Posts by iggy_the

41

Can you solve this paradox?

by Rod P in

jw
friends

you have a bow and arrow.

you shoot the arrow with the bow from point a to point b.. but the arrow will never reach point b, it's destination.

before the arrow can reach point b, it must first travel half way (let's call that point c).. but before the arrow can reach point c, it must first travel half way (let's call that point d).. but before the arrow can reach point d, it must first travel half way (let's call that point e).. do you see the problem?

iggy_the_fish

LOL, that legal one's very good! This thread is making my brain melt...

ig

41

Can you solve this paradox?

by Rod P in

jw
friends

you have a bow and arrow.

you shoot the arrow with the bow from point a to point b.. but the arrow will never reach point b, it's destination.

before the arrow can reach point b, it must first travel half way (let's call that point c).. but before the arrow can reach point c, it must first travel half way (let's call that point d).. but before the arrow can reach point d, it must first travel half way (let's call that point e).. do you see the problem?

iggy_the_fish

zen, you total hole! That bloody mirror thing's been on my mind all evening, and I've got better things to do with my time!

Here's my crack at an explanation, and I haven't even cheated and googled. To see an object in a mirror, we've rotated the object round the "up" axis, thus flipping the left-right and not the up-down. I think that if we had instead tumbled our object over the sideways axis to see it in the mirror, we would now have up and down reversed, but left&right preserved. Humm. It's the best I've come up with so far.

Here's something I've always wondered about - if I hold my heavy briefcase at arms length, my arm quickly becomes fatigued, and I have to expend energy keeping the briefcase still. However, when I rest the briefcase on my desk, the desk holds it up for a great length of time without getting tired. Why do need to expend energy and my desk does not, when we're both doing exactly the same job? If anyone tells me I'm doing work against gravity, I'll send you to the back of the class with the pointy cap on your head! Work = force x distance, and if I'm holding the briefcase still, I should be doing no work, right? Yet I expend energy to do this no work...

ig

41

Can you solve this paradox?

by Rod P in

jw
friends

you have a bow and arrow.

you shoot the arrow with the bow from point a to point b.. but the arrow will never reach point b, it's destination.

before the arrow can reach point b, it must first travel half way (let's call that point c).. but before the arrow can reach point c, it must first travel half way (let's call that point d).. but before the arrow can reach point d, it must first travel half way (let's call that point e).. do you see the problem?

iggy_the_fish

It's a good job that arrows are too stupid to realise that they can't actually fly...

ig.

41

Can you solve this paradox?

by Rod P in

jw
friends

you have a bow and arrow.

you shoot the arrow with the bow from point a to point b.. but the arrow will never reach point b, it's destination.

before the arrow can reach point b, it must first travel half way (let's call that point c).. but before the arrow can reach point c, it must first travel half way (let's call that point d).. but before the arrow can reach point d, it must first travel half way (let's call that point e).. do you see the problem?

iggy_the_fish

Zeno's paradox it's called, although I think he used Achilles chasing a tortoise or something like that.

The answer definitely lies in the fact that you're moving through increasingly small amounts of time, which it turns out you can do in a finite time, EVEN THOUGH there are infinetly many of them.

ig.

20

They really don't have the truth! Their own web server admits it!

by AlmostAtheist in

jw
friends

http://www.watchtower.org/thetruth

in case you have friendly html errors turned on, here's the output i get from the watchtower's site when i go searching for thetruth:.

it's nice to see them admitting it.

iggy_the_fish

LOL, that's funny AA, ya big silly

ig

41

Can you solve this paradox?

by Rod P in

jw
friends

you have a bow and arrow.

you shoot the arrow with the bow from point a to point b.. but the arrow will never reach point b, it's destination.

before the arrow can reach point b, it must first travel half way (let's call that point c).. but before the arrow can reach point c, it must first travel half way (let's call that point d).. but before the arrow can reach point d, it must first travel half way (let's call that point e).. do you see the problem?

iggy_the_fish

Wasn't it one of the greek philosophers who first started thinking this one over? I forget which one.

The answer lies in infinite sums having finite limits. In this case, you're adding 1/2, then 1/4, then 1/8 etc. If you sum this infinite series (1/{2^n}) from n=1 to infinity, you get the answer 1. If the arrow travels at roughly a constant speed from A to B, the time taken to traverse each segment in the series takes exponentially less time also. You travel smaller and smaller distances (to your mid points), but this is balanced by you traversing them in less and less time. This infinite sum has a finite limit.

Interestingly enough, if you sum the series 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/5, ... you don't get a finite answer, it's infinity, even though the terms in the sum get smaller and smaller as you go on...

ig

37