese = more holes More holes = less cheese.”

6. Yeah…

“When my family says, “I’m not racist but…” and then proceeds to say something definitely racist.”

7. Coastlines.

“The coastline paradox.

Coastlines don’t have a well defined length. Imagine trying to measure the coastline of an island. Actual coasts wiggle in and out.

How small of a wiggle you’re willing to measure (instead of just glossing over it) will change the length you measure.”

8. Changing rooms.

“I believe it’s called The Hotel Paradox?

There’s an infinite number of rooms in a hotel, and if each person moves to the room next door/a different room no one would be left without a room or you’d never run out of rooms.

Either that or you’d just have to keep folks moving all the time.”

9. One to ponder.

“If you go back in time and kill Hitler, then you will never have heard of Hitler in your time and wouldn’t know to go back in time and kill him so Hitler would live allowing you to learn about him and go back in time to kill him but now you’ve never heard of him and don’t go back to kill him so he to lives.”

10. Whoa!

“Doc Hollywood and Doc Brown.”

11. Deep in space.

“Moore’s Law – Waiting Paradox.

There’s no point in launching a spaceship on a deep space mission, because as technology advances so rapidly that any ship you build in the future will be faster/more efficient and hence overtake any craft that you launch now, inferring that one should always put off launching a deep space mission.”

12. Death penalty.

“If you support the death penalty, and even one person is found out to be innocent after their execution, you are in turn a murderer and should be put to death.

It’s the obvious paradox of the death penalty, but people enjoy bloodlust too much to see through the red in their eyes and black in their hearts. This applies to everyone who currently supports the death penalty.

Society wrongfully murders people who are later exonerated every year; it’s fucking bananas some states still allow it.”

13. Thank you for this!

“People who claim that undocumented workers in the US are lazy and leeches to society (implying that they don’t work) but that they’re stealing jobs from Americans.”

14. Bad traffic.

“That nobody drives in NYC because the traffic is so bad.”

15. Now what?

“You’re damned if you do, and you’re damned if you don’t.”

16. Blowin’ my mind!

“There is a time travel paradox that involves a door.

So you have a field and there is a free standing door. You are the guard you watch from side on. The door only lets people move 24 hours. Go in one way and it’s 24 hours into the future. Go in the other and it 24 hours into the past.

One day you see a guy come out into the past. But unlike most people he doesn’t leave. He stays in the field near the door. Then, precisely 24 hours after he arrives, he goes into the door.

The paradox is this man’s existence. To the casual observer he only exists for the 24 hours between exit and entrance.”

Now we want to hear from you!

In the comments, tell us what YOUR favorite paradox is.

Please and thank you!

The post People Share Their Favorite Mind-Bending Paradoxes appeared first on UberFacts.