Physics Paradox

Paradoxes
Situations that seems to defy intuition
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Contents
Articles
Introduction
Paradox List of paradoxes Paradoxical laughter 1 1 5 16 17 17 19 22 34 36 38 38 41 51 52 55 56 57 59 62 64 64 69 70 72 73 77 80 85 91 91
Decision theory
Abilene paradox Chainstore paradox Exchange paradox Kavka's toxin puzzle Necktie paradox
Economy
Allais paradox Arrow's impossibility theorem Bertrand paradox Demographic-economic paradox Dollar auction DownsThomson paradox Easterlin paradox Ellsberg paradox Green paradox Icarus paradox Jevons paradox Leontief paradox Lucas paradox Metzler paradox Paradox of thrift Paradox of value Productivity paradox St. Petersburg paradox
Logic
All horses are the same color
Barbershop paradox Carroll's paradox Crocodile Dilemma Drinker paradox Infinite regress Lottery paradox Paradoxes of material implication Raven paradox Unexpected hanging paradox What the Tortoise Said to Achilles
92 95 96 97 99 100 102 105 117 121 125 125 127 129 137 139 143 147 158 160 165 166 167 169 170 172 174 176 178 185 202 204 205 207 208 210 215
Mathematics
Accuracy paradox Apportionment paradox BanachTarski paradox Berkson's paradox Bertrand's box paradox Bertrand paradox Birthday problem BorelKolmogorov paradox Boy or Girl paradox Burali-Forti paradox Cantor's paradox Coastline paradox Cramer's paradox Elevator paradox False positive paradox Gabriel's Horn Galileo's paradox Gambler's fallacy Gdel's incompleteness theorems Interesting number paradox KleeneRosser paradox Lindley's paradox Low birth weight paradox Missing square puzzle Paradoxes of set theory Parrondo's paradox
Russell's paradox Simpson's paradox Skolem's paradox Smale's paradox Thomson's lamp Two envelopes problem von Neumann paradox
220 225 233 236 238 240 252 255 255 256 258 259 260 263 265 266 268 270 271 271 274 278 281 284 286 290 298 301 302 303 310 317 317 317 318
Miscellaneous
Bracketing paradox Buridan's ass Buttered cat paradox Lombard's Paradox Mere addition paradox Navigation paradox Paradox of the plankton Temporal paradox Tritone paradox Voting paradox
Philosophy
Fitch's paradox of knowability Grandfather paradox Liberal paradox Moore's paradox Moravec's paradox Newcomb's paradox Omnipotence paradox Paradox of hedonism Paradox of nihilism Paradox of tolerance Predestination paradox Zeno's paradoxes
Physics
Algol paradox Archimedes paradox Aristotle's wheel paradox
Bell's spaceship paradox Bentley's paradox Black hole information paradox Braess's paradox Cool tropics paradox D'Alembert's paradox Denny's paradox Ehrenfest paradox Elevator paradox EPR paradox Faint young Sun paradox Fermi paradox Feynman sprinkler Gibbs paradox Hardy's paradox Heat death paradox Irresistible force paradox Ladder paradox Loschmidt's paradox Mpemba effect Olbers' paradox Ontological paradox Painlev paradox Physical paradox Quantum pseudo-telepathy Schrdinger's cat Supplee's paradox Tea leaf paradox Twin paradox
319 324 324 328 332 334 342 343 348 349 359 362 383 385 388 390 391 392 400 402 406 411 413 414 418 421 427 428 430 440 440 442 444 446 447 449 452
Self-reference
Barber paradox Berry paradox Epimenides paradox Exception paradox GrellingNelson paradox Intentionally blank page Liar paradox
Opposite Day Paradox of the Court Petronius Quine's paradox Richard's paradox Self-reference Socratic paradox Yablo's paradox
457 458 460 463 464 467 471 472 473 473 473 474 474
Vagueness
Absence paradox Bonini's paradox Code-talker paradox Ship of Theseus
References
Article Sources and Contributors Image Sources, Licenses and Contributors 481 492
Article Licenses
License 495
Introduction
Paradox
Further information: List of paradoxes A paradox is a statement or group of statements that lead to a contradiction or a situation which (if true) defies logic or reason, similar to circular reasoning. Typically, however, quoted paradoxical statements do not imply a real contradiction and the puzzling results can be rectified by demonstrating that one or more of the premises themselves are not really true, a play on words, faulty and/or cannot all be true together. But many paradoxes, such as Curry's paradox, do not yet have universally accepted resolutions. The word paradox is often used interchangeably with contradiction. The logician Willard V. O. Quine distinguishes between: Falsidical paradoxes, which are seemingly valid, logical demonstrations of absurdities Veridical paradoxes, such as the birthday paradox, which are seeming absurdities that are nevertheless true because they are perfectly logical.[1] Paradoxes in economics tend to be the veridical type, typically counterintuitive outcomes of economic theory, such as Simpson's paradox. In literature a paradox can be any contradictory or obviously untrue statement, which resolves itself upon later inspection.
Logical paradox
Common themes in paradoxes include self-reference, infinite regress, circular definitions, and confusion between different levels of abstraction. Patrick Hughes outlines three laws of the paradox:[2] Self reference An example is "This statement is false", a form of the liar paradox. The statement is referring to itself. Another example of self reference is the question of whether the barber shaves himself in the barber paradox. One more example would be "Is the answer to this question no?" In this case, if you replied no, you would be stating that the answer is not no. If you reply yes, you are stating that it is no, because you said yes. But because you answered yes the answer is not no. However you could reply "It isn't." indicating a negative response without saying the word "no". However, a man may merely say "Of course not!" The concept of "nothingness" is the simplest classical example of a self-referential paradox The existence of the concept of "nothingness" invalidates it. It's the simplest paradox because it's a single word that means nothing. Contradiction "This statement is false"; the statement cannot be false and true at the same time. Vicious circularity, or infinite regress "This statement is false"; if the statement is true, then the statement is false, thereby making the statement true. Another example of vicious circularity is the following group of statements: "The following sentence is true." "The previous sentence is false." "What happens when Pinocchio says, 'My nose will grow now'?"
Paradox "Numbers are infinite, however there are more fractions than whole numbers." Other paradoxes involve false statements or half-truths and the resulting biased assumptions. This form is common in howlers. For example, consider a situation in which a father and his son are driving down the road. The car crashes into a tree and the father is killed. The boy is rushed to the nearest hospital where he is prepared for emergency surgery. On entering the surgery suite, the surgeon says, "I can't operate on this boy. He's my son." The apparent paradox is caused by a hasty generalization; if the surgeon is the boy's father, the statement cannot be true. The paradox is resolved if it is revealed that the surgeon is a woman, the boy's mother. Paradoxes which are not based on a hidden error generally happen at the fringes of context or language, and require extending the context or language to lose their paradoxical quality. Paradoxes that arise from apparently intelligible uses of language are often of interest to logicians and philosophers. This sentence is false is an example of the famous liar paradox: it is a sentence which cannot be consistently interpreted as true or false, because if it is known to be false then it is known that it must be true, and if it is known to be true then it is known that it must be false. Therefore, it can be concluded that it is unknowable. Russell's paradox, which shows that the notion of the set of all those sets that do not contain themselves leads to a contradiction, was instrumental in the development of modern logic and set theory. Thought experiments can also yield interesting paradoxes. The grandfather paradox, for example, would arise if a time traveler were to kill his own grandfather before his mother or father was conceived, thereby preventing his own birth. W. V. Quine (1962) distinguished between three classes of paradoxes: A veridical paradox produces a result that appears absurd but is demonstrated to be true nevertheless. Thus, the paradox of Frederic's birthday in The Pirates of Penzance establishes the surprising fact that a twenty-one-year-old would have had only five birthdays, if he was born on a leap day. Likewise, Arrow's impossibility theorem demonstrates difficulties in mapping voting results to the will of the people. A falsidical paradox establishes a result that not only appears false but actually is false due to a fallacy in the demonstration. The various invalid mathematical proofs (e.g., that 1 = 2) are classic examples, generally relying on a hidden division by zero. Another example is the inductive form of the horse paradox, falsely generalizes from true specific statements. A paradox which is in neither class may be an antinomy, which reaches a self-contradictory result by properly applying accepted ways of reasoning. For example, the GrellingNelson paradox points out genuine problems in our understanding of the ideas of truth and description. A fourth kind has sometimes been described since Quine's work. A paradox which is both true and false at the same time in the same sense is called a dialetheism. In Western logics it is often assumed, following Aristotle, that no dialetheia exist, but they are sometimes accepted in Eastern traditions and in paraconsistent logics. An example might be to affirm or deny the statement "John is in the room" when John is standing precisely halfway through the doorway. It is reasonable (by human thinking) to both affirm and deny it ("well, he is, but he isn't"), and it is also reasonable to say that he is neither ("he's halfway in the room, which is neither in nor out"), despite the fact that the statement is to be exclusively proven or disproven.
Paradox in literature
The paradox as a literary device has been assigned as an anomalous juxtaposition of incongruous ideas for the sake of striking exposition or unorthodox insight. It functions as a method of literary analysis which involves examining apparently contradictory statements and drawing conclusions either to reconcile them or to explain their presence.[3] Literary or rhetorical paradoxes abound in the works of Oscar Wilde and G. K. Chesterton; other literature deals with paradox of situation. Rabelais, Cervantes, Sterne, and Borges, for instance, are all concerned with episodes and narratives designed around paradoxes. Two of literature's arguably most famous paradoxes is the Miltonic narrator's
Paradox statement in Book One of 'Paradise Lost', that the fires of hell emit "no light, but darkness visible." Statements such as Wilde's "I can resist anything except temptation," Chesterton's "Spies do not look like spies"[4] and Polonius' observation in Hamlet that "though this be madness, yet there is method in't"[3] are examples of rhetorical paradox. Another example of a paradox is found in the dialogue between Touchstone and Corin in Act Three, Scene Two of As You Like It by William Shakespeare, when Touchstone says: "Truly, shepherd, in respect of itself, it is a good life, but in respect that it is a shepherd's life, it is naught. In respect that it is solitary, I like it very well; but in respect that it is private, it is a very vile life. Now, in respect it is in the fields, it pleaseth me well; but in respect it is not in the court, it is tedious. As is it a spare life, look you, it fits my humour well; but as there is no more plenty in it, it goes much against my stomach."
Paradox in philosophy
A taste for paradox is central to the philosophies of Laozi, Heraclitus, Meister Eckhart, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche, among many others. Sren Kierkegaard, for example, writes, in the Philosophical Fragments, that one must not think ill of the paradox, for the paradox is the passion of thought, and the thinker without the paradox is like the lover without passion: a mediocre fellow. But the ultimate potentiation of every passion is always to will its own downfall, and so it is also the ultimate passion of the understanding to will the collision, although in one way or another the collision must become its downfall. This, then, is the ultimate paradox of thought: to want to discover something that thought itself cannot think.[5]
Moral paradox
In moral philosophy, paradox in a loose sense plays a role in ethics debates. For instance, it may be considered that an ethical admonition to "love thy neighbour" is not just in contrast with, but in contradiction to armed neighbors actively intending murder. If the hostile neighbors succeed, it is impossible to follow the dictum. On the other hand, to attack, fight back, or restrain them is also not usually considered "loving." This might be better termed an ethical dilemma rather than a paradox in the strict sense. However, for this to be a true example of a moral paradox, it must be assumed that "loving" and restraint cannot co-exist. In reality, this situation occurs often, notably when parents punish children out of love.
Paradox in media
Another example is the conflict between a moral injunction and a duty that cannot be fulfilled without violating that injunction. For example, take the situation of a parent with children who must be fed (the duty), but cannot afford to do so without stealing, which would be wrong (the injunction). Such a conflict between two maxims is normally resolved through weakening one or the other of them: the need for survival is greater than the need to abide by the law. However, as maxims are added for consideration, the questions of which to weaken in the general case and by how much pose issues related to Arrow's impossibility theorem; it may not be possible to formulate a consistent system of ethics rules with a definite order of preference in the general case, a so-called "ethical calculus."
Paradox Paradoxes in a more strict sense have been relatively neglected in philosophical discussion within ethics, as compared to their role in other philosophical fields such as logic, epistemology, metaphysics, or even the philosophy of science. Important book-length discussions appear in Derek Parfit's Reasons and Persons and in Saul Smilansky's 10 Moral Paradoxes.
Paradoxology
Paradoxology, "the use of paradoxes."[6] As a word it originates from Thomas Browne in his book Pseudodoxia Epidemica."[7][8] Alexander Bard and Jan Sderqvist developed a "paradoxology" in their book Det globala imperiet ("The Global Empire").[9] The authors emphasize paradoxes between the world as static and as ever-changing, while leaning on loose allegories from quantum mechanics. One may also include the philosopher Derrida in a list of users of paradoxes. Derrida's deconstructions attempt to give opposing interpretations of the same text by rhetoric arguments, similar to how lawyers in a court case may argue from the same text, the same set of laws that is, to reach opposite conclusions.
Footnotes
[1] Van Orman Quine, Willard (1966). "The Ways of Paradox". The Ways of Paradox and Other Essays. Random House. p.5. [2] Hughes, Patrick; Brecht, George (1975). Vicious Circles and Infinity - A Panoply of Paradoxes. Garden City, New York: Doubleday. ISBN0-385-09917-7. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 74-17611.
. p.18.
[3] [4] [5] [6] [7] Rescher, Nicholas (2001). Paradoxes: Their Roots, Range, and Resolution. Chicago: Open Court. ISBN0812694368.. From "A Tall Story" in The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond. Kierkegaard, Sren. Philosophical Fragments, 1844. p. 37 Webster's Revised Unabridged, 2000 Sturm, Sean (5 September 2009). "Paradoxology" (http:/ / www. webcitation. org/ 5minMTvXZ). Te ipu Pakore - Escribir es nacer (to write is to be born). wordpress.com. Archived from the original (http:/ / seansturm. wordpress. com/ tag/ erratology/ #post-41) on 12 January 2010. . Retrieved 12 January 2010. [8] Browne, Thomas (1672) [first published 1646]. Pseudodoxia Epidemica or Enquries into very many received tenets and commonly presumed truths. (http:/ / penelope. uchicago. edu/ pseudodoxia/ pseudodoxia. html) (6th ed.). . Retrieved 12 January 2010. "Although whoever shall indifferently perpend the exceeding difficulty, which either the obscurity of the subject, or unavoidable paradoxology must often put upon the Attemptor, he will easily discern, a work of this nature is not to be performed upon one legg; and should smel of oyl, if duly and deservedly handled." [9] Bard, Alexander; Sderqvist, Jan (2002) (in Swedish). Det globala imperiet: informationslderns politiska filosofi [The Global Empire]. Stockholm: Bonnier Fakta. ISBN91-85015-03-2.; reviewed in Ingdahl, Waldemar (2003). "Informationslderns politiska filosofi [Political Philosophy of the Information Age]" (http:/ / www. webcitation. org/ 5miuoDqyd) (in Swedish). Svensk Tidskrift (Stockholm: Nordstedts Tryckeri) (2). ISSN0039-677X. OCLC1586291. Archived from the original (http:/ / www. eudoxa. se/ content/ archives/ 2003/ 05/ informationsald. html) on 12 January 2010. . Retrieved 12 January 2010.; bibliographic entries at LIBRIS No. 8814548 (http:/ / libris. kb. se/ bib/ 8814548?language=en) ( WebCite (http:/ / www. webcitation. org/ 5miwMwGj9) 12 January 2010) and lybrarything.com (http:/ / www. librarything. com/ work/ 3399093) ( WebCite (http:/ / www. webcitation. org/ 5miwNAQBh) 12 January 2010)
Paradox
External links
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: " Paradoxes and Contemporary Logic (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paradoxes-contemporary-logic/)" by Andrea Cantini. " Insolubles (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/insolubles)" by Paul Vincent Spade. Paradoxes (http://www.dmoz.org/Society/Philosophy/Philosophy_of_Logic/Paradoxes//) at the Open Directory Project "Zeno and the Paradox of Motion" (http://www.mathpages.com/rr/s3-07/3-07.htm) at MathPages.com.
List of paradoxes
This is a list of paradoxes, grouped thematically. The grouping is approximate, as paradoxes may fit into more than one category. Because of varying definitions of the term paradox, some of the following are not considered to be paradoxes by everyone. This list collects only scenarios that have been called a paradox by at least one source and have their own article. Although considered paradoxes, some of these are based on fallacious reasoning, or incomplete/faulty analysis. This list is incomplete.
Logic
Barbershop paradox: The supposition that if one of two simultaneous assumptions leads to a contradiction, the other assumption is also disproved leads to paradoxical consequences. What the Tortoise Said to Achilles "Whatever Logic is good enough to tell me is worth writing down...," also known as Carroll's paradox, not to be confused with the physical paradox of the same name. Crocodile Dilemma: If a crocodile steals a child and promises its return if the father can correctly guess what the crocodile will do, how should the crocodile respond in the case that the father guesses that the child will not be returned? Catch-22 (logic): A situation where someone is in need of something that can only be had by not being in need of it. Drinker paradox: In any pub there is a customer who, if they drink, everybody in the pub drinks. . Paradox of entailment: Inconsistent premises always make an argument valid. Lottery paradox: There is one winning ticket in a large lottery. It is reasonable to believe of a particular lottery ticket that it is not the winning ticket, since the probability that it is the winner is so very small, but it is not reasonable to believe that no lottery ticket will win. Raven paradox (or Hempel's Ravens): Observing a green apple increases the likelihood of all ravens being black. Unexpected hanging paradox: The day of the hanging will be a surprise, so it cannot happen at all, so it will be a surprise. The surprise examination and Bottle Imp paradox use similar logic.
List of paradoxes
Self-reference
These paradoxes have in common a contradiction arising from self-reference. Barber paradox: A male barber shaves all and only those men who do not shave themselves. Does he shave himself? (Russell's popularization of his set theoretic paradox.) Berry paradox: The phrase "the first number not nameable in under eleven words" appears to name it in nine words. Paradox of the Court: A law student agrees to pay his teacher after winning his first case. The teacher then sues the student (who has not yet won a case) for payment. Curry's paradox: "If this sentence is true, then Santa Claus exists." Epimenides paradox: A Cretan says: "All Cretans are liars". This paradox works in mainly the same way as the Liar paradox. Exception paradox: "If there is an exception to every rule, then every rule must have at least one exception; the exception to this one being that it has no exception." "There's always an exception to the rule, except to the exception of the rulewhich is, in of itself, an accepted exception of the rule." GrellingNelson paradox: Is the word "heterological", meaning "not applicable to itself," a heterological word? (Another close relative of Russell's paradox.) KleeneRosser paradox: By formulating an equivalent to Richard's paradox, untyped lambda calculus is shown to be inconsistent. Liar paradox: "This sentence is false." This is the canonical self-referential paradox. Also "Is the answer to this question no?" And "I'm lying." Card paradox: "The next statement is true. The previous statement is false." A variant of the liar paradox that does not use self-reference. The Pinocchio paradox: What would happen if Pinocchio said "My nose will be growing"?[1] Quine's paradox: "'Yields a falsehood when appended to its own quotation' yields a falsehood when appended to its own quotation." Shows that a sentence can be paradoxical even if it is not self-referring and does not use demonstratives or indexicals. Yablo's paradox: An ordered infinite sequence of sentences, each of which says that all following sentences are false. Uses neither self-reference nor circular reference. Opposite Day: "It is opposite day today." Therefore it is not opposite day, but if you say it is a normal day it would be considered a normal day. Petronius's paradox: "Moderation in all things, including moderation" (unsourced quotation sometimes attributed to Petronius). Richard's paradox: We appear to be able to use simple English to define a decimal expansion in a way that is self-contradictory. Russell's paradox: Does the set of all those sets that do not contain themselves contain itself? Socratic paradox: "I know that I know nothing at all."
List of paradoxes
Vagueness
Bonini's paradox: models or simulations that explain the workings of complex systems are seemingly impossible to construct: As a model of a complex system becomes more complete, it becomes less understandable; for it to be more understandable it must be less complete and therefore less accurate. When the model becomes accurate, it is just as difficult to understand as the real-world processes it represents. Code-talker paradox: how can a language both enable communication and block communication? Ship of Theseus (a.k.a. George Washington's axe or Grandfather's old axe): It seems like you can replace any component of a ship, and it is still the same ship. So you can replace them all, one at a time, and it is still the same ship. However, you can then take all the original pieces, and assemble them into a ship. That, too, is the same ship you began with. Sorites paradox (also known as the paradox of the heap): One grain of sand is not a heap. If you don't have a heap, then adding only one grain of sand won't give you a heap. Then no number of grains of sand will make a heap. Similarly, one hair can't make the difference between being bald and not being bald. But then if you remove one hair at a time, you will never become bald. Also similar, one dollar will not make you rich, so if you keep this up, one dollar at a time, you will never become rich, no matter how much you obtain.
Mathematics
Cramer's paradox: the number of points of intersection of two higher-order curves can be greater than the number of arbitrary points needed to define one such curve. The infinite sum of alternating integers 1 2 + 3 4 + can be said to equal , which is not an integer.[2] Elevator paradox: Elevators can seem to be mostly going in one direction, as if they were being manufactured in the middle of the building and being disassembled on the roof and basement. Interesting number paradox: The first number that can be considered "dull" rather than "interesting" becomes interesting because of that fact. Nontransitive dice: You can have three dice, called A, B, and C, such that A is likely to win in a roll against B, B is likely to win in a roll against C, and C is likely to win in a roll against A. Russell's paradox: Does the set of all those sets that do not contain themselves contain itself?
Statistics
Accuracy paradox: predictive models with a given level of accuracy may have greater predictive power than models with higher accuracy. Berkson's paradox: a complicating factor arising in statistical tests of proportions. Freedman's paradox describes a problem in model selection where predictor variables with no explanatory power can appear artificially important Friendship paradox: For almost everyone, their friends have more friends than they do. Inspection paradox: Why one will wait longer for a bus than one should. Lindley's paradox: Tiny errors in the null hypothesis are magnified when large data sets are analyzed, leading to false but highly statistically significant results. Low birth weight paradox: Low birth weight and mothers who smoke contribute to a higher mortality rate. Babies of smokers have lower average birth weight, but low birth weight babies born to smokers have a lower mortality rate than other low birth weight babies. (A special case of Simpson's paradox.) Will Rogers phenomenon: The mathematical concept of an average, whether defined as the mean or median, leads to apparently paradoxical results for example, it is possible that moving an entry from an encyclopedia to a dictionary would increase the average entry length on both books.
List of paradoxes
Probability
Bertrand's box paradox: A paradox of conditional probability closely related to the Boy or Girl paradox. Bertrand's paradox: Different common-sense definitions of randomness give quite different results. Birthday paradox: What is the chance that two people in a room have the same birthday? Borel's paradox: Conditional probability density functions are not invariant under coordinate transformations. Boy or Girl paradox: A two-child family has at least one boy. What is the probability that it has a girl? False positive paradox: A test that is accurate the vast majority of the time could show you have a disease, but the probability that you actually have it could still be tiny. Monty Hall problem: An unintuitive consequence of conditional probability. Necktie Paradox : A wager between two people seems to favour them both. Very similar in essence to the Two-envelope paradox. Proebsting's paradox: The Kelly criterion is an often optimal strategy for maximizing profit in the long run. Proebsting's paradox apparently shows that the Kelly criterion can lead to ruin. Simpson's paradox: An association in sub-populations may be reversed in the population. It appears that two sets of data separately support a certain hypothesis, but, when considered together, they support the opposite hypothesis. Sleeping Beauty problem: A probability problem that can be correctly answered as one half or one third depending on how the question is approached. Three cards problem: When pulling a random card, how do you determine the color of the underside? Three Prisoners problem: A variation of the Monty Hall problem. Two-envelope paradox: You are given two indistinguishable envelopes and you are told one contains twice as much money as the other. You may open one envelope, examine its contents, and then, without opening the other, choose which envelope to take.
The Monty Hall paradox: which door do you choose?
Infinity and infinitesimals

Burali-Forti paradox: If the ordinal numbers formed a set, it would be an ordinal number that is smaller than itself. Cantor's paradox: There is no greatest cardinal number. Galileo's paradox: Though most numbers are not squares, there are no more numbers than squares. (See also Cantor's diagonal argument) Hilbert's paradox of the Grand Hotel: If a hotel with infinitely many rooms is full, it can still take in more guests. Russell's paradox: Does the set of all those sets that do not contain themselves contain itself? Skolem's paradox: Countably infinite models of set theory contain uncountably infinite sets. Supertasks can result in paradoxes such as the Ross-Littlewood paradox and Benardete's paradox. Zeno's paradoxes: "You will never reach point B from point A as you must always get half-way there, and half of the half, and half of that half, and so on." (This is also a physical paradox.)
List of paradoxes
Geometry and topology

BanachTarski paradox: Cut a ball into a finite number of pieces, re-assemble the pieces to get two balls, both of equal size to the first. The von Neumann paradox is a two-dimensional analogue. Paradoxical set: A set that can be partitioned into two sets, each of which is equivalent to the original. Coastline paradox: the perimeter of a landmass is in general ill-defined. Gabriel's Horn or Torricelli's trumpet: A simple object with finite volume but infinite surface area. Also, the Mandelbrot set and various other fractals are covered by a finite area, but have an infinite perimeter (in fact, there are no two distinct points on the boundary of the Mandelbrot set that can be reached from one another by moving a finite distance along that boundary, which also implies that in a sense you go no further if you walk "the wrong way" around the set to reach a nearby point). This can be represented by a Klein bottle. Hausdorff paradox: There exists a countable subset C of the sphere S such that S\C is equidecomposable with two copies of itself. Missing square puzzle: Two similar-looking figures appear to have different areas while built from the same pieces. Nikodym set: A set contained in and with the same Lebesgue measure as the unit square, yet for every one of its points there is a straight line intersecting the Nikodym set only in that point. Smale's paradox: A sphere can, topologically, be turned inside out.
The BanachTarski paradox: A ball can be decomposed and reassembled into two balls the same size as the original.
Decision theory
Abilene paradox: People can make decisions based not on what they actually want to do, but on what they think that other people want to do, with the result that everybody decides to do something that nobody really wants to do, but only what they thought that everybody else wanted to do. Apportionment paradox: Some systems of apportioning representation can have unintuitive results due to rounding Alabama paradox: Increasing the total number of seats might shrink one block's seats. New states paradox: Adding a new state or voting block might increase the number of votes of another. Population paradox: A fast-growing state can lose votes to a slow-growing state. Arrow's paradox: Given more than two choices, no system can have all the attributes of an ideal voting system at once. Buridan's ass: How can a rational choice be made between two outcomes of equal value? Chainstore paradox: Even those who know better play the so-called chain store game in an irrational manner. Fenno's paradox: The belief that people generally disapprove of the United States Congress as a whole, but support the Congressman from their own Congressional district. Green paradox: Policies intending to reduce future CO2 emissions may lead to increased emissions in the present. Inventor's paradox: It is easier to solve a more general problem that covers the specifics of the sought-after solution. Kavka's toxin puzzle: Can one intend to drink the non-deadly toxin, if the intention is the only thing needed to get the reward? Morton's fork: Choosing between unpalatable alternatives.
Navigation paradox: Increased navigational precision may result in increased collision risk. Newcomb's paradox: How do you play a game against an omniscient opponent?
List of paradoxes Paradox of hedonism: When one pursues happiness itself, one is miserable; but, when one pursues something else, one achieves happiness. Paradox of tolerance: Should one tolerate intolerance if intolerance would destroy the possibility of tolerance? Paradox of voting: Also known as the Downs paradox. For a rational, self-interested voter the costs of voting will normally exceed the expected benefits, so why do people keep voting? Parrondo's paradox: It is possible to play two losing games alternately to eventually win. Prevention paradox: For one person to benefit, many people have to change their behavior even though they receive no benefit, or even suffer, from the change. Prisoner's dilemma: Two people might not cooperate even if it is in both their best interests to do so. Relevance paradox: Sometimes relevant information is not sought out because its relevance only becomes clear after the information is available. Voting paradox: Also known as Condorcet's paradox and paradox of voting. A group of separately rational individuals may have preferences that are irrational in the aggregate. Willpower paradox [3]: Those who kept their minds open were more goal-directed and more motivated than those who declared their objective to themselves.
10
Physics
Cool tropics paradox: A contradiction between modelled estimates of tropical temperatures during warm, ice-free periods of the Cretaceous and Eocene, and the colder temperatures that proxies suggest were present. The holographic principle: The amount of information that can be stored in a given volume is not proportional to the volume but to the area that bounds that volume. Irresistible force paradox: What would happen if an unstoppable force hit an immovable object?
Astrophysics
Algol paradox: In some binaries the partners seem to have different ages, even though they're thought to have formed at the same time.
Robert Boyle's self-flowing flask fills itself in this diagram, but perpetual motion machines cannot exist.
Faint young Sun paradox: The apparent contradiction between observations of liquid water early in the Earth's history and the astrophysical expectation that the output of the young sun would have been insufficient to melt ice on earth. The GZK paradox: High-energy cosmic rays have been observed that seem to violate the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin limit, which is a consequence of special relativity.
List of paradoxes
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Classical mechanics
Archer's paradox: An archer must, in order to hit his target, not aim directly at it, but slightly to the side. Archimedes paradox: A massive battleship can float in a few litres of water. Aristotle's wheel paradox: Rolling joined concentric wheels seem to trace the same distance with their circumferences, even though the circumferences are different. Carroll's paradox: The angular momentum of a stick should be zero, but is not. D'Alembert's paradox: Flow of an inviscid fluid produces no net force on a solid body. Denny's paradox: Surface-dwelling arthropods (such as the water strider) should not be able to propel themselves horizontally. Elevator paradox: Even though hydrometers are used to measure fluid density, a hydrometer will not indicate changes of fluid density caused by changing atmospheric pressure. Feynman sprinkler: Which way does a sprinkler rotate when submerged in a tank and made to suck in the surrounding fluid? Painlev paradox: Rigid-body dynamics with contact and friction is inconsistent. Tea leaf paradox: When a cup of tea is stirred, the leaves assemble in the center, even though centrifugal force pushes them outward.
Cosmology
Bentley's paradox: In a Newtonian universe, gravitation should pull all matter into a single point. Fermi paradox: If there are, as probability would suggest, many other sentient species in the Universe, then where are they? Shouldn't their presence be obvious? Heat death paradox: Since the universe is not infinitely old, it cannot be infinite in extent. Olbers' paradox: Why is the night sky black if there is an infinity of stars?
Electromagnetism
Faraday paradox: An apparent violation of Faraday's law of electromagnetic induction.
Quantum mechanics
Bell's theorem: Why do measured quantum particles not satisfy mathematical probability theory? Double-slit experiment: Matter and energy can act as a wave or as a particle depending on the experiment. Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox: Can far away events influence each other in quantum mechanics? Extinction paradox: In the small wavelength limit, the total scattering cross section of an impenetrable sphere is twice its geometrical cross-sectional area (which is the value obtained in classical mechanics).[4] Hardy's paradox: How can we make inferences about past events that we haven't observed while at the same time acknowledge that the act of observing it affects the reality we are inferring to? Klein paradox: When the potential of a potential barrier becomes similar to the mass of the impinging particle, it becomes transparent. The Mott problem: spherically symmetric wave functions, when observed, produce linear particle tracks. Quantum LC circuit paradox: Energies stored on capacitance and inductance are not equal to the ground state energy of the quantum oscillator. Quantum pseudo-telepathy: Two players who can not communicate accomplish tasks that seemingly require direct contact. Schrdinger's cat paradox: A quantum paradox Is the cat alive or dead before we look? Uncertainty principle: Attempts to determine position must disturb momentum, and vice versa.
List of paradoxes
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Relativity
Bell's spaceship paradox: concerning relativity. Black hole information paradox: Black holes violate a commonly assumed tenet of science that information cannot be destroyed. Ehrenfest paradox: On the kinematics of a rigid, rotating disk. Ladder paradox: A classic relativity problem. Mocanu's velocity composition paradox: a paradox in special relativity. Supplee's paradox: the buoyancy of a relativistic object (such as a bullet) appears to change when the reference frame is changed from one in which the bullet is at rest to one in which the fluid is at rest. Trouton-Noble or Right-angle lever paradox. Does a torque arise in static systems when changing frames? Twin paradox: The theory of relativity predicts that a person making a round trip will return younger than his or her identical twin who stayed at home.
Thermodynamics
Gibbs paradox: In an ideal gas, is entropy an extensive variable? Loschmidt's paradox: Why is there an inevitable increase in entropy when the laws of physics are invariant under time reversal? The time reversal symmetry of physical laws appears to contradict the second law of thermodynamics. Maxwell's Demon: The second law of thermodynamics seems to be violated by a cleverly operated trapdoor.[5] Mpemba paradox: Hot water can, under certain conditions, freeze faster than cold water, even though it must pass the lower temperature on the way to freezing.
Biology
Paradox of enrichment: Increasing the food available to an ecosystem may lead to instability, and even to extinction. French paradox: the observation that the French suffer a relatively low incidence of coronary heart disease, despite having a diet relatively rich in saturated fats. Glucose paradox: The large amount of glycogen in the liver cannot be explained by its small glucose absorption. Gray's Paradox: Despite their relatively small muscle mass, dolphins can swim at high speeds and obtain large accelerations. Hispanic Paradox: The finding that Hispanics in the U.S. tend to have substantially better health than the average population in spite of what their aggregate socio-economic indicators predict. Lombard's Paradox: When rising to stand from a sitting or squatting position, both the hamstrings and quadriceps contract at the same time, despite their being antagonists to each other. Mexican paradox: Mexican children tend to have higher birth weights than can be expected from their socio-economic status. Paradox of the pesticides: Applying pesticide to a pest may increase the pest's abundance. Paradox of the plankton: Why are there so many different species of phytoplankton, even though competition for the same resources tends to reduce the number of species? Peto's paradox: Humans gets cancer with high frequency, while larger mammals, like whales, dont. If cancer is essentially a negative outcome lottery at the cell level, and larger organisms have more cells, and thus more potentially cancerous cell divisions, you would expect larger organisms to be more predisposed to cancer. Pulsus paradoxus: Sometimes it is possible to hear, with a stethoscope, heartbeats that can't be felt at the wrist.[6] Sherman paradox: An anomalous pattern of inheritance in the fragile X syndrome. Temporal paradox (paleontology): When did the ancestors of birds live?
List of paradoxes
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Chemistry
Faraday paradox (electrochemistry): Diluted nitric acid will corrode steel, while concentrated nitric acid doesn't. Levinthal paradox: The length of time that it takes for a protein chain to find its folded state is many orders of magnitude shorter than it would be if it freely searched all possible configurations. SAR paradox: Exceptions to the principle that a small change in a molecule causes a small change in its chemical behaviour are frequently profound.
Time
Bootstrap paradox: Can a time traveler send himself information with no outside source? Predestination paradox[7]: A man travels back in time to discover the cause of a famous fire. While in the building where the fire started, he accidentally knocks over a kerosene lantern and causes a fire, the same fire that would inspire him, years later, to travel back in time. The bootstrap paradox is closely tied to this, in which, as a result of time travel, information or objects appear to have no beginning. Temporal paradox: What happens when a time traveler does things in the past that prevent him from doing them in the first place? Grandfather paradox: You travel back in time and kill your grandfather before he conceives one of your parents, which precludes your own conception and, therefore, you couldn't go back in time and kill your grandfather.
Philosophy
Paradox of analysis: It seems that no conceptual analysis can both meet the requirement of correctness and of informativeness. Buridan's bridge: Will Plato throw Socrates into the water or not? Chicken or the egg: Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Fitch's paradox: If all truths are knowable, then all truths must in fact be known. Paradox of free will: If God knew how we will decide when he created us, how can there be free will? Goodman's paradox: Why can induction be used to confirm that things are "green", but not to confirm that things are "grue"? Paradox of hedonism: In seeking happiness, one does not find happiness. Hutton's Paradox: If asking oneself "Am I dreaming?" in a dream proves that one is, what does it prove in waking life? Liberal paradox: "Minimal Liberty" is incompatible with Pareto optimality. Mere addition paradox: Also known as Parfit's paradox: Is a large population living a barely tolerable life better than a small, happy population? Moore's paradox: "It's raining, but I don't believe that it is." Newcomb's paradox: A paradoxical game between two players, one of whom can predict the actions of the other. Paradox of nihilism: Several distinct paradoxes share this name. Omnipotence paradox: Can an omnipotent being create a rock too heavy for itself to lift? Preface paradox: The author of a book may be justified in believing that all his statements in the book are correct, at the same time believing that at least one of them is incorrect. Problem of evil (Epicurean paradox): The existence of evil seems to be incompatible with the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect God. Zeno's paradoxes: "You will never reach point B from point A as you must always get half-way there, and half of the half, and half of that half, and so on..." (This is also a paradox of the infinite)
List of paradoxes
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Mysticism
Tzimtzum: In Kabbalah, how to reconcile self-awareness of finite Creation with Infinite Divine source, as an emanated causal chain would seemingly nullify existence. Luria's initial withdrawal of God in Hasidic panentheism involves simultaneous illusionism of Creation (Upper Unity) and self-aware existence (Lower Unity), God encompassing logical opposites.
Economics
Allais paradox: A change in a possible outcome that is shared by different alternatives affects people's choices among those alternatives, in contradiction with expected utility theory. Arrow information paradox: To sell information you need to give it away before the sale. Bertrand paradox: Two players reaching a state of Nash equilibrium both find themselves with no profits. Braess's paradox: Adding extra capacity to a network can reduce overall performance. Demographic-economic paradox: nations or subpopulations with higher GDP per capita are observed to have fewer children, even though a richer population can support more children. Diamond-water paradox (or paradox of value) Water is more useful than diamonds, yet is a lot cheaper. DownsThomson paradox: Increasing road capacity at the expense of investments in public transport can make overall congestion on the road worse. Easterlin paradox: For countries with income sufficient to meet basic needs, the reported level of happiness does not correlate with national income per person. Edgeworth paradox: With capacity constraints, there may not be an equilibrium. Ellsberg paradox: People exhibit ambiguity aversion (as distinct from risk aversion), in contradiction with expected utility theory. European paradox: The perceived failure of European countries to translate scientific advances into marketable innovations. Gibson's paradox: Why were interest rates and prices correlated? Giffen paradox: Increasing the price of bread makes poor people eat more of it. Icarus paradox: Some businesses bring about their own downfall through their own successes. Jevons paradox: Increases in efficiency lead to even larger increases in demand. Leontief paradox: Some countries export labor-intensive commodities and import capital-intensive commodities, in contradiction with HeckscherOhlin theory. Lucas paradox: Capital is not flowing from developed countries to developing countries despite the fact that developing countries have lower levels of capital per worker, and therefore higher returns to capital. Mandeville's paradox: Actions that may be vicious to individuals may benefit society as a whole. Metzler paradox: The imposition of a tariff on imports may reduce the relative internal price of that good. Paradox of thrift: If everyone saves more money during times of recession, then aggregate demand will fall and will in turn lower total savings in the population. Paradox of toil: If everyone tries to work during times of recession, lower wages will reduce prices, leading to more deflationary expectations, leading to further thrift, reducing demand and thereby reducing employment. Productivity paradox (also known as Solow computer paradox): Worker productivity may go down, despite technological improvements. Scitovsky paradox: Using the KaldorHicks criterion, an allocation A may be more efficient than allocation B, while at the same time B is more efficient than A. Service recovery paradox: Successfully fixing a problem with a defective product may lead to higher consumer satisfaction than in the case where no problem occurred at all. St. Petersburg paradox: People will only offer a modest fee for a reward of infinite expected value.
List of paradoxes Paradox of Plenty: The Paradox of Plenty (resource curse) refers to the paradox that countries and regions with an abundance of natural resources, specifically point-source non-renewable resources like minerals and fuels, tend to have less economic growth and worse development outcomes than countries with fewer natural resources.
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Perception
Tritone paradox: An auditory illusion in which a sequentially played pair of Shepard tones is heard as ascending by some people and as descending by others.
Politics
Stability-instability paradox: When two countries each have nuclear weapons, the probability of a direct war between them greatly decreases, but the probability of minor or indirect conflicts between them increases.
History
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: We learn from history that we do not learn from history.[8] (paraphrased)
Notes
[1] Eldridge-Smith, Peter; Eldridge-Smith, Veronique (13 January 2010). "The Pinocchio paradox" (http:/ / analysis. oxfordjournals. org/ cgi/ content/ short/ 70/ 2/ 212). Analysis 70 (2): 212215. doi:10.1093/analys/anp173. ISSN1467-8284. . Retrieved 23 July 2010. As of 2010, an image of Pinocchio with a speech bubble "My nose will grow now!" has become a minor Internet phenomenon ( Google search (http:/ / www. google. com/ search?q="pinocchio+ paradox"), Google image search (http:/ / www. google. com/ images?q="pinocchio+ paradox")). It seems likely that this paradox has been independently conceived multiple times. [2] Euler, Leonhard (1768). "Remarques sur un beau rapport entre les sries des puissances tant directes que rciproques" (http:/ / www. math. dartmouth. edu/ ~euler/ docs/ originals/ E352. pdf). Memoires de l'academie des sciences de Berlin 17: 83106. . "... quand on dit que la somme de cette srie 1 - 2 + 3 - 4 + 5 - 6 &c. est , cela doit paroitre bien paradoxe" The quote from page 84 translates as "...when it is said that the sum of this series 12+34+56 etc. is , that must appear paradoxical" [3] http:/ / www. scientificamerican. com/ article. cfm?id=the-willpower-paradox [4] Newton, Roger G. (2002). Scattering Theory of Waves and Particles, second edition. Dover Publications. p.68. ISBN0486425355. [5] Carnap is quoted as saying in 1977 "... the situation with respect to Maxwells paradox", in Leff, Harvey S.; Rex, A. F., eds. (2003). Maxwell's Demon 2: Entropy, Classical and Quantum Information, Computing (http:/ / web. archive. org/ web/ 20051109101141/ http:/ / vlatko. madetomeasure. biz/ Papers/ maxwell2. pdf). Institute of Physics. p.19. ISBN0-7503-0759-5. . Retrieved 15 March 2010. On page 36, Leff and Rex also quote Goldstein and Goldstein as saying "Smoluchowski fully resolved the paradox of the demon in 1912" in Goldstein, Martin; Goldstein, Inge F. (1993). The Refrigerator and The Universe (http:/ / books. google. com/ books?id=R3Eek_YZdRUC). Universities Press (India) Pvt. Ltd. p.228. ISBN9788173710858. OCLC477206415. . Retrieved 15 March 2010. [6] Khasnis, A.; Lokhandwala, Y. (Jan-Mar 2002). "Clinical signs in medicine: pulsus paradoxus" (http:/ / www. jpgmonline. com/ text. asp?2002/ 48/ 1/ 46/ 153#Pulsus paradoxus: what is the paradox?). Journal of Postgraduate Medicine (Mumbai - 400 012, India: 49) 48 (1): 46. ISSN0022-3859. PMID12082330. . Retrieved 21 March 2010. "The paradox refers to the fact that heart sounds may be heard over the precordium when the radial pulse is not felt." [7] See also Predestination paradoxes in popular culture [8] Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1832). Lectures on the Philosophy of History.
Paradoxical laughter
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Paradoxical laughter
Paradoxical laughter is an exaggerated expression of humour which is unwarranted by external events. It may be uncontrollable laughter which may be recognised as inappropriate by the person involved. It is associated with altered mental states or mental illness, such as mania, hypomania or schizophrenia, and can have other causes. Paradoxical laughter is indicative of an unstable mood, often caused by the Pseudobulbar affect, which can quickly change to anger and back again, on minor external cues. This type of laughter can also occur at times when the fight-or-flight response may otherwise be evoked.
References
Frijda, Nico H. (1986). The Emotions (http://books.google.com/books?id=QkNuuVf-pBMC&pg=PA52& lpg=PA52&dq="paradoxical+laughter"). Cambridge University Press. p.52. ISBN0521316006. Retrieved 14 November 2009. Rutkowski, Anne-Franoise; Rijsman, John B.; Gergen, Mary (2004). "Paradoxical Laughter at a Victim as Communication with a Non-victim" (http://dbiref.uvt.nl/iPort?request=full_record&db=wo&language=eng& query=142993). International Review of Social Psychology 17 (4): 511. ISSN0992-986X. Retrieved 2009-11-14. ( French biobliographical record (http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=16370783) with French translation of abstract)
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Decision theory
Abilene paradox
The Abilene paradox is a paradox in which a group of people collectively decide on a course of action that is counter to the preferences of any of the individuals in the group.[1][2][3] It involves a common breakdown of group communication in which each member mistakenly believes that their own preferences are counter to the group's and, therefore, does not raise objections. A common phrase relating to the Abilene paradox is a desire to not "rock the boat".
Origins
The Abilene paradox was introduced by management expert Jerry B. Harvey in his article The Abilene Paradox: The Management of Agreement.[4] The name of the phenomenon comes from an anecdote in the article which Harvey uses to elucidate the paradox: On a hot afternoon visiting in Coleman, Texas, the family is comfortably playing dominoes on a porch, until the father-in-law suggests that they take a trip to Abilene [53 miles north] for dinner. The wife says, "Sounds like a great idea." The husband, despite having reservations because the drive is long and hot, thinks that his preferences must be out-of-step with the group and says, "Sounds good to me. I just hope your mother wants to go." The mother-in-law then says, "Of course I want to go. I haven't been to Abilene in a long time." The drive is hot, dusty, and long. When they arrive at the cafeteria, the food is as bad as the drive. They arrive back home four hours later, exhausted. One of them dishonestly says, "It was a great trip, wasn't it?" The mother-in-law says that, actually, she would rather have stayed home, but went along since the other three were so enthusiastic. The husband says, "I wasn't delighted to be doing what we were doing. I only went to satisfy the rest of you." The wife says, "I just went along to keep you happy. I would have had to be crazy to want to go out in the heat like that." The father-in-law then says that he only suggested it because he thought the others might be bored. The group sits back, perplexed that they together decided to take a trip which none of them wanted. They each would have preferred to sit comfortably, but did not admit to it when they still had time to enjoy the afternoon.
Groupthink
The phenomenon may be a form of groupthink. It is easily explained by social psychology theories of social conformity and social influence which suggest that human beings are often very averse to acting contrary to the trend of the group. Likewise, it can be observed in psychology that indirect cues and hidden motives often lie behind peoples' statements and acts, frequently because social disincentives discourage individuals from openly voicing their feelings or pursuing their desires. The Abilene Paradox is related to the concept of groupthink in that both theories appear to explain the observed behavior of groups in social contexts. The crux of the theory is that groups have just as many problems managing their agreements as they do their disagreements. This observation rings true among many researchers in the social sciences and tends to reinforce other theories of individual and group behavior.
Abilene paradox
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Applications of the theory

The theory is often used to help explain extremely poor business decisions, especially notions of the superiority of "rule by committee." A technique mentioned in the study and/or training of management, as well as practical guidance by consultants, is that group members, when the time comes for a group to make decisions, should ask each other, "Are we going to Abilene?" to determine whether their decision is legitimately desired by the group's members or merely a result of this kind of groupthink. This anecdote was also made into a short film[5] for management education.
References
[1] McAvoy, John; Butler, Tom (2007). "The impact of the Abilene Paradox on double-loop learning in an agile team". Information and Software Technology 49 (6): 552563. doi:10.1016/j.infsof.2007.02.012. [2] Mcavoy, J.; Butler, T. (2006). "Resisting the change to user stories: a trip to Abilene" (http:/ / www. inderscience. com/ search/ index. php?action=record& rec_id=8286). International Journal of Information Systems and Change Management 1 (1): 4861. doi:10.1504/IJISCM.2006.008286. . [3] John McAvoy and Tom Butler (2006). "Resisting the change to user stories: a trip to Abilene" (http:/ / inderscience. metapress. com/ app/ home/ linking. asp?referrer=linking& target=contribution& id=6320WJ2DUYA6N0XQ& backto=contribution,1,1;issue,3,6;journal,18,18;linkingpublicationresults,1:119857,1). International Journal of Information Systems and Change Management 1 (1): 4861. doi:10.1504/IJISCM.2006.008286. . [4] Harvey, Jerry B. (Summer 1974). "The Abilene Paradox: The Management of Agreement". Organizational Dynamics 3 (1): 63. doi:10.1016/0090-2616(74)90005-9. [5] http:/ / www. crmlearning. com/ abilene-paradox
Further reading
Harvey, Jerry B. (1988). The Abilene Paradox and Other Meditations on Management. Lexington, Mass: Lexington Books. ISBN 0-7879-0277-2 Harvey, Jerry B. The Abilene Paradox. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1996. Harvey, Jerry B. (1999). How Come Every Time I Get Stabbed In The Back, My Fingerprints Are on The Knife?. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Harvey, Jerry B. (2011). Swatting Flies and Telling Lies: Stories of a Mad Organizational Consultant. Baltimore, MD: Otter Bay Books.
External links
The Abilene Paradox website by Dr. Jerry B. Harvey (http://www.abileneparadox.com)
Chainstore paradox
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Chainstore paradox
Chainstore paradox (or "Chain-Store paradox") is a concept that purports to refute standard game theory reasoning.
The chain store game

A monopolist (Player A) has branches in 20 towns. He faces 20 potential competitors, one in each town, who will be able to choose IN or OUT. They do so in sequential order and one at a time. If a potential competitor chooses OUT, he receives a payoff of 1, while A receives a payoff of 5. If he chooses IN, he will receive a payoff of either 2 or 0, depending on the response of Player A to his action. Player A, in response to a choice of IN, must choose one of two pricing strategies, COOPERATIVE or AGGRESSIVE. If he chooses COOPERATIVE, both player A and the competitor receive a payoff of 2, and if A chooses AGGRESSIVE, each player receives a payoff of 0. These outcomes lead to two theories for the game, the induction (game theoretically correct version) and the deterrence theory (weakly dominated theory):
Induction theory
Consider the decision to be made by the 20th and final competitor, of whether to choose IN or OUT. He knows that if he chooses IN, Player A receives a higher payoff from choosing cooperate than aggressive, and being the last period of the game, there are no longer any future competitors whom Player A needs to intimidate from the market. Knowing this, the 20th competitor enters the market, and Player A will cooperate (receiving a payoff of 2 instead of 0). The outcome in the final period is set in stone, so to speak. Now consider period 19, and the potential competitor's decision. He knows that A will cooperate in the next period, regardless of what happens in period 19. Thus, if player 19 enters, an aggressive strategy will be unable to deter player 20 from entering. Player 19 knows this and chooses IN. Player A chooses cooperate. Of course, this process of backwards induction holds all the way back to the first competitor. Each potential competitor chooses IN, and Player A always cooperates. A receives a payoff of 40 (220) and each competitor receives 2.
Deterrence theory
This theory states that Player A will be able to get payoff of higher than 40. Suppose Player A finds the induction argument convincing. He will decide how many periods at the end to play such a strategy, say 3. In periods 1-17, he will decide to always be aggressive against the choice of IN. If all of the potential competitors know this, it is unlikely potential competitors 1-17 will bother the chain store, thus risking a the safe payout of 1 ("A" will not retaliate if they choose "OUT"). If a few do test the chain store early in the game, and see that they are greeted with the aggressive strategy, the rest of the competitors are likely not to test any further. Assuming all 17 are deterred, Player A receives 91 (175 + 23). Even if as many as 10 competitors enter and test Player A's will, Player A will still receive a payoff of 41 (75 + 23), which is better than the induction (game theoretically correct) payoff.
Chainstore paradox
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The chain store paradox

If Player A follows the game theory payoff matrix to achieve the optimal payoff, he or she will have a lower payoff than with the "deterrence" strategy. This creates an apparent game theory paradox: game theory states that induction strategy should be optimal, but it looks like "deterrence strategy" is optimal instead.
Selten's Response
Reinhard Selten's response to this apparent paradox is to argue that the idea of "deterrence", while irrational by the standards of Game Theory, is in fact an acceptable idea by the rationality that individuals actually employ. Selten argues that individuals can make decisions of three levels: Routine, Imagination, and Reasoning.
Complete Information?
If we stand by game theory, then the initial description given for the game theory payoff matrix in the chain store game is not in fact the complete payoff matrix. The "deterrence strategy" is a valid strategy for Player A, but it is missing in the initially presented payoff matrix. Game theory is based on the idea that each matrix is modeled with the assumption of complete information: that "every player knows the payoffs and strategies available to other players." The initially presented payoff matrix is written for one payoff round instead of for all rounds in their entirety. As described in the "deterrence strategy" section (but not in the induction section), Player A's competitors look at Player A's actions in previous game rounds to determine what course of action to take - this information is missing from the payoff matrix. In this case, backwards induction seems like it will fail, because each individual round payoff matrix is dependent on the previous round. In fact, by doubling the size of the payoff matrix on each round (or, quadrupling the amount of choices -- there are two choices and four possibilities per round), we can find the optimal strategy for all players before the first round is played.
Selten's levels of decision making

The routine level
The individuals use their past experience of the results of decisions to guide their response to choices in the present. "The underlying criteria of similarity between decision situations are crude and sometimes inadequate". (Selten)
The imagination level

The individual tries to visualize how the selection of different alternatives may influence the probable course of future events. This level employs the routine level within the procedural decisions. This method is similar to a computer simulation.
Chainstore paradox
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The reasoning level

The individual makes a conscious effort to analyze the situation in a rational way, using both past experience and logical thinking. This mode of decision uses simplified models whose assumptions are products of imagination, and is the only method of reasoning permitted and expected by game theory.
Decision-making process
The predecision
One chooses which method (routine, imagination or reasoning) to use for the problem, and this decision itself is made on the routine level.
The final decision

Depending on which level is selected, the individual begins the decision procedure. The individual then arrives at a (possibly different) decision for each level available (if we have chosen imagination, we would arrive at a routine decision and possible and imagination decision). Selten argues that individuals can always reach a routine decision, but perhaps not the higher levels. Once the individuals have all their levels of decision, they can decide which answer to use...the Final Decision. The final decision is made on the routine level and governs actual behavior.
The economy of decision effort

Decision effort is a scarce commodity, being both time consuming and mentally taxing. Reasoning is more costly than Imagination, which, in turn is more costly than Routine. The highest level activated is not always the most accurate since the individual may be able to reach a good decision on the routine level, but makes serious computational mistakes on higher levels, especially Reasoning. Selten finally argues that strategic decisions, like those made by the monopolist in the chainstore paradox, are generally made on the level of Imagination, where deterrence is a reality, due to the complexity of Reasoning, and the great inferiority of Routine (it does not allow the individual to see herself in the other player's position). Since Imagination cannot be used to visualize more than a few stages of an extensive form game (like the Chain-store game) individuals break down games into "the beginning" and "towards the end". Here, deterrence is a reality, since it is reasonable "in the beginning", yet is not convincing "towards the end".
References
Selten, Reinhard (1978). "The chain store paradox". Theory and Decision 9 (2): 127159. doi:10.1007/BF00131770. ISSN0040-5833.
Further reading
Relation of Chain Store Paradox to Constitutional Politics in Canada [1]
References
[1] http:/ / jtp. sagepub. com/ cgi/ content/ abstract/ 11/ 1/ 5
Exchange paradox
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Exchange paradox
The two envelopes problem, also known as the exchange paradox, is a brain teaser, puzzle or paradox in logic, philosophy, probability and recreational mathematics, of special interest in decision theory and for the Bayesian interpretation of probability theory. Historically, it arose as a variant of the necktie paradox. A statement of the problem starts with: Let us say you are given two indistinguishable envelopes, each of which contains a positive sum of money. One envelope contains twice as much as the other. You may pick one envelope and keep whatever amount it contains. You pick one envelope at random but before you open it you are offered the possibility to take the other envelope instead. It is possible to give arguments that show that it will be to your advantage to swap envelopes by showing that your expected return on swapping exceeds the sum in your envelope. This leads to the logical absurdity that it is beneficial to continue to swap envelopes indefinitely. A large number of different solutions have been proposed. The usual scenario is that one writer proposes a solution that solves the problem as stated, but then some other writer discovers that by altering the problem a little the paradox is brought back to life again. In this way a family of closely related formulations of the problem is created which are then discussed in the literature. It is common for authors to claim that the solution to the problem is easy, even elementary.[1] However, when investigating these elementary solutions they are not always the same conclusions from one author to the next. Recently, several new papers are published every year regarding the problem and introducing new conclusions. Occasionally, new variants of the problem are introduced.[2]
The problem
The basic setup: You are given two indistinguishable envelopes, each of which contains a positive sum of money. One envelope contains twice as much as the other. You may pick one envelope and keep whatever amount it contains. You pick one envelope at random but before you open it you are offered the possibility to take the other envelope instead.[3] The switching argument: Now suppose you reason as follows: 1. I denote by A the amount in my selected envelope. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. The probability that A is the smaller amount is 1/2, and that it is the larger amount is also 1/2. The other envelope may contain either 2A or A/2. If A is the smaller amount, then the other envelope contains 2A. If A is the larger amount, then the other envelope contains A/2. Thus the other envelope contains 2A with probability 1/2 and A/2 with probability 1/2. So the expected value of the money in the other envelope is
8. This is greater than A, so I gain on average by swapping. 9. After the switch, I can denote that content by B and reason in exactly the same manner as above. 10. I will conclude that the most rational thing to do is to swap back again. 11. To be rational, I will thus end up swapping envelopes indefinitely. 12. As it seems more rational to open just any envelope than to swap indefinitely, we have a contradiction.
Exchange paradox The puzzle: The puzzle is to find the flaw in the very compelling line of reasoning above.
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A common resolution
A common way to resolve the paradox, both in popular literature and in the academic literature in philosophy, is to observe that A stands for different things at different places in the expected value calculation, step 7 above. In the first term A is the smaller amount while in the second term A is the larger amount. To mix different instances of a variable in the same formula like this is said to be illegitimate, so step 7 is incorrect, and this is the cause of the paradox. According to this analysis, a correct alternative argument would have run on the following lines. Assume that there are only two possible sums that might be in the envelope. Denoting the lower of the two amounts by X, we can rewrite the expected value calculation as
Here X stands for the same thing in every term of the equation. We learn that 1.5X is the average expected value in either of the envelopes. According to the correct calculation there is no need to swap envelopes, and certainly no need to swap indefinitely. Many writers have noted that it is important to be careful to distinguish between random variables, possible values which they might take on in any particular instance, and expected values of random variables. Notice also that there are two sources of uncertainty in the problem: what sums of money go into the envelopes in the first place, and which of the two thereafter gets labelled Envelope A. All writers use probability theory to model the second source of uncertainty, but whether or not the pair of amounts of money (the smaller X and the larger Y) are thought of as random variables varies from writer to writer. This is one reason why quite different resolutions of the paradox seem to come naturally to different writers.
Mathematical details
Let us rewrite the preceding calculations in a more detailed notation which explicitly distinguishes random from not-random quantities (that is a different distinction from the usual distinction in ordinary, deterministic, mathematics between variables and constants). This is useful in order to compare with the next, alternative, resolution. So far we were thinking of the two amounts of money in the two envelopes as being fixed; the only randomness lies in which one goes into which envelope. We called the smaller amount X, let us denote the larger amount by Y. Given the values x and y of X and Y, where y = 2x and x > 0, the problem description tells us (whether or not x and y are known)
for all possible values x of the smaller amount X; there is a corresponding definition of the probability distribution of B given X and Y. In our resolution of the paradox, we guessed that in Step 7 the writer was trying to compute the expected value of B given X=x. Splitting the calculation over the two possibilities for which envelope contains the smaller amount, it is certainly correct to write
At this point the writer correctly substitutes the value 1/2 for both of the conditional probabilities on the right hand side of this equation (Step 2). At the same time he correctly substitutes the random variable B inside the first conditional expectation for 2A, when taking its expectation value given B > A and X = x, and he similarly correctly substitutes the random variable B for A/2 when taking its expectation value given B < A and X = x (Steps 4 and 5). He would then arrive at the completely correct equation
Exchange paradox However he now proceeds, in the first of the two terms on the right hand side, to replace the expectation value of A given that Envelope A contains the smaller amount and given that the amounts are x and 2x, by the random quantity A itself. Similarly, in the second term on the right hand side he replaces the expectation value of A given now that Envelope A contains the larger amount and given that the amounts are x and 2x, also by the random quantity A itself. The correct substitutions would have been, of course, x and 2x respectively, leading to a correct conclusion . Naturally this coincides with the expectation value of A given X=x. Indeed, in the two contexts in which the random variable A appears on the right hand side, it is standing for two different things, since its distribution has been conditioned on different events. Obviously, A tends to be larger, when we know that it is greater than B and when the two amounts are fixed, and it tends to be smaller, when we know that it is smaller than B and the two amounts are fixed, cf. Schwitzgebel and Dever (2007, 2008). In fact, it is exactly twice as large in the first situation as in the second situation. The preceding resolution was first noted by Bruss in 1996.[4] A concise exposition is given by Falk in 2009.[5] This resolution depends on a particular interpretation of what the writer of the argument is trying to calculate: namely, it assumes he is after the (unconditional) expectation value of what's in Envelope B. In the mathematical literature on Two Envelopes Problem (and in particular, in the literature where it was first introduced to the world), another interpretation is more common, involving the conditional expectation value (conditional on what might be in Envelope A), to which we turn in the next section.
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Introduction to resolutions based on Bayesian probability theory

Here the ways in which the paradox can be resolved depend to a large degree on the assumptions that are made about the things that are not made clear in the setup and the proposed argument for switching.[6] The most usual assumption about the way the envelopes are set up is that a sum of money is put in one envelope and twice that sum is put in another envelope and then one of the two envelopes is selected randomly, called "Envelope A", and given to the player. It is not made clear exactly how the first mentioned sum of money (the smaller of the two sums) is determined and what values it could possibly take and, in particular, whether there is a maximum sum which it might contain.[7][8] It is also not specified whether the player can look in Envelope A before deciding whether or not to switch. A further ambiguity in the paradox is that it is not made clear in the proposed argument whether the amount A in Envelope A is intended to be a constant, a random variable, or some other quantity. If it assumed that there is a maximum sum that can be put in the first envelope then a very simple and mathematically sound resolution is possible within the second interpretation. Step 6 in the proposed line of reasoning is not always true, since if the player holds more than the maximum sum that can be put into the first envelope they must hold the envelope containing the larger sum and are thus certain to lose by switching. Although this may not occur often, when it does the heavy loss incurred by the player means that, on average, there is no advantage in switching. This resolves all practical cases of the problem, whether or not the player looks in their envelope.[9] It can be envisaged, however, that the sums in the two envelopes are not limited. This requires a more careful mathematical analysis, and also uncovers other possible interpretations of the problem. If, for example, the smaller of the two sums of money is considered to be equally likely to be one of infinitely many positive integers, thus without upper limit, it means that the probability that it will be any given number is always zero. This absurd situation is an example of what is known as an improper prior and this is generally considered to resolve the paradox in this case. It is possible to devise a distribution for the sums possible in the first envelope such that the maximum value is unlimited, computation of the expectation of what's in B given what's in A seems to dictate you should switch, and the distribution constitutes a proper prior.[10] In these cases it can be shown that the expected sum in both envelopes is infinite. There is no gain, on average, in swapping.
Exchange paradox The first two resolutions we present correspond, technically speaking, first to A being a random variable, and secondly to it being a possible value of a random variable (and the expectation being computed is a conditional expectation). At the same time, in the first resolution the two original amounts of money seem to be thought of as being fixed, while in the second they are also thought of as varying. Thus there are two main interpretations of the problem, and two main resolutions.
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Alternative interpretation
The first solution above doesn't explain what's wrong if the player is allowed to open the first envelope before being offered the option to switch. In this case, A stands for the value which is seen then, throughout all subsequent calculations. It also doesn't explain what's wrong, if the player just imagines looking in the first envelope. The mathematical variable A stands for any particular amount he might see there (it is a mathematical variable, a generic possible value of a random variable). The reasoning appears to show that whatever amount he would see there, he would decide to switch. Hence, he does not need to look in the envelope at all: he knows that if he would look, and go through the calculations, they would tell him to switch, whatever he saw in the envelope. In this case, at Steps 6, 7 and 8 of the reasoning, A is any fixed possible value of the amount of money in the first envelope. According to either reading, the previously proposed solution breaks down and another explanation is needed. This interpretation of the two envelopes problem appears in the first publications in which the paradox was introduced, Gardner (1989) and Nalebuff (1989). It is common in the more mathematical literature on the problem.
Proposed resolutions
Nalebuff (1989), Christensen and Utts (1992), Falk and Konold (1992), Blachman, Christensen and Utts (1996),[11] Nickerson and Falk (2006), pointed out that if the amounts of money in the two envelopes have any proper probability distribution representing the player's prior beliefs about the amounts of money in the two envelopes, then it is impossible that whatever the amount A=a in the first envelope might be, it would be equally likely, according to these prior beliefs, that the second contains a/2 or 2a. Thus step 6 of the argument which leads to always switching is a non-sequitur. Mathematical details According to this interpretation, the writer is carrying out the following computation, where he is conditioning now on the value of A, the amount in Envelope A, not on the pair amounts in the two envelopes X and Y:
Completely correctly, and according to Step 5, the two conditional expectation values are evaluated as
However in Step 6 the writer is invoking Steps 2 and 3 to get the two conditional probabilities, and effectively replacing the two conditional probabilities of Envelope A containing the smaller and larger amount, respectively, given the amount actually in that envelope, both by the unconditional probability 1/2: he makes the substitutions
But intuitively we would expect that the larger the amount in A, the more likely it is to be the larger of the two, and vice-versa. And it is a mathematical fact, as we will see in a moment, that it is impossible that both of these conditional probabilities are equal to 1/2 for all possible values of a. In fact, in order for step 6 to be true, whatever a might be, the smaller amount of money in the two envelopes must be equally likely to be between 1 and 2, as between 2 and 4, as between 4 and 8, ... ad infinitum. But there is no way to divide total probability 1 into an infinite
Exchange paradox number of pieces which are not only all equal to one another, but also all larger than zero. Yet the smaller amount of money in the two envelopes must have probability larger than zero to be in at least one of the just mentioned ranges. To see this, suppose that the chance that the smaller of the two envelopes contains an amount between is and , where n is any whole number, positive or negative, and for definiteness we include the lower limit but
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exclude the upper in each interval. It follows that the conditional probability that the envelope in our hands contains the smaller amount of money of the two, given that its contents are between and , is . If this is equal to 1/2, it follows by simple algebra that , or . This has to be true for all n, an impossibility.
A new variant
Though probability theory can resolve this variant of the paradox, it turns out that examples can be found of proper probability distributions, such that the expected value of the amount in the second envelope given that in the first does exceed the amount in the first, whatever it might be. The first such example was already given by Nalebuff (1989). See also Christensen and Utts (1992)[12] Denote again the amount of money in the first envelope by A and that in the second by B. We think of these as random. Let X be the smaller of the two amounts and Y=2X be the larger. Notice that once we have fixed a probability distribution for X then the joint probability distribution of A,B is fixed, since A,B = X,Y or Y,X each with probability 1/2, independently of X,Y. The bad step 6 in the "always switching" argument led us to the finding for all a, and hence to
the recommendation to switch, whether or not we know a. Now, it turns out that one can quite easily invent proper probability distributions for X, the smaller of the two amounts of money, such that this bad conclusion is still true! One example is analysed in more detail, in a moment. It cannot be true that whatever a, given A=a, B is equally likely to be a/2 or 2a, but it can be true that whatever a, given A=a, B is larger in expected value than a. Suppose for example (Broome, 1995)[13] that the envelope with the smaller amount actually contains 2n dollars with probability 2n/3n+1 where n = 0, 1, 2, These probabilities sum to 1, hence the distribution is a proper prior (for subjectivists) and a completely decent probability law also for frequentists. Imagine what might be in the first envelope. A sensible strategy would certainly be to swap when the first envelope contains 1, as the other must then contain 2. Suppose on the other hand the first envelope contains 2. In that case there are two possibilities: the envelope pair in front of us is either {1, 2} or {2, 4}. All other pairs are impossible. The conditional probability that we are dealing with the {1, 2} pair, given that the first envelope contains 2, is
and consequently the probability it's the {2, 4} pair is 2/5, since these are the only two possibilities. In this derivation, is the probability that the envelope pair is the pair 1 and 2, and Envelope A happens to contain 2; is the probability that the envelope pair is the pair 2 and 4, and (again) Envelope A happens to contain 2. Those are the only two ways in which Envelope A can end up containing the amount 2. It turns out that these proportions hold in general unless the first envelope contains 1. Denote by a the amount we imagine finding in Envelope A, if we were to open that envelope, and suppose that a = 2n for some n 1. In that case the other envelope contains a/2 with probability 3/5 and 2a with probability 2/5. So either the first envelope contains 1, in which case the conditional expected amount in the other envelope is 2, or the first envelope contains a > 1, and though the second envelope is more likely to be smaller than larger, its conditionally expected amount is larger: the conditionally expected amount in Envelope B is
Exchange paradox which is more than a. This means that the player who looks in Envelope A would decide to switch whatever he saw there. Hence there is no need to look in Envelope A in order to make that decision. This conclusion is just as clearly wrong as it was in the preceding interpretations of the Two Envelopes Problem. But now the flaws noted above don't apply; the a in the expected value calculation is a constant and the conditional probabilities in the formula are obtained from a specified and proper prior distribution.
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Some writers think that the new paradox can be defused.[14] Suppose for all a. As remarked before, this is possible for some probability distributions of X (the smaller amount of money in the two envelopes). Averaging over a, it follows either that , or alternatively that . But A and B have the same probability distribution, and hence the same expectation value, by symmetry (each envelope is equally likely to be the smaller of the two). Thus both have infinite expectation values, and hence so must X too. Thus if we switch for the second envelope because its conditional expected value is larger than what actually is in the first, whatever that might be, we are exchanging an unknown amount of money whose expectation value is infinite for another unknown amount of money with the same distribution and the same infinite expected value. The average amount of money in both envelopes is infinite. Exchanging one for the other simply exchanges an average of infinity with an average of infinity. Probability theory therefore tells us why and when the paradox can occur and explains to us where the sequence of apparently logical steps breaks down. In this situation, Steps 6 and Steps 7 of the standard Two Envelopes argument can be replaced by correct calculations of the conditional probabilities that the other envelope contains half or twice what's in A, and a correct calculation of the conditional expectation of what's in B given what's in A. Indeed, that conditional expected value is larger than what's in A. But because the unconditional expected amount in A is infinite, this does not provide a reason to switch, because it does not guarantee that on average you'll be better off after switching. One only has this mathematical guarantee in the situation that the unconditional expectation value of what's in A is finite. But then the reason for switching without looking in the envelope, for all a, simply cannot arise. Many economists prefer to argue that in a real-life situation, the expectation of the amount of money in an envelope cannot be infinity, for instance, because the total amount of money in the world is bounded; therefore any probability distribution describing the real world would have to assign probability 0 to the amount being larger than the total amount of money on the world. Therefore the expectation of the amount of money under this distribution cannot be infinity. The resolution of the second paradox, for such writers, is that the postulated probability distributions cannot arise in a real-life situation. These are similar arguments as used to explain the St. Petersburg Paradox. We certainly have a counter-intuitive situation. If the two envelopes are set up exactly as the Broome recipe requires (not with real money, but just with numbers), then it is a fact that in many, many repetitions, the average of the number written on the piece of paper in Envelope B, taken over all those occasions where the number in envelope A is, say, 4, is definitely larger than 4. And the same thing holds with B and A exchanged! And the same thing holds with the number 4 replaced by any other possible number! This might be hard to imagine, but we have now shown how it can be arranged. There is no logical contradiction because we have seen why, logically, there is not implication that we should switch envelopes. There does remain a conflict with our intuition. The Broome paradox can be resolved at a purely formal level by showing where the error in the sequence of apparently logical deductions occurs. But one still is left with a strange situation which simply does not feel right. One can try to soften the blow by giving real-world reasons why this counter-intuitive situation could not occur in reality (with real money). As far as practical economics is concerned, we need not worry about the insult to our intuition.
Exchange paradox
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Foundations of mathematical economics

In mathematical economics and the theory of utility, which explains economic behaviour in terms of expected utility, there remains a problem to be resolved.[15] In the real world we presumably wouldn't indefinitely exchange one envelope for the other (and probability theory, as just discussed, explains quite well why calculations of conditional expectations might mislead us). Yet the expected utility based theory of economic behaviour says (or assumes) that people do (or should) make economic decisions by maximizing expected utility, conditional on present knowledge, and hence predicts that people would (or should) switch indefinitely. Fortunately for mathematical economics and the theory of utility, it is generally agreed that as an amount of money increases, its utility to the owner increases less and less, and ultimately there is a finite upper bound to the utility of all possible amounts of money. We can pretend that the amount of money in the whole world is as large as we like, yet the owner of all that money will not have more and more use of it, the more is in his possession. For decision theory and utility theory, the two envelope paradox illustrates that unbounded utility does not exist in the real world, so fortunately there is no need to build a decision theory which allows unbounded utility, let alone utility of infinite expectation.
Controversy among theoretical economists

As mentioned above, any distribution producing this variant of the paradox must have an infinite mean. So before the player opens an envelope the expected gain from switching is " ", which is not defined. In the words of Chalmers this is "just another example of a familiar phenomenon, the strange behaviour of infinity".[16] Chalmers suggests that decision theory generally breaks down when confronted with games having a diverging expectation, and compares it with the situation generated by the classical St. Petersburg paradox. However, Clark and Shackel argue that this blaming it all on "the strange behaviour of infinity" doesn't resolve the paradox at all; neither in the single case nor the averaged case. They provide a simple example of a pair of random variables both having infinite mean but where it is clearly sensible to prefer one to the other, both conditionally and on average.[17] They argue that decision theory should be extended so as to allow infinite expectation values in some situations. Most mathematical economists are happy to exclude infinite expected utility by assumption, hence excluding the paradox altogether. Some try to generalise some of the existing theory to allow infinite expectations. They have to come up with clever ways to get around the paradoxical example just given.
Non-probabilistic variant
The logician Raymond Smullyan questioned if the paradox has anything to do with probabilities at all. He did this by expressing the problem in a way which doesn't involve probabilities. The following plainly logical arguments lead to conflicting conclusions: 1. Let the amount in the envelope chosen by the player be A. By swapping, the player may gain A or lose A/2. So the potential gain is strictly greater than the potential loss. 2. Let the amounts in the envelopes be X and 2X. Now by swapping, the player may gain X or lose X. So the potential gain is equal to the potential loss.
Exchange paradox
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A number of solutions have been put forward. Albers, Kooi, and Schaafsma (2005) consider that without adding probability (or other) ingredients to the problem, Smullyan's arguments do not give any reason to swap or not to swap, in any case. Thus there is no paradox. This dismissive attitude is common among writers from probability and economics: Smullyan's paradox arises precisely because he takes no account whatever of probability or utility. Rather careful and often highly technical analyses have been made by many authors from the field of logic. Though solutions differ, they all pinpoint semantic issues concerned with counterfactual reasoning. We want to compare the amount that we would gain by switching if we would gain by switching, with the amount we would lose by switching if we would indeed lose by switching. However, we cannot both gain and lose by switching at the same time. We are asked to compare two incompatible situations. Only one of them can factually occur, the other will be a counterfactual situation, somehow imaginary. In order to compare them at all, we must somehow "align" the two situations, we must give them some definite points in common. James Chase (2002), for instance, argues that the second argument is correct because it does correspond to the way to align two situations (one in which we gain, the other in which we lose) which is preferably indicated by the problem description.[18] Also Bernard Katz and Doris Olin (2007) argue this point of view.[19] In the second argument, we consider the amounts of money in the two envelopes as being fixed; what varies is which one is first given to the player. Because that was an arbitrary and physical choice, the counterfactual world in which the player, counterfactually, got the other envelope to the one he was actually (factually) given is a highly meaningful counterfactual world and hence the comparison between gains and losses in the two worlds is meaningful. This comparison is uniquely indicated by the problem description, in which two amounts of money are put in the two envelopes first, and only after that is one chosen arbitrarily and given to the player. In the first argument, however, we consider the amount of money in the envelope first given to the player as fixed and consider the situations where the second envelope contains either half or twice that amount. This would only be a reasonable counterfactual world if in reality the envelopes had been filled as follows: first, some amount of money is placed in the specific envelope which will be given to the player; and secondly, by some arbitrary process, the other envelope is filled (arbitrarily or randomly) either with double or with half of that amount of money. By the way, by interchanging the points of view of the owners of the two envelopes, it is easy to write down a third argument which gives the opposite advice as that of the first argument: definitely, do not switch! Byeong-Uk Yi (2009), on the other hand, argues that comparing the amount you would gain if you would gain by switching with the amount you would lose if you would lose by switching is a meaningless exercise from the outset.[20] According to his analysis, all three implications (switch, indifferent, don't switch) are incorrect. He analyses Smullyan's arguments in detail, showing that intermediate steps are being taken, and pinpointing exactly where an incorrect inference is made according to his formalization of counterfactual inference. An important difference with Chase's analysis is that he does not take account of the part of the story where we are told that which envelope is called Envelope A is decided completely at random. Thus Chase puts probability back into the problem description in order to conclude that arguments 1 and 3 are incorrect, argument 2 is correct, while Yi keeps "two envelope problem without probability" completely free of probability, and comes to the conclusion that there are no reasons to prefer any action. This corresponds to the view of Albers et al., that without probability ingredient, there is no way to argue that one action is better than another, anyway. In perhaps the most recent paper on the subject, Bliss argues that the source of the paradox is that when one mistakenly believes in the possibility of a larger payoff that does not, in actuality, exist, one is mistaken by a larger margin than when one believes in the possibility of a smaller payoff that does not actually exist.[21] If, for example, the envelopes contained $5.00 and $10.00 respectively, a player who opened the $10.00 envelope would expect the possibility of a $20.00 payout that simply does not exist. Were that player to open the $5.00 envelope instead, he would believe in the possibility of a $2.50 payout, which constitutes a smaller deviation from the true value.
Exchange paradox
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Extensions to the Problem

Since the two envelopes problem became popular, many authors have studied the problem in depth in the situation in which the player has a prior probability distribution of the values in the two envelopes, and does look in Envelope A. One of the most recent such publications is by McDonnell and Douglas (2009), who also consider some further generalizations.[22] If a priori we know that the amount in the smaller envelope is a whole number of some currency units, then the problem is determined, as far as probability theory is concerned, by the probability mass function describing our prior beliefs that the smaller amount is any number x = 1,2, ... ; the summation over all values of x being equal to 1. It follows that given the amount a in Envelope A, the amount in Envelope B is certainly 2a if a is an odd number. However, if a is even, then the amount in Envelope B is 2a with probability , and a/2 with probability . If one would like to switch envelopes if the expectation value of what is in the other is larger than what we have in ours, then a simple calculation shows that one should switch if , keep to Envelope A if . If on the other hand the smaller amount of money can vary continuously, and we represent our prior beliefs about it with a probability density , thus a function which integrates to one when we integrate over x running from zero to infinity, then given the amount a in Envelope A, the other envelope contains 2a with probability , and a/2 with probability . If again we decide to switch or not according to the expectation value of what's in the other envelope, the criterion for switching now becomes . The difference between the results for discrete and continuous variables may surprise many readers. Speaking intuitively, this is explained as follows. Let h be a small quantity and imagine that the amount of money we see when we look in Envelope A is rounded off in such a way that differences smaller than h are not noticeable, even though actually it varies continuously. The probability that the smaller amount of money is in an interval around a of length h, and Envelope A contains the smaller amount is approximately . The probability that the larger amount of money is in an interval around a of length h corresponds to the smaller amount being in an interval of length h/2 around a/2. Hence the probability that the larger amount of money is in a small interval around a of length h and Envelope A contains the larger amount is approximately . Thus, given Envelope A contains an amount about equal to a, the probability it is the smaller of the two is roughly . If the player only wants to end up with the larger amount of money, and does not care about expected amounts, then in the discrete case he should switch if a is an odd number, or if a is even and . In the continuous case he should switch if . Some authors prefer to think of probability in a frequentist sense. If the player knows the probability distribution used by the organizer to determine the smaller of the two values, then the analysis would proceed just as in the case when p or f represents subjective prior beliefs. However, what if we take a frequentist point of view, but the player does not know what probability distribution is used by the organiser to fix the amounts of money in any one instance? Thinking of the arranger of the game and the player as two parties in a two person game, puts the problem into the range of game theory. The arranger's strategy consists of a choice of a probability distribution of x, the smaller of the two amounts. Allowing the player also to use randomness in making his decision, his strategy is determined by his choosing a probability of switching for each possible amount of money a he might see in Envelope A. In this section we so far only discussed fixed strategies, that is strategies for which q only takes the values 0 and 1, and we saw that the player is fine with a fixed strategy, if he knows the strategy of the organizer. In the next section we will see that randomized strategies can be useful when the organizer's strategy is not known.
Exchange paradox
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Randomized solutions
Suppose as in the previous section that the player is allowed to look in the first envelope before deciding whether to switch or to stay. We'll think of the contents of the two envelopes as being two positive numbers, not necessarily two amounts of money. The player is allowed either to keep the number in Envelope A, or to switch and take the number in Envelope B. We'll drop the assumption that one number is exactly twice the other, we'll just suppose that they are different and positive. On the other hand, instead of trying to maximize expectation values, we'll just try to maximize the chance that we end up with the larger number. In this section we ask the question, is it possible for the player to make his choice in such a way that he goes home with the larger number with probability strictly greater than half, however the organizer has filled the two envelopes? We are given no information at all about the two numbers in the two envelopes, except that they are different, and strictly greater than zero. The numbers were written down on slips of paper by the organiser, put into the two envelopes. The envelopes were then shuffled, the player picks one, calls it Envelope A, and opens it. We are not told any joint probability distribution of the two numbers. We are not asking for a subjectivist solution. We must think of the two numbers in the envelopes as chosen by the arranger of the game according to some possibly random procedure, completely unknown to us, and fixed. Think of each envelope as simply containing a positive number and such that the two numbers are not the same. The job of the player is to end up with the envelope with the larger number. This variant of the problem, as well as its solution, is attributed by McDonnell and Abbott, and by earlier authors, to information theorist Thomas M. Cover. Counter-intuitive though it might seem, there is a way that the player can decide whether to switch or to stay so that he has a larger chance than 1/2 of finishing with the bigger number, however the two numbers are chosen by the arranger of the game. However, it is only possible with a so-called randomized algorithm, that means to say, the player needs himself to be able to generate random numbers. Suppose he is able to think up a random number, let's call it Z, such that the probability that Z is larger than any particular quantity z is exp(-z). Note that exp(-z) starts off equal to 1 at z=0 and decreases strictly and continuously as z increases, tending to zero as z tends to infinity. So the chance is 0 that Z is exactly equal to any particular number, and there is a positive probability that Z lies between any two particular different numbers. The player compares his Z with the number in Envelope A. If Z is smaller he keeps the envelope. If Z is larger he switches to the other envelope. Think of the two numbers in the envelopes as fixed (though of course unknown to the player). Think of the player's random Z as a probe with which he decides whether the number in Envelope A is small or large. If it is small compared to Z he will switch, if it is large compared to Z he will stay. If both numbers are smaller than the player's Z then his strategy does not help him, he ends up with the Envelope B, which is equally likely to be the larger or the smaller of the two. If both numbers are larger than Z his strategy does not help him either, he ends up with the first Envelope A, which again is equally likely to be the larger or the smaller of the two. However if Z happens to be in between the two numbers, then his strategy leads him correctly to keep Envelope A if its contents are larger than those of B, but to switch to Envelope B if A has smaller contents than B. Altogether, this means that he ends up with the envelope with the larger number with probability strictly larger than 1/2. To be precise, the probability that he ends with the "winning envelope" is 1/2 + Prob(Z falls between the two numbers)/2. In practice, the number Z we have described could be determined to the necessary degree of accuracy as follows. Toss a fair coin many times, and convert the sequence of heads and tails into the binary representation of a number U between 0 and 1: for instance, HTHHTH... becomes the binary representation of u=0.101101.. . In this way, we generate a random number U, uniformly distributed between 0 and 1. Then define Z = - ln (U) where "ln" stands for natural logarithm, i.e., logarithm to base e. Note that we just need to toss the coin long enough to be able to see for sure whether Z is smaller or larger than the number a in the first envelope, we do not need to go on for ever. We will only need to toss the coin a finite (though random) number of times: at some point we can be sure that the outcomes
Exchange paradox of further coin tosses is not going to change the outcome of the comparison. The particular probability law (the so-called standard exponential distribution) used to generate the random number Z in this problem is not crucial. Any probability distribution over the positive real numbers which assigns positive probability to any interval of positive length will do the job. This problem can be considered from the point of view of game theory, where we make the game a two-person zero-sum game with outcomes win or lose, depending on whether the player ends up with the higher or lower amount of money. The organiser chooses the joint distribution of the amounts of money in both envelopes, and the player chooses the distribution of Z. The game does not have a "solution" (or saddle point) in the sense of game theory. This is an infinite game and von Neumann's minimax theorem does not apply.[23]
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History of the paradox

The envelope paradox dates back at least to 1953, when Belgian mathematician Maurice Kraitchik proposed a puzzle in his book Recreational Mathematics concerning two equally rich men who meet and compare their beautiful neckties, presents from their wives, wondering which tie actually cost more money. It is also mentioned in a 1953 book on elementary mathematics and mathematical puzzles by the mathematician John Edensor Littlewood, who credited it to the physicist Erwin Schroedinger. Martin Gardner popularized Kraitchik's puzzle in his 1982 book Aha! Gotcha, in the form of a wallet game: Two people, equally rich, meet to compare the contents of their wallets. Each is ignorant of the contents of the two wallets. The game is as follows: whoever has the least money receives the contents of the wallet of the other (in the case where the amounts are equal, nothing happens). One of the two men can reason: "I have the amount A in my wallet. That's the maximum that I could lose. If I win (probability 0.5), the amount that I'll have in my possession at the end of the game will be more than 2A. Therefore the game is favourable to me." The other man can reason in exactly the same way. In fact, by symmetry, the game is fair. Where is the mistake in the reasoning of each man? In 1988 and 1989, Barry Nalebuff presented two different two-envelope problems, each with one envelope containing twice what's in the other, and each with computation of the expectation value 5A/4. The first paper just presents the two problems, the second paper discusses many solutions to both of them. The second of his two problems is the one which is nowadays the most common and which is presented in this article. According to this version, the two envelopes are filled first, then one is chosen at random and called Envelope A. Martin Gardner independently mentioned this same version in his 1989 book Penrose Tiles to Trapdoor Ciphers and the Return of Dr Matrix. Barry Nalebuff's asymmetric variant, often known as the Ali Baba problem, has one envelope filled first, called Envelope A, and given to Ali. Then a coin is tossed to decide whether Envelope B should contain half or twice that amount, and only then given to Baba. In the Ali-Baba problem, it is a priori clear that (even if they don't look in their envelopes) Ali should want to switch, while Baba should want to keep what he has been given. The Ali-Baba paradox comes about by imagining Baba working through the steps of the two-envelopes problem argument (second interpretation), and wrongly coming to the conclusion that he too wants to switch, just like Ali.
Exchange paradox
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Notes and references

[1] McDonnell, Mark D.; Grant, Alex J.; Land, Ingmar; Vellambi, Badri N.; Abbott, Derek; Lever, Ken (2011). "Gain from the two-envelope problem via information asymmetry: on the suboptimality of randomized switching". Proceedings of the Royal Society, A to appear. doi:10.1098/rspa.2010.0541. [2] A complete list of published and unpublished sources in chronological order can be found here [3] Falk, Ruma (2008). "The Unrelenting Exchange Paradox". Teaching Statistics 30 (3): 8688. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9639.2008.00318.x. [4] Bruss, F.T. (1996). "The Fallacy of the Two Envelopes Problem". The Mathematical Scientist 21 (2): 112119.. [5] Falk, Ruma (2009). "An inside look at the two envelope paradox". Teaching Statistics 31 (2): 3941.. [6] Casper Albers, Trying to resolve the two-envelope problem, Chapter 2 of his thesis Distributional Inference: The Limits of Reason, March 2003. (Has also appeared as Albers, Casper J.; Kooi, Barteld P. and Schaafsma, Willem (2005), Trying to resolve the two-envelope problem, Synthese, 145(1): 89109 p91) [7] Ruma Falk, Raymond Nickerson, An inside look at the two envelopes paradox, Teaching Statistics 31(2): 39-41. [8] Jeff Chen, The Puzzle of the Two-Envelope Puzzlea Logical Approach, published online p274 [9] Barry Nalebuff, Puzzles: The Other Persons Envelope is Always Greener, Journal of Economic Perspectives 3(1): 171181. [10] John Broome, The Two-envelope Paradox, Analysis 55(1): 611. [11] Blachman, N. M.; Christensen, R.; Utts, J. (1996). The American Statistician 50 (1): 9899. [12] Christensen, R.; Utts, J. (1992). The American Statistician 46 (4): 274276., the letters to editor and responses by Christensen and Utts by D.A. Binder (1993; vol. 47, nr. 2, p. 160) and Ross (1994; vol. 48, nr. 3, p. 267), and a letter with corrections to the original article by N.M. Blachman, R. Christensen and J.M. Utts (1996; vol. 50, nr. 1, pp. 98-99) [13] Here we present some details of a famous example due to John Broome of a proper probability distribution of the amounts of money in the two envelopes, for which for all a. Broome, John (1995). "The Two-envelope Paradox". Analysis 55 (1): 611. doi:10.1093/analys/55.1.6. [14] Binder, D. A. (1993). The American Statistician 47 (2): 160. (letters to the editor, comment on Christensen and Utts (1992) [15] Fallis, D. (2009). "Taking the Two Envelope Paradox to the Limit". Southwest Philosophy Review 25 (2). [16] Chalmers, David J. (2002). "The St. Petersburg Two-Envelope Paradox". Analysis 62 (2): 155157. doi:10.1093/analys/62.2.155. [17] Clark, M.; Shackel, N. (2000). "The Two-Envelope Paradox". Mind 109 (435): 415442. doi:10.1093/mind/109.435.415. [18] Chase, James (2002). "The Non-Probabilistic Two Envelope Paradox". Analysis 62 (2): 157160. doi:10.1093/analys/62.2.157. [19] Katz, Bernard; Olin, Doris (2007). "A tale of two envelopes". Mind 116 (464): 903926. doi:10.1093/mind/fzm903. [20] Byeong-Uk Yi (2009). The Two-envelope Paradox With No Probability (http:/ / philosophy. utoronto. ca/ people/ linked-documents-people/ c two envelope with no probability. pdf). . [21] Bliss (2012). A Concise Resolution to the Two Envelope Paradox (http:/ / arxiv. org/ abs/ 1202. 4669). . [22] McDonnell, M. D.; Abott, D. (2009). "Randomized switching in the two-envelope problem". Proceedings of the Royal Society A 465 (2111): 33093322. doi:10.1098/rspa.2009.0312. [23] http:/ / www. mit. edu/ ~emin/ writings/ envelopes. html
Kavka's toxin puzzle
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Kavka's toxin puzzle is a thought experiment about the possibility of forming an intention to perform an act which, following from reason, is an action one would not actually perform. It was presented by moral and political philosopher Gregory S. Kavka in "The Toxin Puzzle" (1983), and grew out of his work in deterrence theory and mutual assured destruction.
The puzzle
Kavka's original version of the puzzle is the following: An eccentric billionaire places before you a vial of toxin that, if you drink it, will make you painfully ill for a day, but will not threaten your life or have any lasting effects. The billionaire will pay you one million dollars tomorrow morning if, at midnight tonight, you intend to drink the toxin tomorrow afternoon. He emphasizes that you need not drink the toxin to receive the money; in fact, the money will already be in your bank account hours before the time for drinking it arrives, if you succeed. All you have to do is. . . intend at midnight tonight to drink the stuff tomorrow afternoon. You are perfectly free to change your mind after receiving the money and not drink the toxin.[1] A possible interpretation: Can you intend to drink the toxin, if you know you do not have to?
The paradox
The paradoxical nature can be stated in many ways, which may be useful for understanding analysis proposed by philosophers: In line with Newcomb's paradox, an omniscient pay-off mechanism makes a person's decision known to him before he makes the decision, but it is also assumed that the person may change his decision afterwards, of free will. Similarly in line with Newcomb's paradox; Kavka's claim, that one cannot intend what one will not do, makes pay-off mechanism an example of reverse causation. Pay-off for decision to drink the poison is ambiguous. There are two decisions for one event with different pay-offs. Since the pain caused by the poison would be more than off-set by the money received, we can sketch the pay-off table as follows.
Pay-offs (Initial analysis)

Intend Do not intend Drink 90 10 0
Do not drink 100
According to Kavka: Whether you are paid or not, drinking the poison would leave you worse off. A rational person would know he would not drink the poison and thus could not intend to drink it.
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Pay-offs (According to Kavka)

Intend Drink Do not intend
Impossible 10
Do not drink Impossible 0
David Gauthier argues once a person intends drinking the poison one cannot entertain ideas of not drinking it.[2] The rational outcome of your deliberation tomorrow morning is the action that will be part of your life going as well as possible, subject to the constraint that it be compatible with your commitment-in this case, compatible with the sincere intention that you form today to drink the toxin. And so the rational action is to drink the toxin.
Pay-offs (According to Gauthier)

Intend Drink 90 Do not intend 10
Do not drink Impossible 0
One of the central tenets of the puzzle is that for a reasonable person There is reasonable grounds for that person to drink the toxin, since some reward may be obtained. Having come to the above conclusion there is no reasonable grounds for that person to drink the toxin, since no further reward may be obtained, and no reasonable person would partake in self-harm for no benefit. Thus a reasonable person must intend to drink the toxin by the first argument, yet if that person intends to drink the toxin, he is being irrational by the second argument.
References
[1] Kavka, Gregory (1983). "The Toxin Puzzle". Analysis 43 (1): 3336 [pp. 3334]. doi:10.1093/analys/43.1.33. [2] Gauthier, David (1994). "Assure and Threaten". Ethics 104 (4): 690721. JSTOR2382214.
Necktie paradox
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Necktie paradox
The necktie paradox is a puzzle or paradox within the subjectivistic interpretation of probability theory. It is a variation (and historically, the origin) of the two-envelope paradox. Two men are each given a necktie by their respective wives as a Christmas present. Over drinks they start arguing over who has the cheaper necktie. They agree to have a wager over it. They will consult their wives and find out which necktie is more expensive. The terms of the bet are that the man with the more expensive necktie has to give it to the other as the prize. The first man reasons as follows: winning and losing are equally likely. If I lose, then I lose the value of my necktie. But if I win, then I win more than the value of my necktie. Therefore the wager is to my advantage. The second man can consider the wager in exactly the same way; thus, paradoxically, it seems both men have the advantage in the bet. This is obviously not possible. The paradox can be resolved by giving more careful consideration to what is lost in one scenario ("the value of my necktie") and what is won in the other ("more than the value of my necktie"). If we assume for simplicity that the only possible necktie prices are $20 and $30, and that a man has equal chances of having a $20 or $30 necktie, then four outcomes (all equally likely) are possible:
Price of 1st man's tie Price of 2nd man's tie 1st man's gain/loss $20 $20 $30 $30 $20 $30 $20 $30 0 gain $30 lose $30 0
We see that the first man has a 50% chance of a neutral outcome, a 25% chance of gaining a necktie worth $30, and a 25% chance of losing a necktie worth $30. Turning to the losing and winning scenarios: if the man loses $30, then it is true that he has lost the value of his necktie; and if he gains $30, then it is true that he has gained more than the value of his necktie. The win and the loss are equally likely; but what we call the value of his necktie in the losing scenario is the same amount as what we call more than the value of his necktie in the winning scenario. Accordingly, neither man has the advantage in the wager. In general, what goes wrong is that when the first man is imagining the scenario that his necktie is actually worth less than the other, his beliefs as to its value have to be revised (downwards) relatively to what they are a priori, without such additional information. Yet in the apparently logical reasoning leading him to take the wager, he is behaving as if his necktie is worth the same when it is worth less than the other, as when it is worth more than the other. Of course, the price his wife actually paid for it is fixed, and doesn't change if it is revealed which tie is worth more. The point is that this price, whatever it was, is unknown to him. It is his beliefs about the price which could not be the same if he was given further information as to which tie was worth more. And it is on the basis of his prior beliefs about the prices that he has to make his decision whether or not to accept the wager. On a technical note, if the prices of the ties could in principle be arbitrarily large, then it is possible to have beliefs about their values, such that learning which was the larger would not cause any change to one's beliefs about the value of one's own tie. However, if one is 100% certain that neither tie can be worth more than, say $100, then knowing which is worth the most changes one's expected value of both (one goes up, the other goes down). This paradox is a rephrasing of the simplest case of the two envelopes problem, and the explanation of "what goes wrong" is essentially the same.
Necktie paradox
37
References
Brown, Aaron C. "Neckties, wallets, and money for nothing." Journal of Recreational Mathematics 27.2 (1995): 116122. Maurice Kraitchik, Mathematical Recreations, George Allen & Unwin, London 1943
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Economy
Allais paradox
The Allais paradox is a choice problem designed by Maurice Allais to show an inconsistency of actual observed choices with the predictions of expected utility theory.
Statement of the Problem

The Allais paradox arises when comparing participants' choices in two different experiments, each of which consists of a choice between two gambles, A and B. The payoffs for each gamble in each experiment are as follows:
Experiment 1 Gamble 1A Gamble 1B Experiment 2 Gamble 2A Gamble 2B
Winnings Chance Winnings Chance Winnings Chance Winnings Chance $1 million 100% $1 million 89% Nothing 1% Nothing 89% Nothing 90%
$1 million 11% $5 million 10%
$5 million 10%
Several studies involving hypothetical and small monetary payoffs, and recently involving health outcomes, have supported the assertion that when presented with a choice between 1A and 1B, most people would choose 1A. Likewise, when presented with a choice between 2A and 2B, most people would choose 2B. Allais further asserted that it was reasonable to choose 1A alone or 2B alone. However, that the same person (who chose 1A alone or 2B alone) would choose both 1A and 2B together is inconsistent with expected utility theory. According to expected utility theory, the person should choose either 1A and 2A or 1B and 2B. The inconsistency stems from the fact that in expected utility theory, equal outcomes added to each of the two choices should have no effect on the relative desirability of one gamble over the other; equal outcomes should "cancel out". Each experiment gives the same outcome 89% of the time (starting from the top row and moving down, both 1A and 1B give an outcome of $1 million, and both 2A and 2B give an outcome of nothing). If this 89% common consequence is disregarded, then the gambles will be left offering the same choice. It may help to re-write the payoffs. After disregarding the 89% chance of winning the same outcome then 1B is left offering a 1% chance of winning nothing and a 10% chance of winning $5 million, while 2B is also left offering a 1% chance of winning nothing and a 10% chance of winning $5 million. Hence, choice 1B and 2B can be seen as the same choice. In the same manner, 1A and 2A should also now be seen as the same choice.
Allais paradox
39
Experiment 1 Gamble 1A Gamble 1B
Experiment 2 Gamble 2A Gamble 2B
Winnings Chance Winnings Chance Winnings Chance Winnings Chance $1 million 89% $1 million 11% $1 million 89% Nothing 1% Nothing 89% Nothing Nothing 89% 1%
$1 million 11%
$5 million 10%
$5 million 10%
Allais presented his paradox as a counterexample to the independence axiom. Independence means that if an agent is indifferent between simple lotteries between probability mixed with an arbitrary simple lottery with probability and and , the agent is also indifferent mixed with with the same and
. Violating this principle is known as the "common consequence" problem (or "common consequence" increases,
effect). The idea of the common consequence problem is that as the prize offered by
become consolation prizes, and the agent will modify preferences between the two lotteries so as to minimize risk and disappointment in case they do not win the higher prize offered by . Difficulties such as this gave rise to a number of alternatives to, and generalizations of, the theory, notably including prospect theory, developed by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, weighted utility (Chew), and rank-dependent expected utility by John Quiggin. The point of these models was to allow a wider range of behavior than was consistent with expected utility theory. Also relevant here is the framing theory of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. Identical items will result in different choices if presented to agents differently (i.e. a surgery with a 70% survival rate vs. a 30% chance of death). The main point Allais wished to make is that the independence axiom of expected utility theory may not be a valid axiom. The independence axiom states that two identical outcomes within a gamble should be treated as irrelevant to the analysis of the gamble as a whole. However, this overlooks the notion of complementarities, the fact your choice in one part of a gamble may depend on the possible outcome in the other part of the gamble. In the above choice, 1B, there is a 1% chance of getting nothing. However, this 1% chance of getting nothing also carries with it a great sense of disappointment if you were to pick that gamble and lose, knowing you could have won with 100% certainty if you had chosen 1A. This feeling of disappointment, however, is contingent on the outcome in the other portion of the gamble (i.e. the feeling of certainty). Hence, Allais argues that it is not possible to evaluate portions of gambles or choices independently of the other choices presented, as the independence axiom requires, and thus is a poor judge of our rational action (1B cannot be valued independently of 1A as the independence or sure thing principle requires of us). We don't act irrationally when choosing 1A and 2B; rather expected utility theory is not robust enough to capture such "bounded rationality" choices that in this case arise because of complementarities.
Mathematical proof of inconsistency

Using the values above and a utility function U(W), where W is wealth, we can demonstrate exactly how the paradox manifests. Because the typical individual prefers 1A to 1B and 2B to 2A, we can conclude that the expected utilities of the preferred is greater than the expected utilities of the second choices, or,
Experiment 1
Allais paradox
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Experiment 2
We can rewrite the latter equation (Experiment 2) as
which contradicts the first bet (Experiment 1), which shows the player prefers the sure thing over the gamble.
References
Allais, M. (1953). "Le comportement de lhomme rationnel devant le risque: critique des postulats et axiomes de lcole Amricaine". Econometrica 21 (4): 503546. JSTOR1907921. Chew Soo Hong; Mao, Jennifer; Nishimura, Naoko (2005). Preference for longshot: An Experimental Study of Demand for Sweepstakes [1]. Kahneman, Daniel; Tversky, Amos (1979). "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk". Econometrica 47 (2): 263291. JSTOR1914185. Oliver, Adam (2003). "A quantitative and qualitative test of the Allais paradox using health outcomes". Journal of Economic Psychology 24 (1): 3548. doi:10.1016/S0167-4870(02)00153-8. Quiggin, J. (1993). Generalized Expected Utility Theory:The Rank-Dependent Expected Utility model. Amsterdam: Kluwer-Nijhoff. review [2]
References
[1] http:/ / cebr. ust. hk/ conference/ 2ndconference/ nishimura. htm [2] http:/ / www. uq. edu. au/ economics/ johnquiggin/ Books/ Machina. html
Arrow's impossibility theorem
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In social choice theory, Arrows impossibility theorem, the General Possibility Theorem, or Arrows paradox, states that, when voters have three or more distinct alternatives (options), no voting system can convert the ranked preferences of individuals into a community-wide (complete and transitive) ranking while also meeting a specific set of criteria. These criteria are called unrestricted domain, non-dictatorship, Pareto efficiency, and independence of irrelevant alternatives. The theorem is often cited in discussions of election theory as it is further interpreted by the GibbardSatterthwaite theorem. The theorem is named after economist Kenneth Arrow, who demonstrated the theorem in his Ph.D. thesis and popularized it in his 1951 book Social Choice and Individual Values. The original paper was titled "A Difficulty in the Concept of Social Welfare".[1] Arrow was a co-recipient of the 1972 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. In short, the theorem proves that no voting system can be designed that satisfies these three "fairness" criteria: If every voter prefers alternative X over alternative Y, then the group prefers X over Y. If every voter's preference between X and Y remains unchanged, then the group's preference between X and Y will also remain unchanged (even if voters' preferences between other pairs like X and Z, Y and Z, or Z and W change). There is no "dictator": no single voter possesses the power to always determine the group's preference. There are several voting systems that side-step these requirements by using cardinal utility (which conveys more information than rank orders) and weakening the notion of independence (see the subsection discussing the cardinal utility approach to overcoming the negative conclusion). Arrow, like many economists, rejected cardinal utility as a meaningful tool for expressing social welfare, and so focused his theorem on preference rankings. The axiomatic approach Arrow adopted can treat all conceivable rules (that are based on preferences) within one unified framework. In that sense, the approach is qualitatively different from the earlier one in voting theory, in which rules were investigated one by one. One can therefore say that the contemporary paradigm of social choice theory started from this theorem.[2]
Statement of the theorem

The need to aggregate preferences occurs in many different disciplines: in welfare economics, where one attempts to find an economic outcome which would be acceptable and stable; in decision theory, where a person has to make a rational choice based on several criteria; and most naturally in voting systems, which are mechanisms for extracting a decision from a multitude of voters' preferences. The framework for Arrow's theorem assumes that we need to extract a preference order on a given set of options (outcomes). Each individual in the society (or equivalently, each decision criterion) gives a particular order of preferences on the set of outcomes. We are searching for a preferential voting system, called a social welfare function (preference aggregation rule), which transforms the set of preferences (profile of preferences) into a single global societal preference order. The theorem considers the following properties, assumed to be reasonable requirements of a fair voting method: Non-dictatorship The social welfare function should account for the wishes of multiple voters. It cannot simply mimic the preferences of a single voter. Unrestricted domain (or universality) For any set of individual voter preferences, the social welfare function should yield a unique and complete ranking of societal choices. Thus: It must do so in a manner that results in a complete ranking of preferences for society.
Arrow's impossibility theorem It must deterministically provide the same ranking each time voters' preferences are presented the same way. Independence of irrelevant alternatives (IIA) The social preference between x and y should depend only on the individual preferences between x and y (Pairwise Independence). More generally, changes in individuals' rankings of irrelevant alternatives (ones outside a certain subset) should have no impact on the societal ranking of the subset. (See Remarks below.) Positive association of social and individual values (or monotonicity) If any individual modifies his or her preference order by promoting a certain option, then the societal preference order should respond only by promoting that same option or not changing, never by placing it lower than before. An individual should not be able to hurt an option by ranking it higher. Non-imposition (or citizen sovereignty) Every possible societal preference order should be achievable by some set of individual preference orders. This means that the social welfare function is surjective: It has an unrestricted target space. Arrow's theorem says that if the decision-making body has at least two members and at least three options to decide among, then it is impossible to design a social welfare function that satisfies all these conditions at once. A later (1963) version of Arrow's theorem can be obtained by replacing the monotonicity and non-imposition criteria with: Pareto efficiency (or unanimity) If every individual prefers a certain option to another, then so must the resulting societal preference order. This, again, is a demand that the social welfare function will be minimally sensitive to the preference profile. The later version of this theorem is strongerhas weaker conditionssince monotonicity, non-imposition, and independence of irrelevant alternatives together imply Pareto efficiency, whereas Pareto efficiency, non-imposition, and independence of irrelevant alternatives together do not imply monotonicity. Remarks on IIA 1. The IIA condition can be justified for three reasons (Mas-Colell, Whinston, and Green, 1995, page 794): (i) normative (irrelevant alternatives should not matter), (ii) practical (use of minimal information), and (iii) strategic (providing the right incentives for the truthful revelation of individual preferences). Though the strategic property is conceptually different from IIA, it is closely related. 2. Arrow's death-of-a-candidate example (1963, page 26) suggests that the agenda (the set of feasible alternatives) shrinks from, say, X = {a, b, c} to S = {a, b} because of the death of candidate c. This example is misleading since it can give the reader an impression that IIA is a condition involving two agenda and one profile. The fact is that IIA involves just one agendum ({x, y} in case of Pairwise Independence) but two profiles. If the condition is applied to this confusing example, it requires this: Suppose an aggregation rule satisfying IIA chooses b from the agenda {a, b} when the profile is given by (cab, cba), that is, individual 1 prefers c to a to b, 2 prefers c to b to a. Then, it must still choose b from {a, b} if the profile were, say, (abc, bac) or (acb, bca) or (acb, cba) or (abc, cba).
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Formal statement of the theorem

Let be a set of outcomes, by . which of voters' .[3] The a number of voters or decision criteria. We shall denote the set of all full linear orderings of
A (strict) social welfare function (preference aggregation rule) is a function aggregates voters' preferences into a single preference order on -tuple
preferences is called a preference profile. In its strongest and simplest form, Arrow's impossibility theorem states that whenever the set of possible alternatives has more than 2 elements, then the following three conditions become incompatible: unanimity, or Pareto efficiency If alternative a is ranked above b for all orderings non-dictatorship There is no individual i whose preferences always prevail. That is, there is no . independence of irrelevant alternatives For two preference profiles and b have the same order in as in and as in . such that for all individuals i, alternatives a , alternatives a and b have the same order in such that , then a is ranked higher than b by
. (Note that unanimity implies non-imposition).
Informal proof
Based on the proof by John Geanakoplos of Cowles Foundation, Yale University.[4] We wish to prove that any social choice system respecting unrestricted domain, unanimity, and independence of irrelevant alternatives (IIA) is a dictatorship.
Part one: there is a "pivotal" voter for B

Say there are three choices for society, call them A, B, and C. Suppose first that everyone prefers option B the least. That is, everyone prefers every other option to B. By unanimity, society must prefer every option to B. Specifically, society prefers A and C to B. Call this situation Profile 1. On the other hand, if everyone preferred B to everything else, then society would have to prefer B to everything else by unanimity. So it is clear that, if we take Profile 1 and, running through the members in the society in some arbitrary but specific order, move B from the bottom of each person's preference list to the top, there must be some point at which B moves off the bottom of society's preferences as well, since we know it eventually ends up at the top. When it happens, we call that voter the pivotal voter. We now want to show that, at the point when the pivotal voter n moves B off the bottom of his preferences to the top, the society's B moves to the top of its preferences as well, not to an intermediate point. To prove this, consider what would happen if it were not true. Then, after n has moved B to the top (i.e., when voters have B at the top and voters still have B at the bottom) society would have some option more preferable than B, say A, and one less preferable than B, say C. Now if each person moves his preference for C above A, then society would prefer C to A by unanimity. But moving C above A should not change anything about how B and C compare, by independence of irrelevant alternatives. That is, since B is either at the very top or bottom of each person's preferences, moving C or A around does not change how either compares with B, leaving B preferred to C. Similarly, by independence of irrelevant alternatives society still prefers A to B because the changing of C and A does not affect how A and B compare.
Arrow's impossibility theorem Since C is above A, and A is above B, C must be above B in the social preference ranking. We have reached an absurd conclusion. Therefore, when the voters have moved B from the bottom of their preferences to the top, society
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moves B from the bottom all the way to the top, not some intermediate point. Note that even with a different starting profile, say Profile 1' , if the order of moving preference of B is unchanged, the pivotal voter remains n. That is, the pivotal voter is determined only by the moving order, and not by the starting profile. It can be seen as following. If we concentrate on a pair of B and one of other choices, during each step on the process, preferences in the pair are unchanged whether we start from Profile 1 and Profile 1' for every person. Therefore by IIA, preference in the pair should be unchanged. Since it applies to every other choices, for Profile 1' , the position of B remains at bottom before n and remains at top after and including n, just as Profile 1.
Part two: voter n is a dictator for AC

We show that voter n dictates society's decision between A and C. In other words, we show that n is a (local) dictator over the set {A, C} in the following sense: if n prefers A to C, then the society prefers A to C and if n prefers C to A, then the society prefers C to A. Let p1 be any profile in which voter n prefers A to C. We show that society prefers A to C. To show that, construct two profiles from p1 by changing the position of B as follows: In Profile 2, all voters up to (not including) n have B at the top of their preferences and the rest (including n) have B at the bottom. In Profile 3, all voters up to (and including) n have B at the top and the rest have B at the bottom. Now consider the profile p4 obtained from p1 as follows: everyone up to n ranks B at the top, n ranks A above B above C, and everyone else ranks B at the bottom. As far as the AB decision is concerned, p4 is just as in Profile 2, which we proved puts A above B (in Profile 2, B is actually at the bottom of the social ordering). C's new position is irrelevant to the BA ordering for society because of IIA. Likewise, p4 has a relationship between B and C that is just as in Profile 3, which we proved has B above C (B is actually at the top). We can conclude from these two observations that society puts A above B above C at p4. Since the relative rankings of A and C are the same across p1 and p4, we conclude that society puts A above C at p1. Similarly, we can show that if q1 is any profile in which voter n prefers C to A, then society prefers C to A. It follows that person n is a (local) dictator over {A, C}. Remark. Since B is irrelevant (IIA) to the decision between A and C, the fact that we assumed particular profiles that put B in particular places does not matter. This was just a way of finding out, by example, who the dictator over A and C was. But all we need to know is that he exists.
Part three: there can be at most one dictator

Finally, we show that the (local) dictator over {A, C} is a (global) dictator: he also dictates over {A, B} and over {B, C}. We will use the fact (which can be proved easily) that if is a strict linear order, then it contains no cycles such as . We have proved in Part two that there are (local) dictators i over {A, B}, j over {B, C}, and k over {A, C}. If i, j, k are all distinct, consider any profile in which i prefers A to B, j prefers B to C and k prefers C to A. Then the society prefers A to B to C to A, a contradiction. If one of i, j, k is different and the other two are equal, assume i=j without loss of generality. Consider any profile in which i=j prefers A to B to C and k prefers C to A. Then the society prefers A to B to C to A, a contradiction. It follows that i=j=k, establishing that the local dictator over {A, C} is a global one.
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Interpretations of the theorem

Arrow's theorem is a mathematical result, but it is often expressed in a non-mathematical way with a statement such as "No voting method is fair", "Every ranked voting method is flawed", or "The only voting method that isn't flawed is a dictatorship". These statements are simplifications of Arrow's result which are not universally considered to be true. What Arrow's theorem does state is that a deterministic preferential voting mechanism - that is, one where a preference order is the only information in a vote, and any possible set of votes gives a unique result - cannot comply with all of the conditions given above simultaneously. Arrow did use the term "fair" to refer to his criteria. Indeed, Pareto efficiency, as well as the demand for non-imposition, seems acceptable to most people. Various theorists have suggested weakening the IIA criterion as a way out of the paradox. Proponents of ranked voting methods contend that the IIA is an unreasonably strong criterion. It is the one breached in most useful voting systems. Advocates of this position point out that failure of the standard IIA criterion is trivially implied by the possibility of cyclic preferences. If voters cast ballots as follows: 1 vote for A > B > C 1 vote for B > C > A 1 vote for C > A > B then the pairwise majority preference of the group is that A wins over B, B wins over C, and C wins over A: these yield rock-paper-scissors preferences for any pairwise comparison. In this circumstance, any aggregation rule that satisfies the very basic majoritarian requirement that a candidate who receives a majority of votes must win the election, will fail the IIA criterion, if social preference is required to be transitive (or acyclic). To see this, suppose that such a rule satisfies IIA. Since majority preferences are respected, the society prefers A to B (two votes for A>B and one for B>A), B to C, and C to A. Thus a cycle is generated, which contradicts the assumption that social preference is transitive. So, what Arrow's theorem really shows is that any majority-wins voting system is a non-trivial game, and that game theory should be used to predict the outcome of most voting mechanisms.[5] This could be seen as a discouraging result, because a game need not have efficient equilibria, e.g., a ballot could result in an alternative nobody really wanted in the first place, yet everybody voted for. Remark: Scalar rankings from a vector of attributes and the IIA property. The IIA property might not be satisfied in human decision-making of realistic complexity because the scalar preference ranking is effectively derived from the weightingnot usually explicitof a vector of attributes (one book dealing with the Arrow theorem invites the reader to consider the related problem of creating a scalar measure for the track and field decathlon evente.g. how does one make scoring 600 points in the discus event "commensurable" with scoring 600 points in the 1500m race) and this scalar ranking can depend sensitively on the weighting of different attributes, with the tacit weighting itself affected by the context and contrast created by apparently "irrelevant" choices. Edward MacNeal discusses this sensitivity problem with respect to the ranking of "most livable city" in the chapter "Surveys" of his book MathSemantics: making numbers talk sense (1994).
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Other possibilities
In an attempt to escape from the negative conclusion of Arrow's theorem, social choice theorists have investigated various possibilities ("ways out"). These investigations can be divided into the following two: those investigating functions whose domain, like that of Arrow's social welfare functions, consists of profiles of preferences; those investigating other kinds of rules.
Approaches investigating functions of preference profiles

This section includes approaches that deal with aggregation rules (functions that map each preference profile into a social preference), and other functions, such as functions that map each preference profile into an alternative. Since these two approaches often overlap, we discuss them at the same time. What is characteristic of these approaches is that they investigate various possibilities by eliminating or weakening or replacing one or more conditions (criteria) that Arrow imposed. Infinitely many individuals Several theorists (e.g., Kirman and Sondermann, 1972[6]) point out that when one drops the assumption that there are only finitely many individuals, one can find aggregation rules that satisfy all of Arrow's other conditions. However, such aggregation rules are practically of limited interest, since they are based on ultrafilters, highly nonconstructive mathematical objects. In particular, Kirman and Sondermann argue that there is an "invisible dictator" behind such a rule. Mihara (1997,[7] 1999[8]) shows that such a rule violates algorithmic computability.[9] These results can be seen to establish the robustness of Arrow's theorem.[10] Limiting the number of alternatives When there are only two alternatives to choose from, May's theorem shows that only simple majority rule satisfies a certain set of criteria (e.g., equal treatment of individuals and of alternatives; increased support for a winning alternative should not make it into a losing one). On the other hand, when there are at least three alternatives, Arrow's theorem points out the difficulty of collective decision making. Why is there such a sharp difference between the case of less than three alternatives and that of at least three alternatives? Nakamura's theorem (about the core of simple games) gives an answer more generally. It establishes that if the number of alternatives is less than a certain integer called the Nakamura number, then the rule in question will identify "best" alternatives without any problem; if the number of alternatives is greater or equal to the Nakamura number, then the rule will not always work, since for some profile a voting paradox (a cycle such as alternative A socially preferred to alternative B, B to C, and C to A) will arise. Since the Nakamura number of majority rule is 3 (except the case of four individuals), one can conclude from Nakamura's theorem that majority rule can deal with up to two alternatives rationally. Some super-majority rules (such as those requiring 2/3 of the votes) can have a Nakamura number greater than 3, but such rules violate other conditions given by Arrow.[11] Remark. A common way "around" Arrow's paradox is limiting the alternative set to two alternatives. Thus, whenever more than two alternatives should be put to the test, it seems very tempting to use a mechanism that pairs them and votes by pairs. As tempting as this mechanism seems at first glance, it is generally far from meeting even the Pareto principle, not to mention IIA. The specific order by which the pairs are decided strongly influences the outcome. This is not necessarily a bad feature of the mechanism. Many sports use the tournament mechanismessentially a pairing mechanismto choose a winner. This gives considerable opportunity for weaker teams to win, thus adding interest and tension throughout the tournament. This means that the person controlling the order by which the choices are paired (the agenda maker) has great control over the outcome. In any case, when
Arrow's impossibility theorem viewing the entire voting process as one game, Arrow's theorem still applies. Domain restrictions Another approach is relaxing the universality condition, which means restricting the domain of aggregation rules. The best-known result along this line assumes "single peaked" preferences. Duncan Black has shown that if there is only one dimension on which every individual has a "single-peaked" preference, then all of Arrow's conditions are met by majority rule. Suppose that there is some predetermined linear ordering of the alternative set. An individual's preference is single-peaked with respect to this ordering if he has some special place that he likes best along that line, and his dislike for an alternative grows larger as the alternative goes further away from that spot (i.e., the graph of his utility function has a single peak if alternatives are placed according to the linear ordering on the horizontal axis). For example, if voters were voting on where to set the volume for music, it would be reasonable to assume that each voter had their own ideal volume preference and that as the volume got progressively too loud or too quiet they would be increasingly dissatisfied. If the domain is restricted to profiles in which every individual has a single peaked preference with respect to the linear ordering, then simple ([]) aggregation rules, which includes majority rule, have an acyclic (defined below) social preference, hence "best" alternatives.[12] In particular, when there are odd number of individuals, then the social preference becomes transitive, and the socially "best" alternative is equal to the median of all the peaks of the individuals (Black's median voter theorem[13]). Under single-peaked preferences, the majority rule is in some respects the most natural voting mechanism. One can define the notion of "single-peaked" preferences on higher dimensional sets of alternatives. However, one can identify the "median" of the peaks only in exceptional cases. Instead, we typically have the destructive situation suggested by McKelvey's Chaos Theorem (1976[14]): for any x and y, one can find a sequence of alternatives such that x is beaten by by a majority, by , , by y. Relaxing transitivity By relaxing the transitivity of social preferences, we can find aggregation rules that satisfy Arrow's other conditions. If we impose neutrality (equal treatment of alternatives) on such rules, however, there exists an individual who has a "veto". So the possibility provided by this approach is also very limited. First, suppose that a social preference is quasi-transitive (instead of transitive); this means that the strict preference ("better than") is transitive: if and , then . Then, there do exist non-dictatorial aggregation rules satisfying Arrow's conditions, but such rules are oligarchic (Gibbard, 1969). This means that there exists a coalition L such that L is decisive (if every member in L prefers x to y, then the society prefers x to y), and each member in L has a veto (if she prefers x to y, then the society cannot prefer y to x). Second, suppose that a social preference is acyclic (instead of transitive): there does not exist alternatives that form a cycle ( , , , , ). Then, provided that there are at least as many alternatives as individuals, an aggregation rule satisfying Arrow's other conditions is collegial (Brown, 1975[15]). This means that there are individuals who belong to the intersection ("collegium") of all decisive coalitions. If there is someone who has a veto, then he belongs to the collegium. If the rule is assumed to be neutral, then it does have someone who has a veto.[] Finally, Brown's theorem left open the case of acyclic social preferences where the number of alternatives is less than the number of individuals. One can give a definite answer for that case using the Nakamura number. See #Limiting the number of alternatives.
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Arrow's impossibility theorem Relaxing IIA There are numerous examples of aggregation rules satisfying Arrow's conditions except IIA. The Borda rule is one of them. These rules, however, are susceptible to strategic manipulation by individuals (Blair and Muller, 1983[16]). See also Interpretations of the theorem below. Relaxing the Pareto criterion Wilson (1972) shows that if an aggregation rule is non-imposed and non-null, then there is either a dictator or an inverse dictator, provided that Arrow's conditions other than Pareto are also satisfied. Here, an inverse dictator is an individual i such that whenever i prefers x to y, then the society prefers y to x. Remark. Amartya Sen offered both relaxation of transitivity and removal of the Pareto principle.[17] He demonstrated another interesting impossibility result, known as the "impossibility of the Paretian Liberal". (See liberal paradox for details). Sen went on to argue that this demonstrates the futility of demanding Pareto optimality in relation to voting mechanisms. Social choice instead of social preference In social decision making, to rank all alternatives is not usually a goal. It often suffices to find some alternative. The approach focusing on choosing an alternative investigates either social choice functions (functions that map each preference profile into an alternative) or social choice rules (functions that map each preference profile into a subset of alternatives). As for social choice functions, the GibbardSatterthwaite theorem is well-known, which states that if a social choice function whose range contains at least three alternatives is strategy-proof, then it is dictatorial. As for social choice rules, we should assume there is a social preference behind them. That is, we should regard a rule as choosing the maximal elements ("best" alternatives) of some social preference. The set of maximal elements of a social preference is called the core. Conditions for existence of an alternative in the core have been investigated in two approaches. The first approach assumes that preferences are at least acyclic (which is necessary and sufficient for the preferences to have a maximal element on any finite subset). For this reason, it is closely related to #Relaxing transitivity. The second approach drops the assumption of acyclic preferences. Kumabe and Mihara (2011[18]) adopt this approach. They make a more direct assumption that individual preferences have maximal elements, and examine conditions for the social preference to have a maximal element. See Nakamura number for details of these two approaches.
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Rated voting systems and other approaches

Arrow's framework assumes that individual and social preferences are "orderings" (i.e., satisfy completeness and transitivity) on the set of alternatives. This means that if the preferences are represented by a utility function, its value is an ordinal utility in the sense that it is meaningful so far as the greater value indicates the better alternative. For instance, having ordinal utilities of 4, 3, 2, 1 for alternatives a, b, c, d, respectively, is the same as having 1000, 100.01, 100, 0, which in turn is the same as having 99, 98, 1, .997. They all represent the ordering in which a is preferred to b to c to d. The assumption of ordinal preferences, which precludes interpersonal comparisons of utility, is an integral part of Arrow's theorem. For various reasons, an approach based on cardinal utility, where the utility has a meaning beyond just giving a ranking of alternatives, is not common in contemporary economics. However, once one adopts that approach, one can take intensities of preferences into consideration, or one can compare (i) gains and losses of utility or (ii) levels of utility, across different individuals. In particular, Harsanyi (1955) gives a justification of utilitarianism (which evaluates alternatives in terms of the sum of individual utilities), originating from Jeremy Bentham. Hammond (1976) gives a justification of the maximin principle (which evaluates alternatives in terms of the utility of the worst-off individual), originating from John Rawls.
Arrow's impossibility theorem Not all voting methods use, as input, only an ordering of all candidates.[19] Methods which don't, often called "rated" or "cardinal" (as opposed to "ranked", "ordinal", or "preferential") voting systems, can be viewed as using information that only cardinal utility can convey. In that case, it is not surprising if some of them satisfy all of Arrow's conditions that are reformulated.[20] Warren Smith claims that range voting is such a method.[21][22] Whether such a claim is correct depends on how each condition is reformulated.[23] Other rated voting systems which pass certain generalizations of Arrow's criteria include Approval voting and Majority Judgment. Note that although Arrow's theorem does not apply to such methods, the GibbardSatterthwaite theorem still does: no system is fully strategy-free, so the informal dictum that "no voting system is perfect" still has a mathematical basis. Finally, though not an approach investigating some kind of rules, there is a criticism by James M. Buchanan and others. It argues that it is silly to think that there might be social preferences that are analogous to individual preferences. Arrow (1963, Chapter 8) answers this sort of criticisms seen in the early period, which come at least partly from misunderstanding.
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Notes
[1] Arrow, K.J., " A Difficulty in the Concept of Social Welfare (http:/ / gatton. uky. edu/ Faculty/ hoytw/ 751/ articles/ arrow. pdf)", Journal of Political Economy 58(4) (August, 1950), pp. 328346. [2] Suzumura, 2002,Suzumura, Ktar; Arrow, Kenneth Joseph; Sen, Amartya Kumar (2002). Handbook of social choice and welfare, vol 1. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Elsevier. ISBN978-0-444-82914-6. Introduction, page 10. [3] Note that by definition, a social welfare function as defined here satisfies the Unrestricted domain condition. Restricting the range to the social preferences that are never indifferent between distinct outcomes is probably a very restrictive assumption, but the goal here is to give a simple statement of the theorem. Even if the restriction is relaxed, the impossibility result will persist. [4] Three Brief Proofs of Arrows Impossibility Theorem (http:/ / ideas. repec. org/ p/ cwl/ cwldpp/ 1123r3. html) [5] This does not mean various normative criteria will be satisfied if we use equilibrium concepts in game theory. Indeed, the mapping from profiles to equilibrium outcomes defines a social choice rule, whose performance can be investigated by social choice theory. See Austen-Smith and Banks (1999Austen-Smith, David; Banks, Jeffrey S. (1999). Positive political theory I: Collective preference (http:/ / books. google. com/ books?id=nxXDn3nPxIAC& q="nakamura+ number"). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ISBN978-0-472-08721-1.), Section 7.2. [6] doi: 10.1016/0022-0531(72)90106-8 This citation will be automatically completed in the next few minutes. You can jump the queue or expand by hand (http:/ / en. wikipedia. org/ wiki/ Template:cite_doi/ _10. 1016. 2f0022-0531. 2872. 2990106-8?preload=Template:Cite_doi/ preload& editintro=Template:Cite_doi/ editintro& action=edit) [7] Mihara, H. R. (1997). "Arrow's Theorem and Turing computability" (http:/ / 129. 3. 20. 41/ eps/ pe/ papers/ 9408/ 9408001. pdf). Economic Theory 10 (2): 257276. doi:10.1007/s001990050157. Reprinted in K. V. Velupillai , S. Zambelli, and S. Kinsella, ed., Computable Economics, International Library of Critical Writings in Economics, Edward Elgar, 2011. [8] Mihara, H. R. (1999). "Arrow's theorem, countably many agents, and more visible invisible dictators" (http:/ / econpapers. repec. org/ paper/ wpawuwppe/ 9705001. htm). Journal of Mathematical Economics 32: 267277. doi:10.1016/S0304-4068(98)00061-5. . [9] Mihara's definition of a computable aggregation rule is based on computability of a simple game (see Rice's theorem). [10] See Taylor (2005,Taylor, Alan D. (2005). Social choice and the mathematics of manipulation. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN0-521-00883-2. Chapter 6) for a concise discussion of social choice for infinite societies. [11] Austen-Smith and Banks (1999, Chapter 3) gives a detailed discussion of the approach trying to limit the number of alternatives. [12] Indeed, many different social welfare functions can meet Arrow's conditions under such restrictions of the domain. It has been proved, however, that under any such restriction, if there exists any social welfare function that adheres to Arrow's criteria, then the majority rule will adhere to Arrow's criteria.Campbell, D.E., Kelly, J.S., "A simple characterization of majority rule", Economic Theory 15 (2000), pp. 689700. [13] Black, Duncan (1968). The theory of committees and elections. Cambridge, Eng.: University Press. ISBN0-89838-189-4. [14] McKelvey, R. (1976). "Intransitivities in multidimensional voting models and some implications for agenda control". Journal of Economic Theory 12 (3): 472482. doi:10.1016/0022-0531(76)90040-5. [15] Brown, D. J. (1975). Aggregation of Preferences. Quarterly Journal of Economics 89: 456-469. [16] Blair, D. (1983). "Essential aggregation procedures on restricted domains of preferences*1". Journal of Economic Theory 30: 3400. doi:10.1016/0022-0531(83)90092-3. [17] Sen, Amartya. 1979. Personal Utilities and Public Judgements: Or What's Wrong With Welfare Economics. The Economic Journal, 89, 537-588. [18] doi: 10.1016/j.geb.2010.06.008 This citation will be automatically completed in the next few minutes. You can jump the queue or expand by hand (http:/ / en. wikipedia. org/ wiki/ Template:cite_doi/ _10. 1016. 2fj. geb. 2010. 06. 008?preload=Template:Cite_doi/ preload& editintro=Template:Cite_doi/ editintro& action=edit)

[19] It is sometimes asserted that such methods may trivially fail the universality criterion. However, it is more appropriate to consider that such methods fails Arrow's definition of an aggregation rule (or that of a function whose domain consists of preference profiles), if preference orderings cannot uniquely translate into a ballot. [20] However, a modified version of Arrow's theorem may still apply to such methods (e.g., Brams and Fishburn, 2002, Chapter 4, Theorem 4.2). [21] Warren D. Smith, et al.. "How can range voting accomplish the impossible?" (http:/ / rangevoting. org/ ArrowThm. html). . [22] New Scientist 12 April 2008 pages 30-33 [23] No voting method that nontrivially uses cardinal utility satisfies Arrow's IIA (in which preference profiles are replaced by lists of ballots or lists of utilities). For this reason, a weakened notion of IIA is proposed (e.g., Sen, 1979,Sen, Amartya Kumar (1979). Collective choice and social welfare. Amsterdam: North-Holland. ISBN978-0-444-85127-7. page 129). The notion requires that the social ranking of two alternatives depend only on the levels of utility attained by individuals at the two alternatives. (More formally, a social welfare functional F is a function that maps each list of utility functions into a social preference. F satisfies IIA (for social welfare functionals) if for all lists u, u' and for all alternatives x, y, if and for all i, then xF(u)y iff xF(u')y.)
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Many cardinal voting methods (including Range voting) satisfy the weakened version of IIA.
References
Campbell, D.E. and Kelly, J.S. (2002) Impossibility theorems in the Arrovian framework, in Handbook of social choice and welfare (ed. by Kenneth J. Arrow, Amartya K. Sen and Kotaro Suzumura), volume 1, pages 3594, Elsevier. Surveys many of approaches discussed in #Approaches investigating functions of preference profiles. The Mathematics of Behavior by Earl Hunt, Cambridge University Press, 2007. The chapter "Defining Rationality: Personal and Group Decision Making" has a detailed discussion of the Arrow Theorem, with proof. URL to CUP information on this book (http://www.cambridge.org/9780521850124) Why flip a coin? : the art and science of good decisions by Harold W. Lewis, John Wiley, 1997. Gives explicit examples of preference rankings and apparently anomalous results under different voting systems. States but does not prove Arrow's theorem. ISBN 0-471-29645-7 Sen, A. K. (1979) Personal utilities and public judgements: or what's wrong with welfare economics? The Economic Journal, 89, 537-558, arguing that Arrow's theorem was wrong because it did not incorporate non-utility information and the utility information it did allow was impoverished http://www.jstor.org/stable/ 2231867
External links
Three Brief Proofs of Arrows Impossibility Theorem (http://ideas.repec.org/p/cwl/cwldpp/1123r3.html) A Pedagogical Proof of Arrows Impossibility Theorem (http://repositories.cdlib.org/ucsdecon/1999-25/) Another Graphical Proof of Arrows Impossibility Theorem (http://www.jstor.org/stable/1183438)
Bertrand paradox
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Bertrand paradox
In economics and commerce, the Bertrand paradoxnamed after its creator, Joseph Bertranddescribes a situation in which two players (firms) reach a state of Nash equilibrium where both firms charge a price equal to marginal cost. The paradox is that in reality, it usually takes a large number of firms to ensure that prices equal marginal cost. Typically, a small number of firms (oligopoly) earn positive profits by charging prices above cost. Suppose two firms, A and B, sell an identical commodity, each with the same cost of production and distribution, so that customers choose the product solely on the basis of price. It follows that neither A nor B will set a higher price than the other because doing so would yield the entire market to their rival. If they set the same price, the companies will share both the market and profits. On the other hand, if either firm were to lower its price, even a little, it would gain the whole market and substantially larger profits. Since both A and B know this, they will each try to undercut their competitor until the product is selling at zero economic profit. This is the pure-strategy Nash equilibrium. Recent work has shown that there may be an additional mixed-strategy Nash equilibrium with positive economic profits (see Kaplan & Wettstein, 2000, and Baye & Morgan, 1999). The Bertrand paradox rarely appears in practice because real products are almost always differentiated in some way other than price (brand name, if nothing else); firms have limitations on their capacity to manufacture and distribute; and two firms rarely have identical costs. Bertrand's result is paradoxical because if the number of firms goes from one to two, the price decreases from the monopoly price to the competitive price and stays at the same level as the number of firms increases further. This is not very realistic, as in reality, markets featuring a small number of firms with market power typically charge a price in excess of marginal cost. The empirical analysis shows that in most industries with two competitors, positive profits are made. Solutions to the Paradox attempt to derive solutions that are more in line with solutions from the Cournot model of competition, where two firms in a market earn positive profits that lie somewhere between the perfectly competitive and monopoly levels. Some reasons the Bertrand paradox do not strictly apply: Capacity constraints. Sometimes firms do not have enough capacity to satisfy all demand Product differentiation. If products of different firms are differentiated, then consumers may not switch completely to the product with lower price Dynamic competition. Repeated interaction or repeated price competition can lead to the price above MC in equilibrium. More money for higher price. It follows from repeated interaction: If one company sets their price slightly higher, then they will still get about the same amount of buys but more profit for each buy, so the other company will raise their price, and so on (only in repeated games, otherwise the price dynamics are in the other direction). Oligopoly. If the two companies can agree on a price, it is in their long-term interest to keep the agreement: the revenue from cutting prices is less than twice the revenue from keeping the agreement, and lasts only until the other firm cuts its own prices.
Bertrand paradox
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References
Baye, M. R.; Morgan, J. (1997). "Necessary and sufficient conditions for existence and uniqueness of Bertrand paradox outcomes". Princeton Woodrow Wilson School, Discussion Paper in Economics, 186. Baye, M. R.; Morgan, J. (1999). "A folk theorem for one-shot Bertrand games". Economics Letters 65 (1): 5965. doi:10.1016/S0165-1765(99)00118-4. Bertrand, J. (1883). "Book review of theorie mathematique de la richesse sociale and of recherches sur les principles mathematiques de la theorie des richesses". Journal des Savants 67: 499508. Kaplan, T. R.; Wettstein, D. (1997). "Mixed strategy equilibria with constant-returns-to-scale technology". Monaster Center Discussion Paper 974. Kaplan, T. R.; Wettstein, D. (2000). "The Possibility of Mixed-Strategy Equilibria with Constant-Returns-to-Scale Technology under Bertrand Competition". Spanish Economic Review 2 (1): 6571. doi:10.1007/s101080050018.
Demographic-economic paradox
The demographic-economic paradox is the inverse correlation found between wealth and fertility within and between nations. The higher the degree of education and GDP per capita of a human population, subpopulation or social stratum, the fewer children are born in any industrialized country. In a 1974 UN population conference in Bucharest, Karan Singh, a former minister of population in India, illustrated this trend by stating "Development is the best [1] contraceptive." The term "paradox" comes from the notion that greater means would necessitate the production of more Graph of Total Fertility Rate vs. GDP per capita of the corresponding country, 2009. Only countries with over 5 Million population were plotted, to reduce outliers. Sources: CIA offspring as suggested by the [2] World Fact Book. For details, see List of countries and territories by fertility rate influential Thomas Malthus. Roughly speaking, nations or subpopulations with higher GDP per capita are observed to have fewer children, even though a richer population can support more children. Malthus held that in order to prevent widespread suffering, from famine for example, what he called "moral restraint" (which included abstinence) was required. The demographic-economic paradox suggests that reproductive restraint arises naturally as a consequence of economic progress. It is hypothesized that the observed trend has come about as a response to increased life expectancy, reduced childhood mortality, improved female literacy and independence, and urbanization that all result from increased GDP per capita,[3] consistent with the demographic transition model. Current information suggests that the demographic-economic paradox only holds up to a point. Recent data suggests that once a country reaches a certain level of human development and economic prosperity the fertility rate stabilizes
Demographic-economic paradox and then recovers slightly to replacement rates.[4]
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Demographic transition
Before the 19th century demographic transition of the western world, a minority of children would survive to the age of 20, and life expectancies were short even for those who reached adulthood. For example, in the 17th century in York, England 15% of children were still alive at age 15 and only 10% of children survived to age 20.[3] Birth rates were correspondingly high, resulting in slow population growth. The agricultural revolution and improvements in hygiene then brought about dramatic reductions in mortality rates in wealthy industrialized countries, initially without affecting birth rates. In the 20th century, birth rates of industrialized countries began to fall, as societies became accustomed to the higher probability that their children would survive them. Cultural value changes were also contributors, as urbanization and female employment rose. Since wealth is what drives this demographic transition, it follows that nations that lag behind in wealth also lag behind in this demographic transition. The developing world's equivalent Green Revolution did not begin until the mid-twentieth century. This creates the existing spread in fertility rates as a function of GDP per capita.
Religion
Another contributor to the demographic-economic paradox may be religion. Religious societies tend to have higher birth rates than secular ones, and richer, more educated nations tend to advance secularization.[5] This may help explain the Israeli and Saudi Arabian exceptions, the two notable outliers in the graph of fertility versus GDP per capita at the top of this article. In American media it is widely believed that America is also an exception to global trends. The current fertility rate in America is 2.09, higher than in most other developed countries.[6][7] This may be due to the United States having a high percentage of religious followers compared to Europe as a whole.[8]
Church service attendance and number of offspring according to the World Value Survey 1981-2004[9]
Church service attendance Number of offspring never only on holidays once per month once per week more frequently 1.67 1.78 2.01 2.23 2.5
The role of different religions in determining family size is complex. For example, the Catholic countries of southern Europe traditionally had a much higher fertility rate than was the case in Protestant northern Europe. However, economic growth in Spain, Italy, Poland etc., has been accompanied by a particularly sharp fall in the fertility rate, to a level below that of the Protestant north. This suggests that the demographic-economic paradox applies more strongly in Catholic countries, although Catholic fertility started to fall when the liberalizing reforms of Vatican II were implemented. It remains to be seen if the fertility rate among (mostly Catholic) Hispanics in the U.S. will follow a similar pattern.
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United States
Another possible explanation for the "American exception" is its much higher rate of teenage pregnancies,[10] particularly in the southern US,[11] compared to other countries with effective sexual education; this does not contradict the religious-beliefs hypothesis. In his book America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, Mark Steyn asserts that the United States has higher fertility rates because of its greater economic freedom compared to other industrialized countries. However, the countries with the highest assessed economic freedom, Hong Kong and Singapore, have significantly lower birthrates than the United States. According to the Index of Economic Freedom, Hong Kong is the most economically free country in the world.[12] Hong Kong also has the world's lowest birth rate.[13]
Fertility and population density

Studies have also suggested a correlation between population density and fertility rate.[14][15][16] Hong Kong and Singapore have the third and fourth-highest population densities in the world. This may account for their very low birth rates despite high economic freedom. By contrast, the United States ranks 180 out of 241 countries and dependencies by population density.
Consequences
A reduction in fertility can lead to an aging population which leads to a variety of problems, see for example the Demographics of Japan. A related concern is that high birth rates tend to place a greater burden of child rearing and education on populations already struggling with poverty. Consequently, inequality lowers average education and hampers economic growth.[17] Also, in countries with a high burden of this kind, a reduction in fertility can hamper economic growth as well as the other way around.[18]
References
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] David N. Weil (2004). Economic Growth. Addison-Wesley. p.111. ISBN0201680262. http:/ / www. econlib. org/ library/ Malthus/ malPlong. html EconLib-1826: An Essay on the Principle of Population, demographic transition (http:/ / www. uwmc. uwc. edu/ geography/ Demotrans/ demtran. htm) (http:/ / www. nature. com/ nature/ journal/ v460/ n7256/ full/ nature08230. html) Marburg Journal of Religion (June 2006) "Religiousity as a demographic factor" (http:/ / web. uni-marburg. de/ religionswissenschaft/ journal/ mjr/ art_blume_2006. html) [6] Watch on the West: Four Surprises in Global Demography - FPRI (http:/ / www. fpri. org/ ww/ 0505. 200407. eberstadt. demography. html) [7] CIA - The World Factbook -- Rank Order - Total fertility rate (https:/ / www. cia. gov/ library/ publications/ the-world-factbook/ rankorder/ 2127rank. html) [8] Nicholas Eberstadt - America the Fertile - washingtonpost.com May 6, 2007 (http:/ / www. washingtonpost. com/ wp-dyn/ content/ article/ 2007/ 05/ 04/ AR2007050401891. html?hpid=opinionsbox2) [9] Michael Blume (2008) "Homo religiosus" (http:/ / www. wissenschaft-online. de/ artikel/ 982875), Gehirn und Geist 04/2009. pp. 32 - 41. [10] Adamson, Peter; Giorgina Brown, John Micklewright and Anna Wright (July 2001). "A League Table of Teenage Births in Rich Nations" (http:/ / www. unicef-icdc. org/ publications/ pdf/ repcard3e. pdf) (PDF). Innocenti Report Card (Unicef) (3). ISBN 88-85401-75-9. . [11] "National and State Trends and Trends by Race and Ethnicity" (http:/ / www. guttmacher. org/ pubs/ 2006/ 09/ 12/ USTPstats. pdf) (PDF). U.S. Teenage Pregnancy Statistics (Guttmacher Institute). September 2006. . [12] Index of Economic Freedom (http:/ / www. heritage. org/ index/ country. cfm?id=HongKong) [13] CIA - The World Factbook - Rank Order - Birth rate (https:/ / www. cia. gov/ library/ publications/ the-world-factbook/ rankorder/ 2054rank. html) [14] Economic geography, fertility and migration (http:/ / www. sciencedirect. com/ science?_ob=ArticleURL& _udi=B6WMG-4KW5W75-3& _user=10& _rdoc=1& _fmt=& _orig=search& _sort=d& view=c& _acct=C000050221& _version=1& _urlVersion=0& _userid=10& md5=149bb91c9e66f19e5400e9ac1f5c4317) Yasuhiro Sato, Journal of Urban Economics. Published July 30, 2006. Last accessed March 31, 2008. [15] An Estimate of the Long-Term Crude Birth Rate of the Agricultural Population of China (http:/ / links. jstor. org/ sici?sici=0070-3370(1966)3:1<204:AEOTLC>2. 0. CO;2-L) Chia-lin Pan, Demography, Volume 3, No. 1. Published 1966. Last accessed
March 31, 2008. [16] (http:/ / houstonstrategies. blogspot. com/ 2006/ 01/ high-density-smart-growth-population. html). Tory Gattis, houstonstrategies.blogspot.com. Published January 15, 2006. Last accessed March 31, 2008. [17] de la Croix, David and Matthias Doepcke: Inequality and growth: why differential fertility matters. American Economic Review 4 (2003) 1091-1113. (http:/ / www. econ. ucla. edu/ workingpapers/ wp803. pdf) [18] UNFPA: Population and poverty. Achieving equity, equality and sustainability. Population and development series no. 8, 2003. (http:/ / www. unfpa. org/ upload/ lib_pub_file/ 191_filename_PDS08. pdf)
55
Dollar auction
The dollar auction is a non-zero sum sequential game designed by economist Martin Shubik to illustrate a paradox brought about by traditional rational choice theory in which players with perfect information in the game are compelled to make an ultimately irrational decision based completely on a sequence of rational choices made throughout the game.[1]
Setup
The setup involves an auctioneer who volunteers to auction off a dollar bill with the following rule: the dollar goes to the highest bidder, who pays the amount he bids. The second-highest bidder also must pay the highest amount that he bid, but gets nothing in return. Suppose that the game begins with one of the players bidding 1 cent, hoping to make a 99 cent profit. He will quickly be outbid by another player bidding 2 cents, as a 98 cent profit is still desirable. Similarly, another bidder may bid 3 cents, making a 97 cent profit. Alternatively, the first bidder may attempt to convert their loss of 1 cent into a gain of 96 cents by bidding 4 cents. In this way, a series of bids is maintained. However, a problem becomes evident as soon as the bidding reaches 99 cents. Supposing that the other player had bid 98 cents, they now have the choice of losing the 98 cents or bidding a dollar even, which would make their profit zero. After that, the original player has a choice of either losing 99 cents or bidding $1.01, and only losing one cent. After this point the two players continue to bid the value up well beyond the dollar, and neither stands to profit.
References
[1] Shubik, Martin (1971). "The Dollar Auction Game: A Paradox in Noncooperative Behavior and Escalation". Journal of Conflict Resolution 15 (1): 109111. doi:10.1177/002200277101500111.
Further reading
Poundstone, William (1993). "The Dollar Auction". Prisoner's Dilemma: John Von Neumann, Game Theory, and the Puzzle of the Bomb. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN019286162X.
DownsThomson paradox
56
Downs-Thomson paradox (named after Anthony Downs and J. M. Thomson), also referred to as the PigouKnightDowns paradox (after Arthur Cecil Pigou and Frank Knight), states that the equilibrium speed of car traffic on the road network is determined by the average door-to-door speed of equivalent journeys by (rail-based or otherwise segregated) public transport. It follows that increasing road capacity can actually make overall congestion on the road worse. This occurs when the shift from public transport causes a disinvestment in the mode such that the operator either reduces frequency of service or raises fares to cover costs. This shifts additional passengers into cars. Ultimately the system may be eliminated and congestion on the original (expanded) road is worse than before. The general conclusion, if the paradox applies, is that expanding a road system as a remedy to congestion is not only ineffective, but often counterproductive. This is also known as LewisMogridge Position and was extensively documented by Martin Mogridge with the case-study of London on his book Travel in towns: jam yesterday, jam today and jam tomorrow? An article of 1968 from Dietrich Braess now at the Faculty of Mathematics in Ruhr University, already pointed out the existence of this counter-intuitive occurrence on networks - the Braess' paradox states that adding extra capacity to a network, when the moving entities selfishly choose their route, can in some cases reduce overall performance. There is a recent interest in the study of this phenomenon since the same may happen in computer networks and not only in traffic networks. Increasing the size of the network is characterized by behaviors of users similar to that of travelers on transportation networks, who act independently and in a decentralized manner in choosing their optimal routes of travel between origins and their destinations. This is an extension of the induced demand theory and consistent with Downs (1992) theory of "triple convergence". Downs (1992) formulated this theory to explain the difficulty of removing peak-hour congestion from highways. In response to a capacity addition three immediate effects occur. Drivers using alternative routes begin to use the expanded highway, those previously traveling at off-peak times (either immediately before or after the peak) shift to the peak (rescheduling behavior as defined previously), and public transport users shift to driving their vehicles.
Restrictions on validity
According to Downs this link between average speeds on public transport and private transport "only applies to regions in which the vast majority of peak-hour commuting is done on rapid transit systems with separate rights of way. Central London is an example, since in 2001 around 85 percent of all morning peak-period commuters into that area used public transit (including 77 percent on separate rights of way) and only 11 percent used private cars. When peak-hour travel equilibrium has been reached between the subway system and the major commuting roads, then the travel time required for any given trip is roughly equal on both modes."
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References
On a Paradox of Traffic Planning, translated from the (1968) original D. Braess paper from German to English by D. Braess, A. Nagurney, and T. Wakolbinger (2005), Transportation Science 39/4, 446-450. Mogridge, Martin J.H. Travel in towns: jam yesterday, jam today and jam tomorrow? Macmillan Press, London, 1990. ISBN 0-333-53204-X Downs, Anthony, Stuck in Traffic: Coping with Peak-Hour Traffic Congestion, The Brookings Institution: Washington, DC. 1992. ISBN 0-8157-1923-X Thomson, J. M. (1972), Methods of traffic limitation in urban areas. Working Paper 3, Paris, OECD.
Easterlin paradox
The Easterlin Paradox is a key concept in happiness economics. It is named for economist and USC Professor Richard Easterlin who discussed the factors contributing to happiness in the 1974 paper "Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot? Some Empirical Evidence."[1] Easterlin found that within a given country people with higher incomes are more likely to report being happy. However, in international comparisons, the average reported level of happiness does not vary much with national income per person, at least for countries with income sufficient to meet basic needs. Similarly, although income per person rose steadily in the United States between 1946 and 1970, average reported happiness showed no long-term trend and declined between 1960 and 1970. This concept was revived recently by Andrew Oswald of the University of Warwick in 1997, driving media interest in the topic. Recent research has utilised many different forms of measuring happiness, including biological measures, showing similar patterns of results. This goes some way to answering the problems of self-rated happiness. The implication for government policy is that once basic needs are met, policy should focus not on economic growth or GDP, but rather on increasing life satisfaction or Gross national happiness (GNH). In 2003 Ruut Veenhoven and Michael Hagerty published a new analysis based on including various sources of data, and their conclusion was that there is no paradox and countries did indeed get happier with increasing income.[2] In his reply Easterlin maintained his position, suggesting that his critics were using inadequate data.[3] In 2008, economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, both of the University of Pennsylvania, published a paper where they reassessed the Easterlin paradox using new time-series data. They conclude like Veenhoven et al. that, contrary to Easterlin's claim, increases in absolute income are clearly linked to increased self-reported happiness, for both individual people and whole countries.[2][4][5][6] The statistical relationship demonstrated is between happiness and the logarithm of absolute income, suggesting that happiness increases more slowly than income, but no "saturation point" is ever reached. The study provides evidence that happiness is determined not only by relative income, but also by absolute income. That is in contrast to an extreme understanding of the hedonic treadmill theory where "keeping up with the Joneses" is the only determinant of behavior.[6] In 2010 Easterlin published as lead author a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reaffirming the Easterlin Paradox with data from a sample of 37 countries.[7]
Easterlin paradox
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Notes
[1] Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot? Some Empirical Evidence. (http:/ / graphics8. nytimes. com/ images/ 2008/ 04/ 16/ business/ Easterlin1974. pdf) [2] WEALTH AND HAPPINESS REVISITED Growing wealth of nations does go with greater happiness (http:/ / www2. eur. nl/ fsw/ research/ veenhoven/ Pub2000s/ 2003e-full. pdf) [3] "FEEDING THE ILLUSION OF GROWTH AND HAPPINESS: A REPLY TO HAGERTY AND VEENHOVEN" by Richard A. Easterlin (http:/ / www-rcf. usc. edu/ ~easterl/ papers/ HVcomment. pdf) [4] Leonhardt, David (16 April 2008). "Maybe Money Does Buy Happiness After All" (http:/ / www. nytimes. com/ 2008/ 04/ 16/ business/ 16leonhardt. html). The New York Times. . [5] Economic Growth and Subjective Well-Being: Reassessing the Easterlin Paradox (http:/ / bpp. wharton. upenn. edu/ betseys/ papers/ Happiness. pdf) [6] Akst, Daniel (23 November 2008). "A talk with Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers" (http:/ / www. boston. com/ bostonglobe/ ideas/ articles/ 2008/ 11/ 23/ a_talk_with_betsey_stevenson_and_justin_wolfers/ ?page=full). The Boston Globe. . [7] Alok Jha: Happiness doesn't increase with growing wealth of nations, finds study (http:/ / www. guardian. co. uk/ science/ 2010/ dec/ 13/ happiness-growing-wealth-nations-study). In: The Guardian. 13 December 2010
References
Easterlin, Richard A. (1974) "Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot?" in Paul A. David and Melvin W. Reder, eds., Nations and Households in Economic Growth: Essays in Honor of Moses Abramovitz, New York: Academic Press, Inc. Easterlin, Richard A.; Angelescu McVey, Laura Angelescu McVey; Switek, Malgorzata; Sawangfa, Onnicha; Smith Zweig, Jacqueline (2010), "The happinessincome paradox revisited", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 107 (52): 2246322468, doi:10.1073/pnas.1015962107 Oswald, Andrew. (2006) "The Hippies Were Right all Along about Happiness" Financial Times, January 19, 2006.
External links
It's experts that make us miserable (http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2000672,00.html) Nick Cohen - The Guardian - January 28, 2007. Andrew Oswald's Website (http://www.andrewoswald.com/). The Hippies Were Right all Along about Happiness (http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/ faculty/oswald/fthappinessjan96.pdf) - Andrew Oswald - Financial Times - January 19, 2006. Happiness Is Increasing in Many Countries -- But Why? (http://pewglobal.org/commentary/display. php?AnalysisID=1020) - Bruce Stokes - July 24, 2007.
Ellsberg paradox
59
Ellsberg paradox
The Ellsberg paradox is a paradox in decision theory and experimental economics in which people's choices violate the expected utility hypothesis.[1] One interpretation is that expected utility theory does not properly describe actual human choices. It is generally taken to be evidence for ambiguity aversion. The paradox was popularized by Daniel Ellsberg, although a version of it was noted considerably earlier by John Maynard Keynes.[2] Ellsberg raised two problems: 1 urn problem and 2 urn problem. Here, 1 urn problem is described, which is the better known one.
The 1 urn paradox

Suppose you have an urn containing 30 red balls and 60 other balls that are either black or yellow. You don't know how many black or how many yellow balls there are, but that the total number of black balls plus the total number of yellow equals 60. The balls are well mixed so that each individual ball is as likely to be drawn as any other. You are now given a choice between two gambles:
Gamble A Gamble B
You receive $100 if you draw a red ball You receive $100 if you draw a black ball
Also you are given the choice between these two gambles (about a different draw from the same urn):
Gamble C Gamble D
You receive $100 if you draw a red or yellow ball You receive $100 if you draw a black or yellow ball
This situation poses both Knightian uncertainty whether the non-red balls are all yellow or all black, which is not quantified and probability whether the ball is red or non-red, which is vs. .
Utility theory interpretation

Utility theory models the choice by assuming that in choosing between these gambles, people assume a probability that the non-red balls are yellow versus black, and then compute the expected utility of the two gambles. Since the prizes are exactly the same, it follows that you will prefer Gamble A to Gamble B if and only if you believe that drawing a red ball is more likely than drawing a black ball (according to expected utility theory). Also, there would be no clear preference between the choices if you thought that a red ball was as likely as a black ball. Similarly it follows that you will prefer Gamble C to Gamble D if, and only if, you believe that drawing a red or yellow ball is more likely than drawing a black or yellow ball. It might seem intuitive that, if drawing a red ball is more likely than drawing a black ball, then drawing a red or yellow ball is also more likely than drawing a black or yellow ball. So, supposing you prefer Gamble A to Gamble B, it follows that you will also prefer Gamble C to Gamble D. And, supposing instead that you prefer Gamble B to Gamble A, it follows that you will also prefer Gamble D to Gamble C. When surveyed, however, most people strictly prefer Gamble A to Gamble B and Gamble D to Gamble C. Therefore, some assumptions of the expected utility theory are violated.
Ellsberg paradox
60
Mathematical demonstration
Mathematically, your estimated probabilities of each color ball can be represented as: R, Y, and B. If you strictly prefer Gamble A to Gamble B, by utility theory, it is presumed this preference is reflected by the expected utilities of the two gambles: specifically, it must be the case that
where
is your utility function. If
(you strictly prefer $100 to nothing), this simplifies to:
If you also strictly prefer Gamble D to Gamble C, the following inequality is similarly obtained:
This simplifies to:
This contradiction indicates that your preferences are inconsistent with expected-utility theory.
Generality of the paradox

Note that the result holds regardless of your utility function. Indeed, the amount of the payoff is likewise irrelevant. Whichever gamble you choose, the prize for winning it is the same, and the cost of losing it is the same (no cost), so ultimately, there are only two outcomes: you receive a specific amount of money, or you receive nothing. Therefore it is sufficient to assume that you prefer receiving some money to receiving nothing (and in fact, this assumption is not necessary in the mathematical treatment above, it was assumed U($100) > U($0), but a contradiction can still be obtained for U($100) < U($0) and for U($100) = U($0)). In addition, the result holds regardless of your risk aversion. All the gambles involve risk. By choosing Gamble D, you have a 1 in 3 chance of receiving nothing, and by choosing Gamble A, you have a 2 in 3 chance of receiving nothing. If Gamble A was less risky than Gamble B, it would follow that Gamble C was less risky than Gamble D (and vice versa), so, risk is not averted in this way. However, because the exact chances of winning are known for Gambles A and D, and not known for Gambles B and C, this can be taken as evidence for some sort of ambiguity aversion which cannot be accounted for in expected utility theory. It has been demonstrated that this phenomenon occurs only when the choice set permits comparison of the ambiguous proposition with a less vague proposition (but not when ambiguous propositions are evaluated in isolation).[3]
Possible explanations
There have been various attempts to provide decision-theoretic explanations of Ellsberg's observation. Since the probabilistic information available to the decision-maker is incomplete, these attempts sometimes focus on quantifying the non-probabilistic ambiguity which the decision-maker faces see Knightian uncertainty. That is, these alternative approaches sometimes suppose that the agent formulates a subjective (though not necessarily Bayesian) probability for possible outcomes. One such attempt is based on info-gap decision theory. The agent is told precise probabilities of some outcomes, though the practical meaning of the probability numbers is not entirely clear. For instance, in the gambles discussed above, the probability of a red ball is 30/90, which is a precise number. Nonetheless, the agent may not distinguish, intuitively, between this and, say, 30/91. No probability information whatsoever is provided regarding other outcomes, so the agent has very unclear subjective impressions of these probabilities.
Ellsberg paradox In light of the ambiguity in the probabilities of the outcomes, the agent is unable to evaluate a precise expected utility. Consequently, a choice based on maximizing the expected utility is also impossible. The info-gap approach supposes that the agent implicitly formulates info-gap models for the subjectively uncertain probabilities. The agent then tries to satisfice the expected utility and to maximize the robustness against uncertainty in the imprecise probabilities. This robust-satisficing approach can be developed explicitly to show that the choices of decision-makers should display precisely the preference reversal which Ellsberg observed.[4] Another possible explanation is that this type of game triggers a deceit aversion mechanism. Many humans naturally assume in real-world situations that if they are not told the probability of a certain event, it is to deceive them. People make the same decisions in the experiment that they would about related but not identical real-life problems where the experimenter would be likely to be a deceiver acting against the subject's interests. When faced with the choice between a red ball and a black ball, the probability of 30/90 is compared to the lower part of the 0/90-60/90 range (the probability of getting a black ball). The average person expects there to be fewer black balls than yellow balls because in most real-world situations, it would be to the advantage of the experimenter to put fewer black balls in the urn when offering such a gamble. On the other hand, when offered a choice between red and yellow balls and black and yellow balls, people assume that there must be fewer than 30 yellow balls as would be necessary to deceive them. When making the decision, it is quite possible that people simply forget to consider that the experimenter does not have a chance to modify the contents of the urn in between the draws. In real-life situations, even if the urn is not to be modified, people would be afraid of being deceived on that front as well. A modification of utility theory to incorporate uncertainty as distinct from risk is Choquet expected utility, which also proposes a solution to the paradox.
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References
[1] Ellsberg, Daniel (1961). "Risk, Ambiguity, and the Savage Axioms". Quarterly Journal of Economics 75 (4): 643669. doi:10.2307/1884324. JSTOR1884324. [2] (Keynes 1921, pp.7576, paragraph 315, footnote 2) [3] Fox, Craig R.; Tversky, Amos (1995). "Ambiguity Aversion and Comparative Ignorance". Quarterly Journal of Economics 110 (3): 585603. doi:10.2307/2946693. JSTOR2946693. [4] Ben-Haim, Yakov (2006). Info-gap Decision Theory: Decisions Under Severe Uncertainty (2nd ed.). Academic Press. section 11.1. ISBN0123735521.
Anand, Paul (1993). Foundations of Rational Choice Under Risk. Oxford University Press. ISBN0198233035. Keynes, John Maynard (1921). A Treatise on Probability. London: Macmillan. Schmeidler, D. (1989). "Subjective Probability and Expected Utility without Additivity". Econometrica 57 (3): 571587. doi:10.2307/1911053. JSTOR1911053.
Green paradox
62
Green paradox
The Green Paradox is a phrase coined by German economist Hans-Werner Sinn to describe the fact that an environmental policy that becomes greener with the passage of time acts like an announced expropriation for the owners of fossil fuel resources, inducing them to anticipate resource extraction and hence to accelerate global warming.
Main line of reasoning

The Green Paradoxs line of reasoning starts by recognizing a fundamental, unavoidable fact: every carbon atom in the gas, coal or oil extracted from the ground to be used as fuel ends up in the atmosphere, in particular if high efficiency combustion processes ensure that no part of it ends up as soot. About a quarter of the emitted carbon will stay in the atmosphere practically forever, contributing to the greenhouse effect that causes global warming.[1] Apart from afforestation, only two things can mitigate the accumulation of carbon in the atmosphere: either less carbon is extracted from the ground, or it is injected back underground after harvesting its energy. Environmental policy efforts, however, in particular European ones, go in neither of these two directions, aiming instead at the promotion of alternative, CO2-free energy sources and a more efficient use of energy. In other words, they only address the demand side of the carbon market, neglecting the supply side. Despite considerable investment, the efforts to curtail demand have not reduced the aggregate amount of CO2 emitted globally, which continues to increase unabated.[2] The reason behind this, according to Sinn, is that green policies, by heralding a gradual tightening of policy over the coming decades, exert a stronger downward pressure on future prices than on current ones, decreasing thus the rate of capital appreciation of the fossil fuel deposits. The owners of these resources regard this development with concern and react by increasing extraction volumes, converting the proceeds into investments in the capital markets, which offer higher yields. That is the green paradox: environmental policy slated to become greener over time acts as an announced expropriation that provokes owners to react by accelerating the rate of extraction of their fossil fuel stocks,[3] thus accelerating climate change. Countries that do not partake of the efforts to curb demand have a double advantage. They burn the carbon set free by the green countries (leakage effect) and they also burn the additional carbon extracted as a reaction to the announced and expected price cuts resulting from the gradual greening of environmental policies (green paradox).[4] Sinn writes in his abstract that: "[Demand reduction strategies] simply depress the world price of carbon and induce the environmental sinners to consume what the Kyoto countries have economized on. Even worse, if suppliers feel threatened by a gradual greening of economic policies in the Kyoto countries that would damage their future prices, they will extract their stocks more rapidly, thus accelerating global warming." [5] Sinn emphasizes that a condition for the green paradox is that the resource be scarce in the sense that its price will always be higher than the unit extraction and exploration costs combined. He points out that this condition is likely to be satisfied as backstop technologies will at best offer a perfect substitute for electricity, but not for fossil fuels. The prices of coal and crude oil are currently many times higher than the corresponding exploration and extraction costs combined.
Green paradox
63
Practicable solutions
An effective climate policy must perforce focus on the hitherto neglected supply side of the carbon market in addition to the demand side. The ways proposed as practicable by Sinn to do this include levying a withholding tax on the capital gains on the financial investments of fossil fuel resource owners, or the establishment of a seamless global emissions trading system that would effectively put a cap on worldwide fossil fuel consumption, thereby achieving the desired reduction in carbon extraction rates.
Works on the subject

Hans-Werner Sinns ideas on the green paradox have been presented in detail in a number of scientific articles,[6][7] his 2007 Thnen Lecture[8] at the annual meeting of the German Economic Association (Verein fr Socialpolitik), his 2007 presidential address to the International Institute of Public Finance in Warwick, two working papers,[9][10] and a German-language book, Das Grne Paradoxon (2008).[11] They build on his earlier studies on supply reactions of the owners of natural resources to announced price changes.[12]

[1] D. Archer, Fate of Fossil Fuel CO2 in Geologic Time, Journal of Geophysical Research 110, 2005, p. 511; D. Archer and V. Brovkin, Millennial Atmospheric Lifetime of Anthropogenic CO2, Climate Change, mimeo, 2006; G. Hoos, R. Voss, K. Hasselmann, E. MeierReimer and F. Joos, A Nonlinear Impulse Response Model of the Coupled Carbon Cycle-Climate System (NICCS), Climate Dynamics 18, 2001, p. 189202. [2] International Energy Agency (IEA), IEA Database, CO2 Emissions from Fuel Combustion 2007. Accessible online at: www.sourceoecd.org (http:/ / www. sourceoecd. org); Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, Global CO2 Emissions: Increase Continued in 2007, Bilthoven, June 13, 2008. Accessible online at: (http:/ / www. mnp. nl/ en/ publications/ 2008/ GlobalCO2emissionsthrough2007. html) [3] N.V. Long, Resource Extraction under the Uncertainty about Possible Nationalization, Journal of Economic Theory 10, 1975, p. 42 53. K. A. Konrad, T. E. Olson and R. Schb, Resource Extraction and the Threat of Possible Expropriation: The Role of Swiss Bank Accounts, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 26, 1994, p. 149162. [4] S. Felder and T. F. Rutherford, Unilateral CO2 Reductions and Carbon Leakage: The Consequences of International Trade in Oil and Basic Materials, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 25, 1993, p. 162176, and J.-M. Burniaux and J. Oliveira Martins, Carbon Emission Leakages: A General Equilibrium View, OECD Working Paper No. 242, 2000. [5] Sinn, H.W. (2008). Public policies against global warming, International Tax and Public Finance, 15, 4, 360-394. Accessible online at: (http:/ / www. cesifo-group. de/ portal/ page/ portal/ ifoContent/ N/ rts/ rts-mitarbeiter/ IFOMITARBSINNCV/ CVSinnPDF/ CVSinnPDFrefjournals2007/ ITAX-hws-2008. pdf) [6] Public Policies against Global Warming: A Supply Side Approach, International Tax and Public Finance 15, 2008, p. 360394. [7] H.-W. Sinn, Das grne Paradoxon: Warum man das Angebot bei der Klimapolitik nicht vergessen darf, Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik 9, 2008, p. 109142. [8] http:/ / www. cesifo-group. de/ link/ _ifovideo/ thuenen-vorlesung-1007. htm [9] H.-W. Sinn, Public Policies against Global Warming, CESifo Working Paper No. 2087 (http:/ / www. cesifo-group. de/ portal/ page/ portal/ ifoHome/ b-publ/ b3publwp/ _wp_abstract?p_file_id=14563), August 2007 [10] H.-W. Sinn, Pareto Optimality in the Extraction of Fossil Fuels and the Greenhouse Effect: A Note, CESifo Working Paper No. 2083 (http:/ / www. cesifo-group. de/ portal/ page/ portal/ ifoHome/ b-publ/ b3publwp/ _wp_abstract?p_file_id=14562), August 2007 [11] Das grne Paradoxon - Pldoyer fr eine illusionsfreie Klimapolitik (http:/ / www. cesifo-group. de/ link/ _publsinnparadoxon), Econ: Berlin, 2008, 480 pages. [12] H-W. Sinn, Absatzsteuern, lfrderung und das Allmendeproblem (Sales Taxes, Oil Extraction and the Common Pool Problem) (http:/ / www. cesifo-group. de/ link/ Sinn_Abs_Oel_Allmend_1982. pdf), in: H. Siebert, ed., Reaktionen auf Energiepreisnderungen, Lang: Frankfurt and Bern 1982, pp. 83-103; N.V. Long and H.-W. Sinn, Surprise Price Shifts, Tax Changes and the Supply Behaviour of Resource Extracting Firms (http:/ / www. cesifo-group. de/ link/ Sinn_Surpr_Price_Shift_AEP_1985. pdf), Australian Economic Papers 24, 1985, pp. 278-289.
Icarus paradox
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Icarus paradox
The Icarus paradox is a neologism coined by Danny Miller, and popularized by his 1990 book by the same name,[1] for the observed phenomenon of businesses that fail abruptly after a period of apparent success. [2] In a 1992 article, Miller noted that some businesses bring about their own downfall through their own successes, be this through over-confidence, exaggeration, complacency. It refers to Icarus of Greek mythology who flew too close to the Sun and melted his own wings. The book is a key source of insight in Escaping the Progress trap by Daniel O'Leary.[3]
References
[1] Michael P. Griffin (December 1, 1990). "The Icarus Paradox.-(book reviews)" (http:/ / www. accessmylibrary. com/ coms2/ summary_0286-9218419_ITM). Management Review. . Retrieved 2008-01-06. [2] Harry Barkema (January 23, 2003). "The Icarus Paradox" (http:/ / www. uvt. nl/ univers/ nieuws/ 0203/ 17/ barkema. html). Univers. . Retrieved 2008-01-06. [3] Danny Miller (JanuaryFebruary, 1992). "The Icarus paradox: how exceptional companies bring about their own downfall". Business Horizons.
Jevons paradox
In economics, the Jevons paradox (sometimes Jevons effect) is the proposition that technological progress that increases the efficiency with which a resource is used, tends to increase (rather than decrease) the rate of consumption of that resource.[1] In 1865, the English economist William Stanley Jevons observed that technological improvements that increased the efficiency of coal-use led to the increased consumption of coal in a wide range of industries. He argued that, contrary to common intuition, technological improvements could not be relied upon to reduce fuel consumption.[2]
The issue has more recently been reexamined by modern economists studying consumption rebound effects from improved energy efficiency. In addition to reducing the amount needed for a given use, improved efficiency lowers the relative cost of using a resource, which increases the quantity demanded of the resource, potentially counteracting any savings from increased efficiency. Additionally, increased efficiency accelerates economic growth, further increasing the demand for resources. The Jevons paradox occurs when the effect from increased demand predominates, causing an increase in overall resource use. The Jevons paradox has been used to argue that energy conservation is futile, as increased efficiency may actually increase fuel use. Nevertheless, increased efficiency can improve material living standards. Further, fuel use declines if increased efficiency is coupled with a green tax or other conservation policies that keeps the cost of use the same (or higher).[3] As the Jevons paradox applies only to technological improvements that increase fuel efficiency, policies that impose conservation standards and increase costs do not display the Jevons paradox.
Coal-burning factories in 19th-century Manchester, England. Improved technology allowed coal to fuel the Industrial Revolution, greatly increasing the consumption of coal.
Jevons paradox
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History
The Jevons paradox was first identified by William Stanley Jevons in his 1865 book The Coal Question. Jevons observed that England's consumption of coal soared after James Watt introduced his coal-fired steam engine, which greatly improved the efficiency of Thomas Newcomen's earlier design. Watt's innovations made coal a more cost-effective power source, leading to the increased use of the steam engine in a wide range of industries. This in turn increased total coal consumption, even as the amount of coal required for any particular application fell. Jevons argued in The Coal Question that improvements in fuel efficiency tend to increase, rather than decrease, fuel use: "It is a confusion of ideas to suppose that the economical use of fuel is equivalent to diminished consumption. The very contrary is the truth."[4]
William Stanley Jevons At that time, many in Britain worried that coal reserves were rapidly dwindling, but some experts opined that improving technology would reduce coal consumption. Jevons argued that this view was incorrect, as further increases in efficiency would tend to increase the use of coal. Hence, improving technology would tend to increase, rather than reduce, the rate at which England's coal deposits were being depleted.[2][4]
Cause
Rebound effect
One way to understand the Jevons paradox is to observe that an increase in the efficiency with which a resource (e.g., fuel) is used causes a decrease in the price of that resource when measured in terms of what it can achieve (e.g., work). Generally speaking, a decrease in the price of a good or service will increase the quantity demanded (see supply and Elastic Demand for Work: A doubling of fuel efficiency more than doubles work demand, demand curve). Thus with a demanded, increasing the amount of fuel used. Jevons paradox occurs. lower price for work, more work will be "purchased" (indirectly, by buying more fuel). The resulting increase in the demand for fuel is known as the rebound effect. This increase in demand may or may not be large enough to offset the original drop in demand from the increased efficiency. The Jevons paradox occurs when the rebound effect is greater than 100percent, exceeding the original
Jevons paradox
66 efficiency gains. This greater than 100percent rebound has been called 'backfire'.[2]
Consider a simple case: a perfectly competitive market where fuel is the sole input used, and the only determinant of the cost of work. If the price of fuel remains constant, but the efficiency of its conversion into work is doubled, the effective price of work is halved and so twice as much work can be purchased for the same amount Inelastic Demand for Work:A doubling of fuel efficiency does not double work demanded, the amount of fuel used decreases. Jevons paradox does not occur. of money. If the amount of work purchased more than doubles (i.e., demand for work is elastic, the price elasticity is larger than 1 in magnitude), then the quantity of fuel used would increase, not decrease. If however, the demand for work is inelastic (price elasticity is smaller than 1 in magnitude), the amount of work purchased would less than double, and the quantity of fuel used would decrease. A full analysis would also have to take into account the fact that products (work) use more than one type of input (e.g., fuel, labor, machinery), and that other factors besides input cost (e.g., a non-competitive market structure) may also affect the price of work. These factors would tend to decrease the effect of fuel efficiency on the price of work, and hence reduce the rebound effect, making the Jevons paradox less likely to occur. Additionally, any change in the demand for fuel would have an effect on the price of fuel, and also on the effective price of work.
KhazzoomBrookes postulate
In the 1980s, the economists Daniel Khazzoom and Leonard Brookes revisited the Jevons paradox for the case of a society's energy use. Brookes, then chief economist at the UK Atomic Energy Authority, argued that attempts to reduce energy consumption by increasing energy efficiency would simply raise demand for energy in the economy as a whole. Khazzoom focused on the narrower point that the potential for rebound was ignored in mandatory performance standards for domestic appliances being set by the California Energy Commission. In 1992, the economist Harry Saunders dubbed the hypothesisthat improvements in energy efficiency work to increase, rather than decrease, energy consumptionthe KhazzoomBrookes postulate. Saunders showed that the KhazzoomBrookes postulate was consistent with neo-classical growth theory (the mainstream economic theory of capital accumulation, technological progress and long-run economic growth) under a wide range of assumptions.[5] According to Saunders, increased energy efficiency tends to increase energy consumption by two means. First, increased energy efficiency makes the use of energy relatively cheaper, thus encouraging increased use (the direct rebound effect). Second, increased energy efficiency leads to increased economic growth, which pulls up energy use for the whole economy. At the microeconomic level (looking at an individual market), even with the rebound effect, improvements in energy efficiency usually result in reduced energy consumption.[6] That is, the rebound effect is usually less than 100percent. However, at the macroeconomic level, more efficient (and hence comparatively cheaper) energy leads to faster economic growth, which in turn increases energy use throughout the economy. Saunders concludes that, taking into account both the microeconomic and the macroeconomic effects, technological progress that improves energy efficiency will tend to increase overall energy use.
Jevons paradox
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Energy conservation policy

Jevons warned that fuel efficiency gains tend to increase, rather than reduce, fuel use. This does not imply that increased fuel efficiency is worthless. Increased fuel efficiency enables greater production and a higher quality of material life. For example, a more efficient steam engine allowed the cheaper transport of goods and people that contributed to the Industrial Revolution. However, if the KhazzoomBrookes postulate is correct, increased fuel efficiency will not reduce the rate of depletion of fossil fuels. The Jevons paradox is sometimes used to argue that energy conservation efforts are futile. For example, that more efficient use of oil will lead to increased demand, and will not slow the arrival or the effects of peak oil. This argument is usually presented as a reason not to impose environmental policies, or to increase fuel efficiency (e.g. if cars are more efficient, it will simply lead to more driving).[7][8] Several points have been raised against this argument. First, in the context of a mature market such as for oil in developed countries, the direct rebound effect is usually small, and so increased fuel efficiency usually reduces resource use, other conditions remaining constant.[6][9][10] Second, even if increased efficiency does not reduce the total amount of fuel used, there remain other benefits associated with improved efficiency. For example, increased fuel efficiency may mitigate the price increases, shortages and disruptions in the global economy associated with peak oil.[11] Third, environmental economists have pointed out that fuel use will unambiguously decrease if increased efficiency is coupled with an intervention (e.g. a green tax) that keeps the cost of fuel use the same or higher.[3] The Jevons paradox indicates that increased efficiency, by itself, is unlikely to reduce fuel use, and that sustainable energy policy must rely on other types of government interventions.[12] As the Jevons paradox only applies to technological improvements that increase fuel efficiency, the imposition of conservation standards that simultaneously increase costs do not cause a paradoxical increase in fuel use. To ensure that efficiency enhancing technological improvements actually reduce overall fuel use, efficiency gains must be paired with some government intervention that reduces demand (e.g., green taxes, a cap and trade program, or higher fuel taxes). The ecological economists Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees have suggested that any cost savings from efficiency gains be "taxed away or otherwise removed from further economic circulation. Preferably they should be captured for reinvestment in natural capital rehabilitation."[3] By mitigating the economic effects of government interventions designed to promote ecologically sustainable activities, efficiency-improving technological progress may make the imposition of these interventions more palatable, and more likely to be implemented.[13]
References
[1] Alcott, Blake (July 2005). "Jevons' paradox" (http:/ / www. sciencedirect. com/ science/ article/ B6VDY-4G7GFMG-1/ 2/ 5da4f921421a31032f8fcd6971b0e177). Ecological Economics 54 (1): 921. doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2005.03.020. . Retrieved 2010-08-08. [2] Alcott, Blake (2008). "Historical Overview of the Jevons Paradox in the Literature". In JM Polimeni, K Mayumi, M Giampietro. The Jevons Paradox and the Myth of Resource Efficiency Improvements. Earthscan. pp.778. ISBN1844074625. [3] Wackernagel, Mathis; Rees, William (1997). "Perceptual and structural barriers to investing in natural capital: Economics from an ecological footprint perspective". Ecological Economics 20 (3): 324. doi:10.1016/S0921-8009(96)00077-8. [4] Jevons, William Stanley (1866). "VII" (http:/ / www. econlib. org/ library/ YPDBooks/ Jevons/ jvnCQ0. html). The Coal Question (2nd ed.). London: Macmillan and Company. . Retrieved 2008-07-21. [5] Saunders, Harry D., "The KhazzoomBrookes postulate and neoclassical growth." The Energy Journal, October 1, 1992. [6] Greening, L; David L. Greene,Carmen Difiglio (2000). "Energy efficiency and consumptionthe rebound effecta survey". Energy Policy 28 (67): 389401. doi:10.1016/S0301-4215(00)00021-5 [7] Potter, Andrew (2007-02-13). "Planet-friendly design? Bah, humbug" (http:/ / web. archive. org/ web/ 20071214235056/ http:/ / www. macleans. ca/ article. jsp?content=20070202_154815_4816). MacLean's 120 (5): 14. Archived from the original (http:/ / www. macleans. ca/ article. jsp?content=20070202_154815_4816) on 2007-12-14. . Retrieved 2010-09-01. [8] Strassel, Kimberley A. (2001-05-17). "Conservation Wastes Energy" (http:/ / web. archive. org/ web/ 20051113194327/ http:/ / www. opinionjournal. com/ columnists/ kstrassel/ ?id=95000484). Wall St. Journal (Wall St. JournalOpinion). Archived from the original (http:/ / www. opinionjournal. com/ columnists/ kstrassel/ ?id=95000484) on 2005-11-13. . Retrieved 2009-07-31. [9] Small, Kenneth A.; Kurt Van Dender (2005-09-21). "The Effect of Improved Fuel Economy on Vehicle Miles Traveled: Estimating the Rebound Effect Using U.S. State Data, 19662001" (http:/ / escholarship. org/ uc/ item/ 1h6141nj). Policy and Economics (University of California Energy Institute, UC Berkeley). . Retrieved 2010-09-01.
Jevons paradox
[10] Gottron, Frank. "Energy Efficiency and the Rebound Effect: Does Increasing Efficiency Decrease Demand?" (http:/ / www. policyarchive. org/ handle/ 10207/ bitstreams/ 3492. pdf). . Retrieved 2012-02-24. [11] Hirsch, R. L., Bezdek, R. and Wendling, R. (2006), Peaking of World Oil Production and Its Mitigation. AIChE Journal, 52: 28. doi: 10.1002/aic.10747 [12] Giampietro, Mario; Kozo Mayumi (2008). "The Jevons Paradox: The Evolution of Complex Adaptive Systems and the Challenge for Scientific Analysis". In JM Polimeni, K Mayumi, M Giampietro. The Jevons Paradox and the Myth of Resource Efficiency Improvements. Earthscan. pp.79140. ISBN1844074625. [13] Laitner, John A.; Stephen J. De Canio and Irene Peters (2003). "Incorporating Behavioural, Social, and Organizational Phenomena in the Assessment of Climate Change Mitigation Options" (http:/ / www. springerlink. com/ content/ n107734r313hh4wp/ ). Society, Behaviour, and Climate Change Mitigation. Advances in Global Change Research 8: 164. doi:10.1007/0-306-48160-X_1. ISBN0-7923-6802-9. . Retrieved 2010-08-08.
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Further reading
Jevons, William Stanley (1866). The Coal Question (http://www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/Jevons/ jvnCQ.html) (2nd ed.). London: Macmillan and Co.. Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology (5 July 2005). "3: The economics of energy efficiency" (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldselect/ldsctech/21/2106.htm). Select Committee on Science and Technology Second Report. Session 2005-06. House of Lords. Herring, Horace (19 July 1999). "Does energy efficiency save energy? The debate and its consequences". Applied Energy 63 (3): 209226. doi:10.1016/S0306-2619(99)00030-6. ISSN03062619. Owen, David (December 20, 2010). "Annals of Environmentalism: The Efficiency Dilemma" (http://www. newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/20/101220fa_fact_owen). The New Yorker: pp.78. Schipper, Lee (November 26, 1994). "Energy Efficiency Works, and It Saves Money" (http://query.nytimes. com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9904E4D61530F935A15752C1A962958260). The New York Times.
External links
Rocky Mountain Institute (May 1, 2008). "Beating the Energy Efficiency Paradox (Part I)" (http://www. treehugger.com/files/2008/05/beating-energy-efficiency-paradox.php). TreeHugger.
Leontief paradox
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Leontief paradox
Leontief's paradox in economics is that the country with the world's highest capital-per worker has a lower capital/labor ratio in exports than in imports. This econometric find was the result of Professor Wassily W. Leontief's attempt to test the Heckscher-Ohlin theory empirically. In 1954, Leontief found that the U.S. (the most capital-abundant country in the world) exported labor-intensive commodities and imported capital-intensive commodities, in contradiction with Heckscher-Ohlin theory ("H-O theory").
Measurements
In 1971 Robert Baldwin showed that US imports were 27% more capital-intensive than US exports in the 1962 trade data,[1] using a measure similar to Leontief's. In 1980 Edward Leamer questioned Leontief's original methodology on Real exchange rate grounds, but acknowledged that the US paradox still appears in the data (for years other than 1947).[2] A 1999 survey of the econometric literature by Elhanan Helpman concluded that the paradox persists, but some studies in non-US trade were instead consistent with the H-O theory. In 2005 Kwok & Yu used an updated methodology to argue for a lower or zero paradox in US trade statistics, though the paradox is still derived in other developed nations.[3]
Responses to the paradox

For many economists, Leontief's paradox undermined the validity of the Heckscher-Ohlin theorem (H-O) theory, which predicted that trade patterns would be based on countries' comparative advantage in certain factors of production (such as capital and labor). Many economists have dismissed the H-O theory in favor of a more Ricardian model where technological differences determine comparative advantage. These economists argue that the U.S. has an advantage in highly skilled labor more so than capital. This can be seen as viewing "capital" more broadly, to include human capital. Using this definition, the exports of the U.S. are very (human) capital-intensive, and not particularly intensive in (unskilled) labor. Some explanations for the paradox dismiss the importance of comparative advantage as a determinant of trade. For instance, the Linder hypothesis states that demand plays a more important role than comparative advantage as a determinant of trade--with the hypothesis that countries which share similar demands will be more likely to trade. For instance, both the U.S. and Germany are developed countries with a significant demand for cars, so both have large automotive industries. Rather than one country dominating the industry with a comparative advantage, both countries trade different brands of cars between them. Similarly, New Trade Theory argues that comparative advantages can develop separately from factor endowment variation (e.g. in industrial increasing returns to scale).
References
[1] "Leontief Paradox" (http:/ / www. econ. iastate. edu/ classes/ econ355/ choi/ leo. htm). . Retrieved 2007-11-05. [2] Duchin, Faye (2000). "International Trade: Evolution in the Thought and Analysis of Wassily Leontief" (http:/ / www. wassily. leontief. net/ PDF/ Duchin. pdf). p.3. . [3] "Leontief paradox and the role of factor intensity measurement" (http:/ / editorialexpress. com/ cgi-bin/ conference/ download. cgi?db_name=ACE2005& paper_id=224). 2005. .
Lucas paradox
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Lucas paradox
In economics, the Lucas paradox or the Lucas puzzle is the observation that capital does not flow from developed countries to developing countries despite the fact that developing countries have lower levels of capital per worker.[1] Classical economic theory predicts that capital should flow from rich countries to poor countries, due to the effect of diminishing returns of capital. Poor countries have lower levels of capital per worker which explains, in part, why they are poor. In poor countries, the scarcity of capital relative to labor should mean that the returns related to the infusion of capital are higher than in developed countries. In response, savers in rich countries should look at poor countries as profitable places in which to invest. In reality, things just dont seem to work that way. Surprisingly little capital flows from rich countries to poor countries. This puzzle, famously discussed in a paper by Robert Lucas in 1990 and is often referred to as the "Lucas Paradox." The theoretical explanations for the Lucas Paradox can be grouped into two categories.[2] 1. The first group attributes the limited amount of capital received by poorer nations to differences in fundamentals that affect the production structure of the economy, such as technological differences, missing factors of production, government policies, and the institutional structure. 2. The second group of explanations focuses on international capital market imperfections, mainly sovereign risk (risk of nationalization) and asymmetric information. Although the expected return on investment might be high in many developing countries, it does not flow there because of the high level of uncertainty associated with those expected returns.
Examples of the Lucas Paradox: 20th century development of Third World nations
Lucas seminal paper was a reaction to observed trends in international development efforts during the 20th century. Regions characterized by poverty, such as India, China and Africa, have received particular attention with regard to the underinvestment predicted by Lucas. Africa, with its impoverished populace and rich natural resources, has been upheld as exemplifying the type of the nation that would, under neoclassical assumptions, be able to offer extremely high returns to capital. The meager foreign capital Africa receives outside of the charity of multinational corporations reveals the extent to which Lucas captured the realities of todays global capital flows.[3] Authors more recently have focused their explanations for the paradox on Lucas first category of explanation, the difference in fundamentals of the production structure. Some have pointed to the quality of institutions as the key determinant of capital inflows to poorer nations.[4] As evidence for the central role played by institutional stability, it has been shown that the amount of foreign direct investment a country receives is highly correlated to the strength of infrastructure and the stability of government in that country.
Counterexample of the Lucas Paradox; American economic development

Although Lucas original hypothesis has widely been accepted as descriptive of the modern period in history, the paradox does not emerge as clearly before the 20th century. The colonial era, for instance, stands out as an age of unimpeded capital flows. The system of imperialism produced economic conditions particularly amenable to the movement of capital according to the assumptions of classical economics. Britain, for instance, was able to design, impose, and control the quality of institutions in their colonies to capitalize on the high returns to capital in the new world.[5] Jeffrey Williamson has explored in depth this reversal of the Lucas Paradox in the colonial context. Although not emphasized by Lucas himself, Williamson maintains that unimpeded labor migration is one way that capital flows to the citizens of developing nations. The empire structure was particularly important for facilitating low-cost international migration, allowing wage rates to converge across the regions in the British Empire.[6] For instance, in
Lucas paradox the 17th and 18th century, England incentivized its citizens to move to the labor-scarce America, endorsing a system of indentured servitude to make overseas migration affordable. While Britain enabled free capital flow from old to new world, the success of the American enterprise after the American Revolution is a good example of the role of institutional and legal frameworks for facilitating a continued flow of capital. The American Constitutions commitment to private property rights, rights of personal liberty; and strong contract law enabled investment from Britain to America to continue even without the incentives of the colonial relationship.[7] In these ways, early American economic development, both pre and post-revolution, provides a case study for the conditions under which the Lucas Paradox is reversed. Even after the average income level in America exceeded that of Britain, the institutions exported under imperialism and the legal frameworks established after independence enabled long term capital flows from Europe to America.
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References
[1] Lucas, Robert (1990). "Why doesn't Capital Flow from Rich to Poor Countries?". American Economic Review 80 (2): 9296 [2] Alfaro, Laura; KalemliOzcan, Sebnem; Volosovych, Vadym (2008). "Capital Flows in a Globalized World: The Role of Policies and Institutions". Review of Economics and Statistics 90 (2): 347368. doi:10.1162/rest.90.2.347 [3] Montiel, Peter. "Obstacles to Investment in Africa: Explaining the Lucas Paradox" (http:/ / www. imf. org/ external/ np/ seminars/ eng/ 2006/ rppia/ pdf/ montie. pdf). Article. . Retrieved 27 February 2011. [4] Daude, Christian. "THE QUALITY OF INSTITUTIONS AND FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT". Article. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0343.2007.00318.x. [5] Schularick, Moritz. "The Lucas Paradox and the Quality of Institutions: Then and Now" (http:/ / www. jfki. fu-berlin. de/ faculty/ economics/ team/ persons/ schularick/ Lucas_discussion_paper_FUB. pdf). . Retrieved 21 February 2011. [6] Williamson, Jeffrey. "Winners and Losers Over Two Centuries of Globalization". National Bureau of Economic Research. [7] Ferguson, Niall. "The British Empire and Globalization" (http:/ / www. originofnations. org/ British_Empire/ british_empire_and_globalization. htm). . Retrieved 28 February 2011.
The Alfaro et al. (2008) article is titled "Why Doesn't Capital Flow from Rich to Poor Countries? An Empirical Investigation"
Metzler paradox
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Metzler paradox
In economics, the Metzler paradox (named after the American economist Lloyd Metzler) is the theoretical possibility that the imposition of a tariff on imports may reduce the relative internal price of that good.[1] It was proposed by Lloyd Metzler in 1949 upon examination of tariffs within the HeckscherOhlin model.[2] The paradox has roughly the same status as immiserizing growth and a transfer that makes the recipient worse off.[3] The strange result could occur if the exporting country's offer curve is very inelastic. In this case, the tariff lowers the duty-free cost of the price of the import by such a great degree that the effect of the improvement of the tariff-imposing countries' terms of trade on relative prices exceeds the amount of the tariff. Such a tariff would not protect the industry competing with the imported goods. It is deemed to be unlikely in practice.[4][5]
References
[1] Casas, Franois R.; Choi, Eun K. (1985). "The Metzler Paradox and the Non-equivalence of Tariffs and Quotas: Further Results". Journal of Economic Studies 12 (5): 5357. doi:10.1108/eb002612. [2] Metzler, Lloyd A. (1949). "Tariffs, the Terms of Trade, and the Distribution of National Income". Journal of Political Economy 57 (1): 129. doi:10.1086/256766. [3] Krugman and Obstfeld (2003), p. 112 [4] de Haan, Werner A.; Visser, Patrice (December 1979). "A note on tariffs, quotas, and the Metzler Paradox: An alternative approach". Review of World Economics 115 (4): 736741. doi:10.1007/bf02696743. [5] Krugman and Obstfeld (2003), p. 113
Further reading
Krugman, Paul R.; Obstfeld, Maurice (2003). "Chapter 5: The Standard Trade Model". International Economics: Theory and Policy (6th ed.). Boston: Addison-Wesley. p.112. ISBN0321116399.
Paradox of thrift
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Paradox of thrift
The paradox of thrift (or paradox of saving) is a paradox of economics, popularized by John Maynard Keynes, though it had been stated as early as 1714 in The Fable of the Bees,[1] and similar sentiments date to antiquity.[2][3] The paradox states that if everyone tries to save more money during times of recession, then aggregate demand will fall and will in turn lower total savings in the population because of the decrease in consumption and economic growth. The paradox is, narrowly speaking, that total savings may fall even when individual savings attempt to rise, and, broadly speaking, that increase in savings may be harmful to an economy.[4] Both the narrow and broad claims are paradoxical within the assumption underlying the fallacy of composition, namely that what is true of the parts must be true of the whole. The narrow claim transparently contradicts this assumption, and the broad one does so by implication, because while individual thrift is generally averred to be good for the economy, the paradox of thrift holds that collective thrift may be bad for the economy. The paradox of thrift is a central component of Keynesian economics, and has formed part of mainstream economics since the late 1940s, though it is criticized on a number of grounds.
Overview
The argument is that, in equilibrium, total income (and thus demand) must equal total output, and that total investment must equal total saving. Assuming that saving rises faster as a function of income than the relationship between investment and output, then an increase in the marginal propensity to save, ceteris paribus, will move the equilibrium point at which income equals output and investment equals savings to lower values. In this form it represents a prisoner's dilemma as saving is beneficial to each individual but deleterious to the general population. This is a "paradox" because it runs contrary to intuition. One who does not know about the paradox of thrift would fall into a fallacy of composition wherein one generalizes what is perceived to be true for an individual within the economy to the overall population. Although exercising thrift may be good for an individual by enabling that individual to save for a "rainy day", it may not be good for the economy as a whole. This paradox can be explained by analyzing the place, and impact, of increased savings in an economy. If a population saves more money (that is the marginal propensity to save increases across all income levels), then total revenues for companies will decline. This decrease in economic growth means fewer salary increases and perhaps downsizing. Eventually the population's total savings will have remained the same or even declined because of lower incomes and a weaker economy. This paradox is based on the proposition, put forth in Keynesian economics, that many economic downturns are demand based. Hypothetically, if all people will save their money, savings will rise but there is a tendency that the macroeconomic status will fall.
History
While the paradox of thrift was popularized by Keynes, and is often attributed to him,[2] it was stated by a number of others prior to Keynes, and the proposition that spending may help and saving may hurt an economy dates to antiquity; similar sentiments occur in the Bible verse: There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth; and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty. Proverbs 11:24 which has found occasional use as an epigram in underconsumptionist writings.[2][5][6][7] Keynes himself notes the appearance of the paradox in The Fable of the Bees: or, Private Vices, Publick Benefits (1714) by Bernard Mandeville, the title itself hinting at the paradox, and Keynes citing the passage:
Paradox of thrift As this prudent economy, which some people call Saving, is in private families the most certain method to increase an estate, so some imagine that, whether a country be barren or fruitful, the same method if generally pursued (which they think practicable) will have the same effect upon a whole nation, and that, for example, the English might be much richer than they are, if they would be as frugal as some of their neighbours. This, I think, is an error. Keynes suggests Adam Smith was referring to this passage when he wrote "What is prudence in the conduct of every private family can scarce be folly in that of a great Kingdom." The problem of underconsumption and oversaving, as they saw it, was developed by underconsumptionist economists of the 19th century, and the paradox of thrift in the strict sense that "collective attempts to save yield lower overall savings" was explicitly stated by John M. Robertson in his 1892 book The Fallacy of Saving,[2][8] writing: Had the whole population been alike bent on saving, the total saved would positively have been much less, inasmuch as (other tendencies remaining the same) industrial paralysis would have been reached sooner or oftener, profits would be less, interest much lower, and earnings smaller and more precarious. This ... is no idle paradox, but the strictest economic truth. John M. Robertson, The Fallacy of Saving, p. 1312 Similar ideas were forwarded by William Trufant Foster and Waddill Catchings in the 1920s in The Dilemma of Thrift [9]. Keynes distinguished between business activity/investment ("Enterprise") and savings ("Thrift") in his Treatise on Money (1930): ...mere abstinence is not enough by itself to build cities or drain fens. ... If Enterprise is afoot, wealth accumulates whatever may be happening to Thrift; and if Enterprise is asleep, wealth decays whatever Thrift may be doing. Thus, Thrift may be the handmaiden of Enterprise. But equally she may not. And, perhaps, even usually she is not. and stated the paradox of thrift in The General Theory, 1936: For although the amount of his own saving is unlikely to have any significant influence on his own income, the reactions of the amount of his consumption on the incomes of others makes it impossible for all individuals simultaneously to save any given sums. Every such attempt to save more by reducing consumption will so affect incomes that the attempt necessarily defeats itself. It is, of course, just as impossible for the community as a whole to save less than the amount of current investment, since the attempt to do so will necessarily raise incomes to a level at which the sums which individuals choose to save add up to a figure exactly equal to the amount of investment. John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, Chapter 7, p. 84 The theory is referred to as the "paradox of thrift" in Samuelson's influential Economics of 1948, which popularized the term.
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Paradox of thrift
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Related concepts
The paradox of thrift has been related to the debt deflation theory of economic crises, being called "the paradox of debt"[10] people save not to increase savings, but rather to pay down debt. As well, a paradox of toil and a paradox of flexibility have been proposed: A willingness to work more in a liquidity trap and wage flexibility after a debt deflation shock may lead not only to lower wages, but lower employment.[11]
Criticisms
Within mainstream economics, non-Keynesian economists, particularly neoclassical economists, criticize this theory on three principal grounds. The first criticism is that, following Say's law and the related circle of ideas, if demand slackens, prices will fall (barring government intervention), and the resulting lower price will stimulate demand (though at lower profit or cost possibly even lower wages). This criticism in turn has been questioned by Keynesian economists, who reject Say's law and instead point to evidence of sticky prices as a reason why prices do not fall in recession; this remains a debated point. The second criticism is that savings represent loanable funds, particularly at banks, assuming the savings are held at banks, rather than currency itself being held ("stashed under one's mattress"). Thus an accumulation of savings yields an increase in potential lending, which will lower interest rates and stimulate borrowing. So a decline in consumer spending is offset by an increase in lending, and subsequent investment and spending. Two caveats are added to this criticism. Firstly, if savings are held as cash, rather than being loaned out (directly by savers, or indirectly, as via bank deposits), then loanable funds do not increase, and thus a recession may be caused but this is due to holding cash, not to saving per se.[12] Secondly, banks themselves may hold cash, rather than loaning it out, which results in the growth of excess reserves funds on deposit but not loaned out. This is argued to occur in liquidity trap situations, when interest rates are at a zero lower bound (or near it) and savings still exceed investment demand. Within Keynesian economics, the desire to hold currency rather than loan it out is discussed under liquidity preference. Third, the paradox assumes a closed economy in which savings are not invested abroad (to fund exports of local production abroad). Thus, while the paradox may hold at the global level, it need not hold at the local or national level: if one nation increases savings, this can be offset by trading partners consuming a greater amount relative to their own production, i.e., if the saving nation increases exports, and its partners increase imports. This criticism is not very controversial, and is generally accepted by Keynesian economists as well,[13] who refer to it as "exporting one's way out of a recession". They further note that this frequently occurs in concert with currency devaluation[14] (hence increasing exports and decreasing imports), and cannot work as a solution to a global problem, because the global economy is a closed system not every nation can increase exports.
Austrian School criticism

Within heterodox economics, the paradox was criticized by the Austrian School economist and Nobel Prize winner Friedrich Hayek in a 1929 article, "The 'Paradox' of Savings", attacking the paradox as proposed by Foster and Catchings.[15] Hayek and later Austrian School economists agree that if a population saves more money, total revenues for companies will decline, but they deny the assertion that lower revenues lead to lower economic growth. Austrian School economists believe the productivity of the economy is determined by the consumption-investment ratio, and the demand for money only tells us the degree to which people prefer the utility of money (protection against uncertainty) to the utility of goods. They argue that hoarding of money (an increase in the demand for money) does not necessarily lead to a change in the population's consumption-investment ratio;[16] instead, it may simply be reflected in the price level. For example, if spending falls by half and prices also uniformly fall by half, the consumption-investment ratio and productivity would be left unchanged.
Paradox of thrift
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Notes
[1] Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, Chapter 23. Notes on Merchantilism, the Usury Laws, Stamped Money and Theories of Under-consumption (http:/ / www. marxists. org/ reference/ subject/ economics/ keynes/ general-theory/ ch23. htm) [2] Nash, Robert T.; Gramm, William P. (1969). "A Neglected Early Statement the Paradox of Thrift" (http:/ / hope. dukejournals. org/ cgi/ pdf_extract/ 1/ 2/ 395). History of Political Economy 1 (2): 395400. doi:10.1215/00182702-1-2-395. . [3] See history section for further discussion. [4] These two formulations are given in Campbell R. McConnell (1960: 26162), emphasis added: "By attempting to increase its rate of saving, society may create conditions under which the amount it can actually save is reduced. This phenomenon is called the paradox of thrift....[T]hrift, which has always been held in high esteem in our economy, now becomes something of a social vice." [5] English, Irish and Subversives Among the Dismal Scientists, Noel Thompson, Nigel Allington, 2010, p. 122 (http:/ / books. google. com/ books?id=4fjwxnH8VPcC& pg=PA122& dq="scattereth,+ and+ yet+ increaseth"): "A suggestion that a more equal distribution of income might be a remedy for general stagnation and that excess saving can be harmful is implicit in the quotation from the Old Testament on the Reply to Mr. Say [by John Cazenove (17881879)]. [6] A Reply to Mr. Says Letters to Mr. Malthus, by John Cazenove, uses the verse as an epigram [7] Studies in economics, William Smart, 1895, p. 249 (http:/ / books. google. com/ books?id=YwUPAAAAQAAJ& dq="scattereth,+ and+ yet+ increaseth") [8] Robertson, John M. (1892). The Fallacy of Saving (http:/ / www. archive. org/ stream/ fallacyofsavings00robe/ fallacyofsavings00robe_djvu. txt). . [9] http:/ / books. google. com/ books?id=0flCPQAACAAJ [10] Paradox of thrift (http:/ / krugman. blogs. nytimes. com/ 2009/ 02/ 03/ paradox-of-thrift/ ), Paul Krugman [11] Eggertsson, Gauti B.; Krugman, Paul (14 February 2011), Debt, Deleveraging, and the Liquidity Trap: A Fisher-Minsky-Koo Approach (http:/ / faculty. wcas. northwestern. edu/ ~gep575/ seminars/ spring2011/ EK. pdf), , retrieved 2011-12-15 [12] See section 9.9 and 9.11 http:/ / www. auburn. edu/ ~garriro/ cbm. htm [13] The paradox of thrift for real (http:/ / krugman. blogs. nytimes. com/ 2009/ 07/ 07/ the-paradox-of-thrift-for-real/ ), Paul Krugman, July 7, 2009 [14] Devaluing History (http:/ / krugman. blogs. nytimes. com/ 2010/ 11/ 24/ devaluing-history/ ), Paul Krugman, November 24, 2010 [15] Hayek on the Paradox of Saving (http:/ / mises. org/ story/ 2804) [16] Pages 37-39 of http:/ / www. mises. org/ rothbard/ agd. pdf
References
Samuelson, Paul& Nordhaus, William (2005). Economics (18th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN007-123932-4.
External links
The paradox of thrift explained (http://ingrimayne.saintjoe.edu/econ/Keynes/Paradox.html)
Criticisms
The Paradox of Thrift: RIP (http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj16n1-7.html), by Clifford F. Thies, The Cato Journal, Volume 16, Number 1 Consumers don't cause recessions (http://mises.org/story/3194) by Robert P. Murphy (an Austrian School critique of the paradox of thrift)
Paradox of value
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Paradox of value
The paradox of value (also known as the diamondwater paradox) is the apparent contradiction that, although water is on the whole more useful, in terms of survival, than diamonds, diamonds command a higher price in the market. The philosopher Adam Smith is often considered to be the classic presenter of this paradox. Nicolaus Copernicus[1], John Locke, John Law[2] and others had previously tried to explain the disparity.
Labor theory of value

In a passage of Adam Smith's An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, he discusses the concepts of value in use and value in exchange, and notices how they tend to differ:
Water diamonds.
What are the rules which men naturally observe in exchanging them [goods] for money or for one another, I shall now proceed to examine. These rules determine what may be called the relative or exchangeable value of goods. The word VALUE, it is to be observed, has two different meanings, and sometimes expresses the utility of some particular object, and sometimes the power of purchasing other goods which the possession of that object conveys. The one may be called "value in use;" the other, "value in exchange." The things which have the greatest value in use have frequently little or no value in exchange; on the contrary, those which have the greatest value in exchange have frequently little or no value in use. Nothing is more useful than water: but it will purchase scarce anything; scarce anything can be had in exchange for it. A diamond, on the contrary, has scarce any use-value; but a very great quantity of other goods may frequently be had in exchange for it.[3] Furthermore, he explained the value in exchange as being determined by labor: The real price of every thing, what every thing really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.[4] Hence, Smith denied a necessary relationship between price and utility. Price on this view was related to a factor of production (namely, labor) and not to the point of view of the consumer.[5] Proponents of the labor theory of value saw that as the resolution of the paradox. The labor theory of value has lost popularity in mainstream economics and has been replaced by the theory of marginal utility.
Paradox of value
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Marginalism
The theory of marginal utility, which is based on the subjective theory of value, says that the price at which an object trades in the market is determined neither by how much labor was exerted in its production, as in the labor theory of value, nor on how useful it is on a whole (total utility). Rather, its price is determined by its marginal utility. The marginal utility of a good is derived from its most important use to a person. So, if someone possesses a good, he will use it to satisfy some need or want. Which one? Naturally, the one that takes highest-priority. Eugen von Bhm-Bawerk At low levels of consumption, water has a much higher marginal utility than illustrated this with the example of a farmer [6] diamonds and thus is more valuable. People usually consume water at much higher having five sacks of grain. With the first, levels than they do diamonds and thus the marginal utility and price of water are he will make bread to survive. With the lower than that of diamonds. second, he will make more bread, in order to be strong enough to work. With the next, he will feed his farm animals. The next is used to make whisky, and the last one he feeds to the pigeons. If one of those bags is stolen, he will not reduce each of those activities by one-fifth; instead he will stop feeding the pigeons. So the value of the fifth bag of grain is equal to the satisfaction he gets from feeding the pigeons. If he sells that bag and neglects the pigeons, his least productive use of the remaining grain is to make whisky, so the value of a fourth bag of grain is the value of his whisky. Only if he loses four bags of grain will he start eating less; that is the most productive use of his grain. The last bag of grain is worth his life. In explaining the diamond-water paradox, marginalists explain that it is not the total usefulness of diamonds or water that matters, but the usefulness of each unit of water or diamonds. It is true that the total utility of water to people is tremendous, because they need it to survive. However, since water is in such large supply in the world, the marginal utility of water is low. In other words, each additional unit of water that becomes available can be applied to less urgent uses as more urgent uses for water are satisfied. Therefore, any particular unit of water becomes worth less to people as the supply of water increases. On the other hand, diamonds are in much lower supply. They are of such low supply that the usefulness of one diamond is greater than the usefulness of one glass of water, which is in abundant supply. Thus, diamonds are worth more to people. Therefore, those who want diamonds are willing to pay a higher price for one diamond than for one glass of water, and sellers of diamonds ask a price for one diamond that is higher than for one glass of water.
Paradox of value
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Criticisms
George Stigler has argued that Smith's statement of the paradox is flawed, since it consisted of a comparison between heterogeneous goods, and such comparison would have required using the concept of marginal utility of income. And since this concept was not known in Smith's time, then the value in use and value in exchange judgement may be meaningless: The paradoxthat value in exchange may exceed or fall short of value in usewas, strictly speaking, a meaningless statement, for Smith had no basis (i.e., no concept of marginal utility of income or marginal price of utility) on which he could compare such heterogeneous quantities. On any reasonable interpretation, moreover, Smith's statement that value in use could be less than value in exchange was clearly a moral judgment, not shared by the possessors of diamonds. To avoid the incomparability of money and utility, one may interpret Smith to mean that the ratio of values of two commodities is not equal to the ratio of their total utilities. Or, alternatively, that the ratio of the prices of two commodities is not equal to the ratio of their total utilities; but this also requires an illegitimate selection of units: The price of what quantity of diamonds is to be compared with the price of one gallon of water? George Stigler, The development of Utility Theory. I [7]
References
[1] Gordon, Scott (1991). "Chapter 7: The Scottish Enlightenment of the eighteenth century". History and Philosophy of Social Science: An Introduction. Routledge. p.141. ISBN0-415-09670-7. "This 'paradox of value', as it was called, was frequently noted before Adam Smith (for example, by Copernicus who wrote a bit on economic questions)..." [2] Blaug, Mark (1962). "Chapter 2: Adam Smith". Economic Theory in Retrospect. Cambridge University Press. p.39. ISBN0-521-57701-2. "Moreover, such writers as Locke, Law and Harris had contrasted the value of water with that of diamonds..." [3] Smith, Adam (1776). "Of the Origin and Use of Money" (http:/ / www. econlib. org/ LIBRARY/ Smith/ smWN. html). An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. . Retrieved April 2006. [4] Smith, Adam (1776). "Book I, Chapter V Of the Real and Nominal Price of Commodities, or of their Price in Labour, and their Price in Money" (http:/ / www. econlib. org/ LIBRARY/ Smith/ smWN. html). An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. . Retrieved July 2006. [5] Dhamee, Yousuf(1996?), Adam Smith and the division of labour (http:/ / www. victorianweb. org/ economics/ division. html) accessed 09/08/06 [6] Bhm-Bawerk, Eugen von (1891). "Book III, Chapter IV: The Marginal Utility" (http:/ / www. econlib. org/ library/ BohmBawerk/ bbPTC. html). . . Retrieved 2006-06-20. "A colonial farmer, whose log hut stands by itself in the primeval forest, far away from the busy haunts of men, has just harvested five sacks of corn..." [7] Stigler, George (1950). The development of Utility Theory. I. Journal of political economy 58(4), p 308.
Productivity paradox
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The productivity paradox was analyzed and popularized in a widely-cited article[1] by Erik Brynjolfsson, which noted the apparent contradiction between the remarkable advances in computer power and the relatively slow growth of productivity at the level of the whole economy, individual firms and many specific applications. The concept is sometimes referred to as the Solow computer paradox in reference to Robert Solow's 1987 quip, "You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics."[2] The paradox has been defined as the discrepancy between measures of investment in information technology and measures of output at the national level.[3] It was widely believed that office automation was boosting labor productivity (or total factor productivity). However, the growth accounts didn't seem to confirm the idea. From the early 1970s to the early 1990s there was a massive slow-down in growth as the machines were becoming ubiquitous. (Other variables in country's economies were changing simultaneously; growth accounting separates out the improvement in production output using the same capital and labour resources as input by calculating growth in total factor productivity, AKA the "Solow residual".) The productivity paradox has attracted a lot of recent controversy and has grown outside the original context of computers and communications. Some are now arguing that technology in general is subject to diminishing returns in its ability to increase economic growth.[4]
Explanations
Different authors have explained the paradox in different ways. In his original article, Brynjolfsson (1993) identified four possible explanations: Mismeasurement: the gains are real, but our current measures miss them; Redistribution: there are private gains, but they come at the expense of other firms and individuals, leaving little net gain; Time lags: the gains take a long time to show up; and Mismanagement: there are no gains because of the unusual difficulties in managing IT or information itself. He stressed the first explanation, noting weaknesses with then-existing studies and measurement methods, and pointing out that "a shortfall of evidence is not evidence of a shortfall." Turban, et al. (2008), mention that understanding the paradox requires an understanding of the concept of productivity. Pinsonneault et al. (1998) state that for untangling the paradox an understanding of how IT usage is related to the nature of managerial work and the context in which it is deployed is required. One hypothesis to explain the productivity paradox is that computers are productive, yet their productive gains are realized only after a lag period, during which complementary capital investments must be developed to allow for the use of computers to their full potential.[5] Diminishing marginal returns from computers, the opposite of the time lag hypothesis, is that computers, in the form of mainframes, were used in the most productive areas, like high volume transactions of banking, accounting and airline reservations, over two decades before personal computers. Also, computers replaced a sophisticated system of data processing that used unit record equipment. Therefore the important productivity opportunities were exhausted before computers were everywhere. We were looking at the wrong time period. Another hypothesis states that computers are simply not very productivity enhancing because they require time, a scarce complementary human input. This theory holds that although computers perform a variety of tasks, these tasks are not done in any particularly new or efficient manner, but rather they are only done faster. Current data does not confirm the validity of either hypothesis. It could very well be that increases in productivity due to computers is not captured in GDP measures, but rather in quality changes and new products.
Productivity paradox Economists have done research in the productivity issue and concluded that there are three possible explanations for the paradox. The explanations can be divided in three categories: Data and analytical problems hide "productivity-revenues". The ratios for input and output are sometimes difficult to measure, especially in the service sector. Revenues gained by a company through productivity will be hard to notice because there might be losses in other divisions/departments of the company. So it is again hard to measure the profits made only through investments in productivity. There is complexity in designing, administering and maintaining IT systems. IT projects, especially software development, are notorious for cost overruns and schedule delays. Adding to cost are rapid obsolescence of equipment and software, incompatible software and network platforms and issues with security such as data theft and viruses. This causes constant spending for replacement. One time changes also occur, such as the Year 2000 problem and the changeover from Novell NetWare by many companies. Other economists have made a more controversial charge against the utility of computers: that they pale into insignificance as a source of productivity advantage when compared to the industrial revolution, electrification, infrastructures (canals and waterways, railroads, highway system), Fordist mass production and the replacement of human and animal power with machines. [6] High productivity growth occurred from last decades of the 19th century until the 1973, with a peak from 1929-1973, then declined to levels of the early 19th century. [7][8] There was a rebound in productivity after 2000. Much of the productivity from 1885-2000 came in the computer and related industries.[8] A number of explanations of this have been advanced, including: The tendency at least initially of computer technology to be used for applications that have little impact on overall productivity, e.g. word processing. Inefficiencies arising from running manual paper-based and computer-based processes in parallel, requiring two separate sets of activities and human effort to mediate between them usually considered a technology alignment problem Poor user interfaces that confuse users, prevent or slow access to time-saving facilities, are internally inconsistent both with each other and with terms used in work processes a concern addressed in part by enterprise taxonomy Extremely poor hardware and related boot image control standards that forced users into endless "fixes" as operating systems and applications clashed addressed in part by single board computers and simpler more automated re-install procedures, and the rise of software specifically to solve this problem, e.g. Norton Ghost Technology-driven change driven by companies such as Microsoft which profit directly from more rapid "upgrades" An emphasis on presentation technology and even persuasion technology such as PowerPoint, at the direct expense of core business processes and learning addressed in some companies including IBM and Sun Microsystems by creating a PowerPoint-Free Zone The blind assumption that introducing new technology must be good The fact that computers handle office functions that, in most cases, are not related to the actual production of goods and services. Factories were automated decades before computers. Adding computer control to existing factories resulted in only slight productivity gains in most cases. A paper by Triplett (1999) reviews Solows paradox from seven other often given explanations. They are: You dont see computers everywhere, in a meaningful economic sense You only think you see computers everywhere You may not see computers everywhere, but in the industrial sectors where you most see them, output is poorly measured Whether or not you see computer everywhere, some of what they do is not counted in economic statistics
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Productivity paradox You dont see computers in the productivity yet, but wait a bit and you will You see computers everywhere but in the productivity statistics because computers are not as productive as you think There is no paradox: some economists are counting innovations and new products on an arithmetic scale when they should count on a logarithmic scale
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Before computers: Data processing with unit record equipment

When computers for general business applications appeared in the 1950s, a sophisticated industry for data processing existed in the form of unit record equipment. These systems processed data on punched cards by running the cards through tabulating machines, the holes in the cards allowing electrical contact to activate relays and solenoids to keep a count. The flow of punched cards could be arranged in various program-like sequences to allow sophisticated data processing. Some unit record equipment was programmable by wiring a plug board, with the plug boards being removable allowing for quick replacement with another pre-wired program.[9] In 1949 vacuum tube calculators were added to unit record equipment. In 1955 the first completely transistorized calculator with magnetic cores for dynamic memory, the IBM 608, was introduced.[9] The first computers were an improvement over unit record equipment, but not by a great amount. This was partly due to low level software used, low performance capability and failure of vacuum tubes and other components. Also, the data input to early computers also used punched cards. Most of these hardware and software shortcomings were solved by the late 1960s, but punched cards did not become fully displaced until the 1980s.
Analog process control

Computers did not revolutionize manufacturing because automation, in the form of control systems, had already been in existence for decades, although computers did allow more sophisticated control, which led to improved product quality and process optimization. Pre-computer control was known as analog control and computerized control is called digital.
Parasitic losses of cashless transactions

Credit card transactions now represent a large percentage of low value transactions on which credit card companies charge merchants. Most of such credit card transactions are more of a habit than an actual need for credit and to the extent that such purchases represent convenience or lack of planning to carry cash on the part of consumers, these transactions add a layer of unnecessary expense. However, debit or check card transactions are cheaper than processing paper checks.
On line commerce
Despite high expectations for on line retail sales, individual item and small quantity handling and transportation costs more than offset the savings of not having to maintain "bricks and mortar" stores. On line retail sales main success was in specialty items, collectibles and higher priced goods. Some airline and hotel discounters have been very successful. On line commerce was extremely successful in banking, airline, hotel, and rental car reservations, to name a few.
Restructured office
The personal computer restructured the office by reducing the secretarial and clerical staffs. Prior to computers, secretaries transcribed Dictaphone recordings or live speech into shorthand, and typed the information, typically a memo or letter. All filing was done with paper copies.
Productivity paradox A new position in the office staff was the information technologist, or department. With networking came information overload in the form of e-mail, with some office workers receiving several hundred each day, most of which are not necessary information for the recipient.
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Cost overruns of software projects

It is well known by software developers that projects typically run over budget and finish behind schedule. Software development is typically for new applications that are unique. The project's analyst is responsible for interviewing the stakeholders, individually and in group meetings, to gather the requirements and incorporate them into a logical format for review by the stakeholders and developers. This sequence is repeated in successive iterations, with partially completed screens available for review in the latter stages. Unfortunately, stakeholders often have a vague idea of what the functionality should be, and tend to add a lot of unnecessary features, resulting in schedule delays and cost overruns.
Qualifications
By the late 1990s there were some signs that productivity in the workplace been improved by the introduction of IT, especially in the United States. In fact, Erik Brynjolfsson and his colleagues found a significant positive relationship between IT investments and productivity, at least when these investments were made to complement organizational changes.[10][11][12] A large share of the productivity gains outside the IT-equipment industry itself have been in retail, wholesale and finance.[13] Computers revolutionized accounting, billing, record keeping and many other office functions; however, early computers used punched cards for data and programming input. Until the 1980s it was common to receive monthly utility bills printed on a punched card that was returned with the customers payment. In 1973 IBM introduced point of sale (POS) terminals in which electronic cash registers were networked to the store mainframe computer. By the 1980s bar code readers were added. These technologies automated inventory management. Wal-Mart Stores was an early adopter of POS. Computers also greatly increased productivity of the communications sector, especially in areas like the elimination of telephone operators. In engineering, computers replaced manual drafting with CAD and software was developed for calculations used in electronic circuits, stress analysis, heat and material balances, etc. Automated teller machines (ATMs) became popular in recent decades and self checkout at retailers appeared in the 1990s. The Airline Reservations System and banking are areas where computers are practically essential. Modern military systems also rely on computers.
References
[1] Brynjolfsson, Erik (1993). "The productivity paradox of information technology". Communications of the ACM 36 (12): 6677. doi:10.1145/163298.163309. ISSN00010782. [2] Robert Solow, "We'd better watch out", New York Times Book Review, July 12, 1987, page 36. See here (http:/ / www. standupeconomist. com/ blog/ economics/ solows-computer-age-quote-a-definitive-citation/ ). [3] Wetherbe, James C.; Turban, Efraim; Leidner, Dorothy E.; McLean, Ephraim R. (2007). Information Technology for Management: Transforming Organizations in the Digital Economy (6th ed.). New York: Wiley. ISBN0-471-78712-4. [4] The Debate Zone: Has the US passed peak productivity growth? (http:/ / whatmatters. mckinseydigital. com/ the_debate_zone/ has-the-us-passed-peak-productivity-growth) [5] David P.A., "The Dynamo and the Computer: A Historical Perspective on the Modern Productivity Paradox", American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, 1990, 35561 [6] Gordon, Robert J. (2000). Does the "New Economy" Measure up to the Great Inventions of the Past? , NBER Working Paper No. 7833 (http:/ / www. nber. org/ papers/ w7833).
[7] Kendrick, John (1991). U.S. productivity performance in perspective , Business Economics, October 1, 1991 (http:/ / www. allbusiness. com/ finance/ 262030-1. html). [8] [ |Field, Alexander J (http:/ / www. scu. edu/ business/ economics/ faculty/ field. cfm)] (2007). U.S. economic growth in the gilded age 31, Journal of Macroeconomics (2009) 173-190 [9] Fierheller, George A. (2006). Do not fold, spindle or mutilate: the "hole" story of punched cards (http:/ / www. gfierheller. ca/ books/ pdf/ do_not_fold. pdf). Stewart Pub.. ISBN1-894183-86-X. . [10] E.Brynjolfsson and L.Hitt, "Beyond the Productivity Paradox: Computers are the Catalyst for Bigger Changes", CACM, August 1998 [11] E. Brynjolfsson, S. Yang, The Intangible Costs and Benefits of Computer Investments: Evidence from the Financial Markets, MIT Sloan School of Management, December 1999 [12] Paolo Magrassi, A.Panarella, B.Hayward, The 'IT and Economy' Discussion: A Review, GartnerGroup, Stamford (CT), USA, June 2002 [1] [13] Kevin Stiroh (2002), Information Technology and the US Productivity Revival: What Do the Industry Data Say?, American Economic Review 92(5), 1559-76.
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Further reading
Brynjolfsson, Erik, and Lorin Hitt (June 2003). "Computing Productivity: Firm Level Evidence" (http://papers. ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=290325). MIT Sloan Working Paper No. 4210-01. Brynjolfsson, Erik, and Adam Saunders (2010). Wired for Innovation: How Information Technology is Reshaping the Economy (http://digital.mit.edu/erik/Wired4innovation.html). MIT Press. Greenwood, Jeremy (1997). The Third Industrial Revolution: Technology, Productivity and Income Inequality (http://www.econ.rochester.edu/Faculty/GreenwoodPapers/third.pdf). AEI Press. Landauer, Thomas K. (1995). The trouble with computers: Usefulness, usability and productivity. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. ISBN0-262-62108-8. "Information Technology and the Nature of Managerial Work: From the Productivity paradox to the Icarus Paradox". MIS Quarterly 22 (3): 287311. 1998. Triplett, Jack E. (1999). "The solow productivity paradox: what do computers do to productivity" (http://www. csls.ca/journals/sisspp/v32n2_04.pdf). Canadian Journal of Economics 32 (2): 309334. "Does successful investment in information technology solve the productivity paradox?". Information & Management: 113. 2000.
St. Petersburg paradox
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In economics, the St. Petersburg paradox is a paradox related to probability theory and decision theory. It is based on a particular (theoretical) lottery game (sometimes called St. Petersburg Lottery) that leads to a random variable with infinite expected value, i.e., infinite expected payoff, but would nevertheless be considered to be worth only a very small amount of money. The St. Petersburg paradox is a classical situation where a nave decision criterion (which takes only the expected value into account) would recommend a course of action that no (real) rational person would be willing to take. Several resolutions are possible. The paradox is named from Daniel Bernoulli's presentation of the problem and his solution, published in 1738 in the Commentaries of the Imperial Academy of Science of Saint Petersburg (Bernoulli 1738). However, the problem was invented by Daniel's cousin Nicolas Bernoulli who first stated it in a letter to Pierre Raymond de Montmort of 9 September 1713 (de Montmort 1713).
The paradox
A casino offers a game of chance for a single player in which a fair coin is tossed at each stage. The pot starts at 1 dollar and is doubled every time a head appears. The first time a tail appears, the game ends and the player wins whatever is in the pot. Thus the player wins 1 dollar if a tail appears on the first toss, 2 dollars if a head appears on the first toss and a tail on the second, 4 dollars if a head appears on the first two tosses and a tail on the third, 8 dollars if a head appears on the first three tosses and a tail on the fourth, and so on. In short, the player wins 2k1 dollars if the coin is tossed k times until the first tail appears. What would be a fair price to pay the casino for entering the game? To answer this we need to consider what would be the average payout: With probability 1/2, the player wins 1 dollar; with probability 1/4 she wins 2 dollars; with probability 1/8 she wins 4 dollars etc. The expected value is thus
Assuming the game can continue as long as the coin toss results in heads, in particular that the casino has unlimited resources, this sum diverges without bound, and so the expected win for the player, at least in this idealized form, is an infinite amount of money. According to the usual treatment of deciding when it is advantageous and therefore rational to play, one should therefore play the game at any price if offered the opportunity. Yet, in published descriptions of the game, e.g., (Martin 2004), many people expressed disbelief in the result. Martin quotes Ian Hacking as saying "few of us would pay even $25 to enter such a game" and says most commentators would agree. The paradox is the discrepancy between what people seem willing to pay to enter the game and the infinite expected value suggested by the above analysis.
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Solutions of the paradox

There are different approaches for solving the paradox.
Expected utility theory

The classical resolution of the paradox involved the explicit introduction of a utility function, an expected utility hypothesis, and the presumption of diminishing marginal utility of money. In Daniel Bernoulli's own words: The determination of the value of an item must not be based on the price, but rather on the utility it yields. There is no doubt that a gain of one thousand ducats is more significant to the pauper than to a rich man though both gain the same amount. A common utility model, suggested by Bernoulli himself, is the logarithmic function u(w)=ln(w) (known as log utility [1]). It is a function of the gamblers total wealth w, and the concept of diminishing marginal utility of money is built into it. By the expected utility hypothesis, expected utilities can be calculated the same way expected values are. For each possible event, the change in utility ln(wealthaftertheevent)-ln(wealthbeforetheevent) will be weighted by the probability of that event occurring. Let c be the cost charged to enter the game. The expected utility of the lottery now converges to a finite value:
This formula gives an implicit relationship between the gambler's wealth and how much he should be willing to pay to play (specifically, any c that gives a positive expected utility). For example, with log utility a millionaire should be willing to pay up to $10.94, a person with $1000 should pay up to $5.94, a person with $2 should pay up to $2, and a person with $0.60 should borrow $0.87 and pay up to $1.47. Before Daniel Bernoulli published, in 1728, another Swiss mathematician, Gabriel Cramer, had already found parts of this idea (also motivated by the St. Petersburg Paradox) in stating that the mathematicians estimate money in proportion to its quantity, and men of good sense in proportion to the usage that they may make of it. He demonstrated in a letter to Nicolas Bernoulli [2] that a square root function describing the diminishing marginal benefit of gains can resolve the problem. However, unlike Daniel Bernoulli, he did not consider the total wealth of a person, but only the gain by the lottery. This solution by Cramer and Bernoulli, however, is not yet completely satisfying, since the lottery can easily be changed in a way such that the paradox reappears: To this aim, we just need to change the game so that it gives the (even larger) payoff . Again, the game should be worth an infinite amount. More generally, one can find a lottery that allows for a variant of the St. Petersburg paradox for every unbounded utility function, as was first pointed out by (Menger 1934). There are basically two ways of solving this generalized paradox, which is sometimes called the Super St. Petersburg paradox: We can take into account that a casino would only offer lotteries with a finite expected value. Under this restriction, it has been proved that the St. Petersburg paradox disappears as long as the utility function is concave, which translates into the assumption that people are (at least for high stakes) risk averse [Compare (Arrow 1974)]. We can assume that the utility function has an upper bound. Cramer had, in fact, also suggested a simple bounding under which all sums of money beyond some point would have equal utility (id est that the marginal utility of money would go to zero) (Bernoulli 1738), but a utility function need not become constant beyond some point to be bounded; for example the function is bounded above by 1, yet strictly increasing.
St. Petersburg paradox Recently, expected utility theory has been extended to arrive at more behavioral decision models. In some of these new theories, as in cumulative prospect theory, the St. Petersburg paradox again appears in certain cases, even when the utility function is concave, but not if it is bounded (Rieger & Wang 2006).
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Probability weighting
Nicolas Bernoulli himself proposed an alternative idea for solving the paradox. He conjectured that people will neglect unlikely events (de Montmort 1713). Since in the St. Petersburg lottery only unlikely events yield the high prizes that lead to an infinite expected value, this could resolve the paradox. The idea of probability weighting resurfaced much later in the work on prospect theory by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. However, their experiments indicated that, very much to the contrary, people tend to overweight small probability events. Therefore the proposed solution by Nicolas Bernoulli is nowadays not considered to be satisfactory.
Rejection of mathematical expectation

Various authors, including Jean le Rond d'Alembert and John Maynard Keynes, have rejected maximization of expectation (even of utility) as a proper rule of conduct. Keynes, in particular, insisted that the relative risk of an alternative could be sufficiently high to reject it even were its expectation enormous.
One cannot buy what is not sold

Some economists resolve the paradox by arguing that, even if an entity had infinite resources, the game would never be offered. If the lottery represents an infinite expected gain to the player, then it also represents an infinite expected loss to the host. No one could be observed paying to play the game because it would never be offered. As Paul Samuelson describes the argument: Paul will never be willing to give as much as Peter will demand for such a contract; and hence the indicated activity will take place at the equilibrium level of zero intensity. (Samuelson 1960)
Finite St. Petersburg lotteries

The classical St. Petersburg lottery assumes that the casino has infinite resources. This assumption is often criticized as unrealistic, particularly in connection with the paradox, which involves the reactions of ordinary people to the lottery. Of course, the resources of an actual casino (or any other potential backer of the lottery) are finite. More importantly, the expected value of the lottery only grows logarithmically with the resources of the casino. As a result, the expected value of the lottery, even when played against a casino with the largest resources realistically conceivable, is quite modest. If the total resources (or total maximum jackpot) of the casino are W dollars, then L = 1 + floor(log2(W)) is the maximum number of times the casino can play before it no longer covers the next bet. The expected value E of the lottery then becomes:
The following table shows the expected value E of the game with various potential bankers and their bankroll W (with the assumption that if you win more than the bankroll you will be paid what the bank has):
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Banker Friendly game Millionaire Billionaire Bill Gates (2008) U.S. GDP (2007)
Bankroll $100 $1,000,000 $1,000,000,000
Expected value of lottery $4.28 $10.95 $15.93
$58,000,000,000 $18.84 $13.8 trillion $22.78 $23.77 $166.50
World GDP (2007) $54.3 trillion Googolaire $10100
Notes: The estimated net worth of Bill Gates is from Forbes. The GDP data are as estimated for 2007 by the International Monetary Fund, where one trillion dollars equals $1012 (one million times one million dollars). A googolaire is a hypothetical person worth a googol dollars ($10100).
A rational person might not find the lottery worth even the modest amounts in the above table, suggesting that the naive decision model of the expected return causes essentially the same problems as for the infinite lottery. Even so, the possible discrepancy between theory and reality is far less dramatic. The assumption of infinite resources can produce other apparent paradoxes in economics. See martingale (roulette system) and gambler's ruin.
Iterated St. Petersburg lottery

Players may assign a higher value to the game when the lottery is repeatedly played. This can be seen by simulating a typical series of lotteries and accumulating the returns; compare the illustration (right). If the expected payout from playing the game once is E1, the expected average per-game payout from playing the game n times is:
Since E1 is infinite, En is infinite as well. Nevertheless, expressing En in this way shows that n, the number of times the game is played, makes a finite contribution to the average per-game payout. The actual average per-game payout obtained in a series of n games is unlikely to fall short of this finite contribution by a significant amount. To see where the (1/2) log2 n contribution comes from, consider the case of n = 1,024. On average: 512 games will pay $1 256 games will pay $2 128 games will pay $4 64 games will pay $8 32 games will pay $16 16 games will pay $32 8 games will pay $64 4 games will pay $128
A typical graph of average winnings over one course of a St. Petersburg Paradox lottery shows how occasional large payoffs lead to an overall very slow rise in average winnings. After 20,000 gameplays in this simulation the average winning per lottery was just under 8 dollars. The graph encapsulates the paradox of the lottery: The overall upward slope in the average winnings graph shows that average winnings tend upward to infinity, but the slowness of the rise in average winnings (a rise that becomes yet slower as gameplay progresses) indicates that a tremendously huge number of lottery plays will be required to reach average winnings of even modest size.
St. Petersburg paradox 2 games will pay $256 1 game will pay $512 From here on it is equivalent to: 1 game will pay out 1,024 x E1 (1/2) game will pay $1,024 (1/4) game will pay $2,048 etc. The collective average payout is therefore $5,120 (Until the arrow sign) + 1,024 x E1, and the per-game average payout is:
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Because the finite contribution from n games is proportional to log2 n, doubling the number of games played leads to a $0.50 increase in the finite contribution. For example, if 2,048 games are played, the finite contribution is $5.50 rather than $5. It follows that, in order to be reasonably confident of achieving target average per-game winnings of approximately W (where W > $1), we should play approximately 4W games. This will yield a finite contribution equal to W. Unfortunately, the number of games required to be confident of meeting even modest targets is astronomically high. $7 requires approximately 16,000 games, $10 requires approximately 1 million games, and $20 requires approximately 1 trillion games.
Further discussions
The St. Petersburg paradox and the theory of marginal utility have been highly disputed in the past. For a discussion from the point of view of a philosopher, see (Martin 2004).
Works cited
Arrow, Kenneth J. (February 1974). "The use of unbounded utility functions in expected-utility maximization: Response" [3] (PDF). Quarterly Journal of Economics (The MIT Press) 88 (1): 136138. doi:10.2307/1881800. JSTOR1881800. Handle: RePEc:tpr:qjecon:v:88:y:1974:i:1:p:136-38. Bernoulli, Daniel; Originally published in 1738; translated by Dr. Lousie Sommer. (January 1954). "Exposition of a New Theory on the Measurement of Risk" [4]. Econometrica (The Econometric Society) 22 (1): 2236. doi:10.2307/1909829. JSTOR1909829. Retrieved 2006-05-30. de Montmort, Pierre Remond (1713) (in (French)). Essay d'analyse sur les jeux de hazard [Essays on the analysis of games of chance] (Reprinted in 2006) (Second ed.). Providence, Rhode Island: American Mathematical Society. ISBN978-0821837818. as translated and posted at Pulskamp, Richard J. "Correspondence of Nicolas Bernoulli concerning the St. Petersburg Game" [5] ( PDF(88KB)). Retrieved July 22, 2010. Martin, Robert (2004). "The St. Petersburg Paradox" [6]. In Edward N. Zalta. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2004 ed.). Stanford, California: Stanford University. ISSN1095-5054. Retrieved 2006-05-30. Menger, Karl (August 1934). "Das Unsicherheitsmoment in der Wertlehre Betrachtungen im Anschlu an das sogenannte Petersburger Spiel". Zeitschrift fr Nationalkonomie 5 (4): 459485. doi:10.1007/BF01311578. ISSN0931-8658. (Paper) (Online). Rieger, Marc Oliver; Wang, Mei (August 2006). "Cumulative prospect theory and the St. Petersburg paradox". Economic Theory 28 (3): 665679. doi:10.1007/s00199-005-0641-6. ISSN0938-2259. (Paper) (Online). (Publicly accessible, older version. [7]) Samuelson, Paul (January 1960). "The St. Petersburg Paradox as a Divergent Double Limit". International Economic Review (Blackwell Publishing) 1 (1): 3137. doi:10.2307/2525406. JSTOR2525406.
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Bibliography
Aumann, Robert J. (April 1977). "The St. Petersburg paradox: A discussion of some recent comments". Journal of Economic Theory 14 (2): 443445. doi:10.1016/0022-0531(77)90143-0. Durand, David (September 1957). "Growth Stocks and the Petersburg Paradox". The Journal of Finance (American Finance Association) 12 (3): 348363. doi:10.2307/2976852. JSTOR2976852. "Bernoulli and the St. Petersburg Paradox" [8]. The History of Economic Thought. The New School for Social Research, New York. Retrieved 2006-05-30. Haigh, John (1999). Taking Chances. Oxford,UK: Oxford University Press. pp.330. ISBN0-19-850291-9.(Chapter 4) Samuelson, Paul A. (March 1977). "St. Petersburg paradoxes: defanged, dissected, and historically described". Journal of Economic Literature 15 (1): 2455.
External links
Online simulation of the St. Petersburg lottery [9]
References
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] http:/ / www. econterms. com/ glossary. cgi?query=log+ utility http:/ / www. cs. xu. edu/ math/ Sources/ Montmort/ stpetersburg. pdf#search=%22Nicolas%20Bernoulli%22 http:/ / ideas. repec. org/ a/ tpr/ qjecon/ v88y1974i1p136-38. html http:/ / www. math. fau. edu/ richman/ Ideas/ daniel. htm http:/ / www. cs. xu. edu/ math/ Sources/ Montmort/ stpetersburg. pdf http:/ / plato. stanford. edu/ archives/ fall2004/ entries/ paradox-stpetersburg/ http:/ / www. sfb504. uni-mannheim. de/ publications/ dp04-28. pdf http:/ / cepa. newschool. edu/ het/ essays/ uncert/ bernoulhyp. htm http:/ / www. mathematik. com/ Petersburg/ Petersburg. html
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Logic
The horse paradox is a falsidical paradox that arises from flawed demonstrations, which purport to use mathematical induction, of the statement All horses are the same color. There is no actual contradiction, as these arguments have a crucial flaw that makes them incorrect. This example was used by George Plya as an example of the subtle errors that can occur in attempts to prove statements by induction.
The argument
The flawed argument claims to be based on mathematical induction, and proceeds as follows: Suppose that we have a set of five horses. We wish to prove that they are all the same color. Suppose that we had a proof that all sets of four horses were the same color. If that were true, we could prove that all five horses are the same color by removing a horse to leave a group of four horses. Do this in two ways, and we have two different groups of four horses. By our supposed existing proof, since these are groups of four, all horses in them must be the same color. For example, the first, second, third and fourth horses constitute a group of four, and thus must all be the same color; and the second, third, fourth and fifth horses also constitute a group of four and thus must also all be the same color. For this to occur, all five horses in the group of five must be the same color. But how are we to get a proof that all sets of four horses are the same color? We apply the same logic again. By the same process, a group of four horses could be broken down into groups of three, and then a group of three horses could be broken down into groups of two, and so on. Eventually we will reach a group size of one, and it is obvious that all horses in a group of one horse must be the same color. By the same logic we can also increase the group size. A group of five horses can be increased to a group of six, and so on upwards, so that all finite sized groups of horses must be the same color.
Explanation
The argument above makes the implicit assumption that the two subsets of horses to which the induction assumption is applied have a common element. This is not true when n = 1, that is, when the original set only contains 2 horses. Let the two horses be horse A and horse B. When horse A is removed, it is true that the remaining horses in the set are the same color (only horse B remains). If horse B is removed instead, this leaves a different set containing only horse A, which may or may not be the same color as horse B. The problem in the argument is the assumption that because each of these two sets contains only one color of horses, the original set also contained only one color of horses. Because there are no common elements (horses) in the two sets, it is unknown whether the two horses share the same color. The proof forms a falsidical paradox; it seems to show something manifestly false by valid reasoning, but in fact the reasoning is flawed. The horse paradox exposes the pitfalls arising from failure to consider special cases for which a general statement may be false.
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References
Enumerative Combinatorics by George E. Martin, ISBN 0-387-95225-X
Barbershop paradox
The Barbershop Paradox was proposed by Lewis Carroll in a three-page essay entitled "A Logical Paradox" which appeared in the July 1894 issue of Mind. The name comes from the "ornamental" short story that Carroll uses to illustrate the paradox (although it had appeared several times in more abstract terms in his writing and correspondence before the story was published). Carroll claimed that it illustrated "a very real difficulty in the Theory of Hypotheticals" in use at the time.[1]
The paradox
Briefly, the story runs as follows: Uncle Joe and Uncle Jim are walking to the barber shop. There are three barbers who live and work in the shopAllen, Brown, and Carrbut not all of them are always in the shop. Carr is a good barber, and Uncle Jim is keen to be shaved by him. He knows that the shop is open, so at least one of them must be in. He also knows that Allen is a very nervous man, so that he never leaves the shop without Brown going with him. Uncle Joe insists that Carr is certain to be in, and then claims that he can prove it logically. Uncle Jim demands the proof. Uncle Joe reasons as follows. Suppose that Carr is out. If Carr is out, then if Allen is also out Brown would have to be insince someone must be in the shop for it to be open. However, we know that whenever Allen goes out he takes Brown with him, and thus we know as a general rule that if Allen is out, Brown is out. So if Carr is out then the statements "if Allen is out then Brown is in" and "if Allen is out then Brown is out" would both be true at the same time. Uncle Joe notes that this seems paradoxical; the hypotheticals seem "incompatible" with each other. So, by contradiction, Carr must logically be in.
Simplification
Carroll wrote this story to illustrate a controversy in the field of logic that was raging at the time. His vocabulary and writing style can easily add to the confusion of the core issue for modern readers.
Notation
When reading the original it may help to keep the following in mind: What Carroll called "hypotheticals" modern logicians call "logical conditionals." Whereas Uncle Joe concludes his proof reductio ad absurdum, modern mathematicians would more commonly claim "proof by contradiction." What Carroll calls the prostasis of a conditional is now known as the antecedent, and similarly the apodosis is now called the consequent. Symbols can be used to greatly simplify logical statements such as those inherent in this story:
Barbershop paradox
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Operator (Name) Colloquial Negation Conjunction Disjunction Conditional NOT AND OR not X X and Y X or Y
Symbolic X XY XY XY
IF ... THEN if X then Y
Note: X Y (also known as "Implication") can be read many ways in English, from "X is sufficient for Y" to "Y follows from X." See also Table of mathematical symbols.
Restatement
To aid in restating Carroll's story more simply, we will take the following atomic statements: A = Allen is in the shop B = Brown is in C = Carr is in So, for instance (A B) represents "Allen is out and Brown is in" Uncle Jim gives us our two axioms: 1. There is at least one barber in the shop now 2. Allen never goes anywhere without Brown Uncle Joe presents a proof:
Abbreviated English with logical markers Suppose Carr is NOT in. Given NOT C, IF Allen is NOT in THEN Brown must be in, to satisfy Axiom 1. But Axiom 2 gives that it is universally true that IF Allen is Not in THEN Brown is Not in (it's always true that if A then B) H0: C By H0 and A1, A B By A2, A B Mainly Symbolic
So far we have that NOT C yields both (Not A THEN B) AND (Not A THEN Not B). Thus C ( (A B) (A B) ) Uncle Joe claims that these are contradictory. Therefore Carr must be in. C
Uncle Joe basically makes the argument that (A B) and (A B) are contradictory, saying that the same antecedent cannot result in two different consequents. This purported contradiction is the crux of Joe's "proof." Carroll presents this intuition-defying result as a paradox, hoping that the contemporary ambiguity would be resolved.
Discussion
In modern logic theory this scenario is not a paradox. The law of implication reconciles what Uncle Joe claims are incompatible hypotheticals. This law states that "if X then Y" is logically identical to "X is false or Y is true" (X Y). For example, given the statement "if you press the button then the light comes on," it must be true at any given moment that either you have not pressed the button, or the light is on. In short, what obtains is not that C yields a contradiction, only that it necessitates A, because A is what actually yields the contradiction. In this scenario, that means Carr doesn't have to be in, but that if he isn't in, Allen has to be in.
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Simplifying to Axiom 1
Applying the law of implication to the offending conditionals shows that rather than contradicting each other one simply reiterates the fact that since the shop is open one or more of Allen, Brown or Carr is in and the other puts very little restriction on who can or cannot be in shop. To see this let's attack Jim's large "contradictory" result, mainly by applying the law of implication repeatedly. First let's break down one of the two offending conditionals:
"If Allen is out, then Brown is out" "Allen is in or Brown is out" (A B) (A B)
Substituting this into

"IF Carr is out, THEN If Allen is also out Then Brown is in AND If Allen is out Then Brown is out." C ( (A B) (A B) )
Which yields, with continued application of the law of implication,

"IF Carr is out, THEN if Allen is also out, Brown is in AND either Allen is in OR Brown is out." "IF Carr is out, THEN both of these are true: Allen is in OR Brown is in AND Allen is in OR Brown is out." "Carr is in OR both of these are true: Allen is in OR Brown is in AND Allen is in OR Brown is out." C ( (A B) (A B) ) C ( (A B) (A B) ) C ( (A B) (A B) )
And finally, (on the right we are distributing over the parentheses)
"Carr is in OR Either Allen is in OR Brown is in, AND Carr is in OR Either Allen is in OR Brown is out." "Inclusively, Carr is in OR Allen is in OR Brown is in, AND Inclusively, Carr is in OR Allen is in OR Brown is out." C (A B) C (A B) (C A B) (C A B)
So the two statements which become true at once are: "One or more of Allen, Brown or Carr is in," which is simply Axiom 1, and "Carr is in or Allen is in or Brown is out." Clearly one way that both of these statements can become true at once is in the case where Allen is in (because Allen's house is the barber shop, and at some point Brown left the shop). Another way to describe how (X Y) (X Y) resolves this into a valid set of statements is to rephrase Jim's statement that "If Allen is also out ..." into "If Carr is out and Allen is out then Brown is in" ( (C A) B).
Showing Conditionals Compatible

The two conditionals are not logical opposites: to prove by contradiction Jim needed to show C (Z Z), where Z happens to be a conditional. The opposite of (A B) is (A B), which, using De Morgan's Law, resolves to (A B), which is not at all the same thing as (A B), which is what A B reduces to. This confusion about the "compatibility" of these two conditionals was foreseen by Carroll, who includes a mention of it at the end of the story. He attempts to clarify the issue by arguing that the protasis and apodosis of the implication "If Carr is in ..." are "incorrectly divided." However, application of the Law of Implication removes the "If ..." entirely (reducing to disjunctions), so no protasis and apodosis exist and no counter-argument is needed.
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Notes
[1] Carroll, Lewis (July 1894). "A Logical Paradox" (http:/ / fair-use. org/ mind/ 1894/ 07/ notes/ a-logical-paradox). Mind 3 (11): 436438. .
Further reading
Russell, Bertrand (1903). "Chapter II. Symbolic Logic" (http://fair-use.org/bertrand-russell/ the-principles-of-mathematics/s.19#s19n1). The Principles of Mathematics. p. 19 n. 1. ISBN0-415-48741-2. Russell suggests a truth-functional notion of logical conditionals, which (among other things) entails that a false proposition will imply all propositions. In a note he mentions that his theory of implication would dissolve Carroll's paradox, since it not only allows, but in fact requires that both "p implies q" and "p implies not-q" be true, so long as p is not true.
Carroll's paradox
In physics, Carroll's paradox arises when considering the motion of a falling rigid rod that is specially constrained. Considered one way, the angular momentum stays constant; considered in a different way, it changes. It is named after Michael M. Carroll who first published it in 1984.
Explanation
Consider two concentric circles of radius uniform rigid heavy rod of length and as might be drawn on the face of a wall clock. Suppose a is somehow constrained between these two circles so that one end
of the rod remains on the inner circle and the other remains on the outer circle. Motion of the rod along these circles, acting as guides, is frictionless. The rod is held in the three o'clock position so that it is horizontal, then released. Now consider the angular momentum about the centre of the rod: 1. After release, the rod falls. Being constrained, it must rotate as it moves. When it gets to a vertical six o'clock position, it has lost potential energy and, because the motion is frictionless, will have gained kinetic energy. It therefore possesses angular momentum. 2. The reaction force on the rod from either circular guide is frictionless, so it must be directed along the rod; there can be no component of the reaction force perpendicular to the rod. Taking moments about the center of the rod, there can be no moment acting on the rod, so its angular momentum remains constant. Because the rod starts with zero angular momentum, it must continue to have zero angular momentum for all time. An apparent resolution of this paradox is that the physical situation cannot occur. To maintain the rod in a radial position the circles have to exert an infinite force. In real life it would not be possible to construct guides that do not exert a significant reaction force perpendicular to the rod. Victor Namias, however, disputed that infinite forces occur, and argued that a finitely thick rod experiences torque about its center of mass even in the limit as it approaches zero width.
References
Victor Namias. On an apparent paradox in the motion of a smoothly constrained rod, American Journal of Physics, 54(5), May 1986. M. M. Carroll. Singular constraints in rigid-body dynamics, American Journal of Physics, 52(11), Nov 1984, pp 10101012.
Crocodile Dilemma
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Crocodile Dilemma
The Crocodile Dilemma is an unsolvable problem in logic.[1] The premise states that a crocodile who has stolen a child promises the father that his son will be returned if and only if he can correctly predict whether or not the crocodile will return the child. The transaction is logically smooth (but unpredictable) if the father guesses that the child will be returned, but a dilemma arises for the crocodile if he guesses that the child will not be returned.
If the Crocodile decides to If the Crocodile decides to If the Crocodile decides to If the Crocodile decides to KEEP the child, and the Father predicted the child would be the child, and the Father predicted the child would be KEPT then the outcome A PARADOX. is
KEEP
RETURNED then the outcome THE CHILD IS KEPT. is RETURNED then the outcome THE CHILD IS is RETURNED. KEPT then the outcome A PARADOX. is
RETURN the child, and the Father predicted the child would be RETURN the child, and the Father predicted the child would be
The question of what the crocodile should do is therefore paradoxical, and there is no justifiable solution.[2][3][4] The Crocodile Dilemma serves to expose some of the logical problems presented by metaknowledge. In this regard, it is similar in construction to the unexpected hanging paradox, which Richard Montague(1960) used to demonstrate that the following assumptions about knowledge are inconsistent when tested in combination:[2] (i) If is known to be true, then . (ii) It is known that (i). (iii) If implies , and is known to be true, then is also known to be true. It also bears similarities to the Liar paradox. Ancient Greek sources were the first to discuss the Crocodile Dilemma.[1] It has been suggested that, realistically, the infinitely repeating dilemma would not occur because the father guessed correctly. In other words, the father was guessing at what the crocodile intended to do, not what the eventual result would be.
Notes
[1] Barile, Margherita. "Crococile Dilemma MathWorld" (http:/ / mathworld. wolfram. com/ CrocodilesDilemma. html). . Retrieved 2009-09-05. [2] J. Siekmann, ed. (1989). Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence. Springer-Verlag. p.14. ISBN3540530827. [3] Young, Ronald E (2005). Traveling East. iUniverse. pp.89. ISBN0595795846. [4] Murray, Richard (1847). Murray's Compendium of logic. p.159.
Drinker paradox
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Drinker paradox
The drinker paradox is a theorem of classical predicate logic that states: There is someone in the pub such that, if he is drinking, everyone in the pub is drinking. The actual theorem is
The paradox was popularised by the mathematical logician Raymond Smullyan, who called it the "drinking principle" in his book What Is the Name of this Book?[1]
Proof of the paradox

The paradox is valid due to the nature of material implication in formal logic, which states that "If P, then Q" is always true if P (the condition or antecedent) is false. The proof begins by recognizing it is true that either everyone in the pub is drinking (in this particular round of drinks), or at least one person in the pub isn't drinking. On the one hand, suppose everyone is drinking. For any particular person, it can't be wrong to say that if that particular person is drinking, then everyone in the pub is drinking because everyone is drinking. Because everyone is drinking, then that one person must drink because when ' that person ' drinks ' everybody ' drinks, everybody includes that person. Suppose, on the other hand, that at least one person is not drinking. For any particular nondrinking person, it still cannot be wrong to say that if that particular person is drinking, then everyone in the pub is drinking because that person is, in fact, not drinking. In this case the condition is false, so the statement is true. Either way, there is someone in the pub such that, if he is drinking, everyone in the pub is drinking. Hence the paradox.
Discussion
This proof illustrates several properties of classical predicate logic that do not always agree with ordinary language.
Non-empty domain
First, we didn't need to assume there was anyone in the pub. The assumption that the domain is non-empty is built into the inference rules of classical predicate logic.[2] We can deduce from , but of course if the domain were empty (in this case, if there were nobody in the pub), the proposition is not well-formed for any closed expression . Nevertheless, free logic, which allows for empty domains, still has something like the drinker paradox in the form of the theorem:
Or in words: If there is anyone in the pub at all, then there is someone such that, if they are drinking, then everyone in the pub is drinking.
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Excluded middle
The above proof begins by saying that either everyone is drinking, or someone is not drinking. This uses the validity of excluded middle for the statement "everyone is drinking", which is always available in classical logic. If the logic does not admit arbitrary excluded middlefor example if the logic is intuitionisticthen the truth of must first be established, i.e., must be shown to be decidable.[3]
Material versus indicative conditional

Most important to the paradox is that the conditional in classical (and intuitionistic) logic is the material conditional. It has the property that is true if B is true or if A is false (in classical logic, but not intuitionistic logic, this is also a necessary condition). So as it was applied here, the statement "if he is drinking, everyone is drinking" was taken to be correct in one case, if everyone was drinking, and in the other case, if he was not drinking even though his drinking may not have had anything to do with anyone else's drinking. In natural language, on the other hand, typically "if...then..." is used as an indicative conditional.
Notes
[1] Raymond Smullyan (1990). What is the Name of this Book. Penguin Books Ltd. chapter 14. ISBN0-14-013511-1. [2] Martn Escard; Paulo Oliva. Searchable Sets, Dubuc-Penon Compactness, Omniscience Principles, and the Drinker Paradox (http:/ / www. cs. bham. ac. uk/ ~mhe/ papers/ dp. pdf). Computability in Europe 2010. p. 2. . [3] Martin Abadi; Georges Gonthier; Benjamin Werner (1998). "Choice in Dynamic Linking". In Igor Walukiewicz. Foundations of Software Science and Computation Structures. Springer. p.24. ISBN3-540-21298-1.
References
Coscoy, Yann; Kahn, Gilles; Thry, Laurent (1995), "Extracting text from proofs" (http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/ viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.36.8114&rep=rep1&type=pdf), Typed Lambda Calculi and Applications, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 902/1995, pp.109123, doi:10.1007/BFb0014048.
Infinite regress
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Infinite regress
An infinite regress in a series of propositions arises if the truth of proposition P1 requires the support of proposition P2, the truth of proposition P2 requires the support of proposition P3, ... , and the truth of proposition Pn-1 requires the support of proposition Pn and n approaches infinity. Distinction is made between infinite regresses that are "vicious" and those that are not. One definition given is that a vicious regress is "an attempt to solve a problem which re-introduced the same problem in the proposed solution. If one continues along the same lines, the initial problem will recur infinitely and will never be solved. Not all regresses, however, are vicious."[1]
Aristotle's answer
Aristotle argued that knowing does not necessitate an infinite regress because some knowledge does not depend on demonstration:
Some hold that, owing to the necessity of knowing the primary premises, there is no scientific knowledge. Others think there is, but that all truths are demonstrable. Neither doctrine is either true or a necessary deduction from the premises. The first school, assuming that there is no way of knowing other than by demonstration, maintain that an infinite regress is involved, on the ground that if behind the prior stands no primary, we could not know the posterior through the prior (wherein they are right, for one cannot traverse an infinite series): if on the other hand they say the series terminates and there are primary premises, yet these are unknowable because incapable of demonstration, which according to them is the only form of knowledge. And since thus one cannot know the primary premises, knowledge of the conclusions which follow from them is not pure scientific knowledge nor properly knowing at all, but rests on the mere supposition that the premises are true. The other party agree with them as regards knowing, holding that it is only possible by demonstration, but they see no difficulty in holding that all truths are demonstrated, on the ground that demonstration may be circular and reciprocal. Our own doctrine is that not all knowledge is demonstrative: on the contrary, knowledge of the immediate premises is independent of demonstration. (The necessity of this is obvious; for since we must know the prior premises from which the demonstration is drawn, and since the regress must end in immediate truths, those truths must be indemonstrable.) Such, then, is our doctrine, and in addition we maintain that besides scientific knowledge there is its original source which enables us to recognize the definitions.
Aristotle, Posterior Analytics (Book 1, Part 3, verses 1 and 2)
Consciousness
Infinite regress in consciousness is the formation of an infinite series of "inner observers" as we ask the question of who is observing the output of the neural correlates of consciousness in the study of subjective consciousness.
Optics
Infinite regress in optics is the formation of an infinite series of receding images created in two parallel facing mirrors.
References
[1] http:/ / www. michaelridge. com/ mr/ course/ glossary. asp#v
Lottery paradox
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Lottery paradox
Henry E. Kyburg, Jr.'s lottery paradox (1961, p. 197) arises from considering a fair 1000 ticket lottery that has exactly one winning ticket. If this much is known about the execution of the lottery it is therefore rational to accept that some ticket will win. Suppose that an event is very likely only if the probability of it occurring is greater than 0.99. On these grounds it is presumed rational to accept the proposition that ticket 1 of the lottery will not win. Since the lottery is fair, it is rational to accept that ticket 2 won't win either--indeed, it is rational to accept for any individual ticket i of the lottery that ticket i will not win. However, accepting that ticket 1 won't win, accepting that ticket 2 won't win, and so on until accepting that ticket 1000 won't win: that entails that it is rational to accept that no ticket will win, which entails that it is rational to accept the contradictory proposition that one ticket wins and no ticket wins. The lottery paradox was designed to demonstrate that three attractive principles governing rational acceptance lead to contradiction, namely that It is rational to accept a proposition that is very likely true, It is not rational to accept a proposition that is known to be inconsistent, and If it is rational to accept a proposition A and it is rational to accept another proposition A', then it is rational to accept A & A', are jointly inconsistent. The paradox remains of continuing interest because it raises several issues at the foundations of knowledge representation and uncertain reasoning: the relationships between fallibility, corrigible belief and logical consequence; the roles that consistency, statistical evidence and probability play in belief fixation; the precise normative force that logical and probabilistic consistency have on rational belief.
History
Although the first published statement of the lottery paradox appears in Kyburg's 1961 Probability and the Logic of Rational Belief, the first formulation of the paradox appears in his "Probability and Randomness," a paper delivered at the 1959 meeting of the Association for Symbolic Logic, and the 1960 International Congress for the History and Philosophy of Science, but published in the journal Theoria in 1963. This paper is reprinted in Kyburg (1987).
Smullyan's variation
Raymond Smullyan presents the following variation on the lottery paradox: You are either inconsistent or conceited. Since the human brain is finite, there are a finite number of propositions p1pn that you believe. But unless you are conceited, you know that you sometimes make mistakes, and that not everything you believe is true. Therefore, if you are not conceited, you know that at least some of the pi are false. Yet you believe each of the pi individually. This is an inconsistency.(Smullyan 1978, p.206)
A Short Guide to the Literature

The lottery paradox has become a central topic within epistemology, and the enormous literature surrounding this puzzle threatens to obscure its original purpose. Kyburg proposed the thought experiment to get across a feature of his innovative ideas on probability (Kyburg 1961, Kyburg and Teng 2001), which are built around taking the first two principles above seriously and rejecting the last. For Kyburg, the lottery paradox isn't really a paradox: his solution is to restrict aggregation. Even so, for orthodox probabilists the second and third principles are primary, so the first principle is rejected. Here too you'll see claims that there is really no paradox but an error: the solution is to reject the first principle, and with it
Lottery paradox the idea of rational acceptance. For anyone with basic knowledge of probability, the first principle should be rejected: for a very likely event, the rational belief about that event is just that it is very likely, not that it is true. Most of the literature in epistemology approaches the puzzle from the orthodox point of view and grapples with the particular consequences faced by doing so, which is why the lottery is associated with discussions of skepticism (e.g., Klein 1981), and conditions for asserting knowledge claims (e.g., J. P. Hawthorne 2004). It is common to also find proposed resolutions to the puzzle that turn on particular features of the lottery thought experiment (e.g., Pollock 1986), which then invites comparisons of the lottery to other epistemic paradoxes, such as David Makinson's preface paradox, and to "lotteries" having a different structure. This strategy is addressed in (Kyburg 1997) and also in (Wheeler 2007). An extensive bibliography is included in (Wheeler 2007). Philosophical logicians and AI researchers have tended to be interested in reconciling weakened versions of the three principles, and there are many ways to do this, including Jim Hawthorne and Luc Bovens's (1999) logic of belief, Gregory Wheeler's (2006) use of 1-monotone capacities, Bryson Brown's (1999) application of preservationist paraconsistent logics, Igor Douven and Timothy Williamson's (2006) appeal to cumulative non-monotonic logics, Horacio Arlo-Costa's (2007) use of minimal model (classical) modal logics, and Joe Halpern's (2003) use of first-order probability. Finally, philosophers of science, decision scientists, and statisticians are inclined to see the lottery paradox as an early example of the complications one faces in constructing principled methods for aggregating uncertain information, which is now a thriving discipline of its own, with a dedicated journal, Information Fusion, in addition to continuous contributions to general area journals.
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Selected References
Arlo-Costa, H (2005). "Non-Adjunctive Inference and Classical Modalities", The Journal of Philosophical Logic, 34, 581-605. Brown, B. (1999). "Adjunction and Aggregation", Nous, 33(2), 273-283. Douven and Williamson (2006). "Generalizing the Lottery Paradox", The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 57(4), pp. 755-779. Halpern, J. (2003). Reasoning about Uncertainty, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hawthorne, J. and Bovens, L. (1999). "The Preface, the Lottery, and the Logic of Belief", Mind, 108: 241-264. Hawthorne, J.P. (2004). Knowledge and Lotteries, New York: Oxford University Press. Klein, P. (1981). Certainty: a Refutation of Scepticism, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Kyburg, H.E. (1961). Probability and the Logic of Rational Belief, Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Kyburg, H. E. (1983). Epistemology and Inference, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Kyburg, H. E. (1997). "The Rule of Adjunction and Reasonable Inference", Journal of Philosophy, 94(3), 109-125. Kyburg, H. E., and Teng, C-M. (2001). Uncertain Inference, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lewis, D. (1996). "Elusive Knowledge", Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 74, pp. 549-67. Makinson, D. (1965). "The Paradox of the Preface", Analysis, 25: 205-207. Pollock, J. (1986). "The Paradox of the Preface", Philosophy of Science, 53, pp. 346-258. Smullyan, Raymond (1978). What is the name of this book?. Prentice-Hall. p.206. ISBN0139550887. Wheeler, G. (2006). "Rational Acceptance and Conjunctive/Disjunctive Absorption", Journal of Logic, Language, and Information, 15(1-2): 49-53. Wheeler, G. (2007). "A Review of the Lottery Paradox", in William Harper and Gregory Wheeler (eds.) Probability and Inference: Essays in Honour of Henry E. Kyburg, Jr., King's College Publications, pp. 1-31.
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External links
Links to James Hawthorne's papers on the logic of nonmonotonic conditionals (and Lottery Logic) [1]
References
[1] http:/ / faculty-staff. ou. edu/ H/ James. A. Hawthorne-1/
Paradoxes of material implication

The paradoxes of material implication are a group of formulas which are truths of classical logic, but which are intuitively problematic. One of these paradoxes is the paradox of entailment. The root of the paradoxes lies in a mismatch between the interpretation of the validity of logical implication in natural language, and its formal interpretation in classical logic, dating back to George Boole's algebraic logic. In classical logic, implication describes conditional if-then statements using a truth-functional interpretation, ie "p implies q" is defined to be "it is not the case that p is true and q false". Also, "p implies q" is equivalent to "p is false or q is true". For example, "if it is raining, then I will bring an umbrella", is equivalent to "it is not raining, or I will bring an umbrella, or both". This truth-functional interpretation of implication is called material implication or material conditional. The paradoxes are logical statements which are true but whose truth is intuitively surprising to people who are not familiar with them. If the terms 'p', 'q' and 'r' stand for arbitrary propositions then the main paradoxes are given formally as follows: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. , p and its negation imply q. This is the paradox of entailment. , if p is true then it is implied by every q. , if p is false then it implies every q. This is referred to as 'explosion'. , either q or its negation is true, so their disjunction is implied by every p. , if p, q and r are three arbitrary propositions, then either p implies q or q implies r. This is
because if q is true then p implies it, and if it is false then q implies any other statement. Since r can be p, it follows that given two arbitrary propositions, one must imply the other, even if they are mutually contradictory. For instance, "Nadia is in Barcelona implies Nadia is in Madrid or Nadia is in Madrid implies Nadia is in Barcelona." This truism sounds like nonsense in ordinary discourse. 6. , if p does not imply q then p is true and q is false. NB if p were false then it would imply q, so p is true. If q were also true then p would imply q, hence q is false. This paradox is particularly surprising because it tells us that if one proposition does not imply another then the first is true and the second false. The paradoxes of material implication arise because of the truth-functional definition of material implication, which is said to be true merely because the antecedent is false or the consequent is true. By this criterion, "If the moon is made of green cheese, then the world is coming to an end," is true merely because the moon isn't made of green cheese. By extension, any contradiction implies anything whatsoever, since a contradiction is never true. (All paraconsistent logics must, by definition, reject (1) as false.) Also, any tautology is implied by anything whatsoever, since a tautology is always true. To sum up, although it is deceptively similar to what we mean by "logically follows" in ordinary usage, material implication does not capture the meaning of "if... then".
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Paradox of entailment
As the most well known of the paradoxes, and most formally simple, the paradox of entailment makes the best introduction. In natural language, an instance of the paradox of entailment arises: It is raining And It is not raining Therefore George Washington is made of rakes. This arises from the principle of explosion, a law of classical logic stating that inconsistent premises always make an argument valid; that is, inconsistent premises imply any conclusion at all. This seems paradoxical, as it suggests that the above is a valid argument.
Understanding the paradox of entailment

Validity is defined in classical logic as follows: An argument (consisting of premises and a conclusion) is valid if and only if there is no possible situation in which all the premises are true and the conclusion is false. For example a valid argument might run: If it is raining, water exists (1st premise) It is raining (2nd premise) Water exists (Conclusion) In this example there is no possible situation in which the premises are true while the conclusion is false. Since there is no counterexample, the argument is valid. But one could construct an argument in which the premises are inconsistent. This would satisfy the test for a valid argument since there would be no possible situation in which all the premises are true and therefore no possible situation in which all the premises are true and the conclusion is false. For example an argument with inconsistent premises might run: Matter has mass (1st premise; true) Matter does not have mass (2nd premise; false) All numbers are equal to 12 (Conclusion) As there is no possible situation where both premises could be true, then there is certainly no possible situation in which the premises could be true while the conclusion was false. So the argument is valid whatever the conclusion is; inconsistent premises imply all conclusions.
Explaining the paradox

The strangeness of the paradox of entailment comes from the fact that the definition of validity in classical logic does not always agree with the use of the term in ordinary language. In everyday use validity suggests that the premises are consistent. In classical logic, the additional notion of soundness is introduced. A sound argument is a valid argument with all true premises. Hence a valid argument with an inconsistent set of premises can never be sound. A suggested improvement to the notion of logical validity to eliminate this paradox is relevant logic.
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Simplification
The classical paradox formulas are closely tied to the formula, the principle of Simplification, which can be derived from the paradox formulas rather easily (e.g. from (1) by Importation). In addition, there are serious problems with trying to use material implication as representing the English "if ... then ...". For example, the following are valid inferences: 1. 2. but mapping these back to English sentences using "if" gives paradoxes. The first might be read "If John is in London then he is in England, and if he is in Paris then he is in France. Therefore, it is either true that if John is in London then he is in France, or that if he is in Paris then he is in England." Either John is in London or John is not in London. If John is in London, then John is in England. Thus the proposition "if John is in Paris, then John is in England" holds because we have prior knowledge that the conclusion is true. If John is not in London, then the proposition "if John is in London, then John is in France" is true because we have prior knowledge that the premise is false. The second can be read "If both switch A and switch B are closed, then the light is on. Therefore, it is either true that if switch A is closed, the light is on, or if switch B is closed, the light is on." If the two switches are in series, then the premise is true but the conclusion is false. Thus, using classical logic and taking material implication to mean if-then is an unsafe method of reasoning which can give erroneous results.
References
Bennett, J. A Philosophical Guide to Conditionals. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 2003. Conditionals, ed. Frank Jackson. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1991. Etchemendy, J. The Concept of Logical Consequence. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1990. Sanford, D. If P, Then Q: Conditionals and the Foundations of Reasoning. New York: Routledge. 1989. Priest, G. An Introduction to Non-Classical Logic, Cambridge University Press. 2001.
Raven paradox
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Raven paradox
The Raven paradox, also known as Hempel's paradox or Hempel's ravens is a paradox proposed by the German logician Carl Gustav Hempel in the 1940s to illustrate a problem where inductive logic violates intuition. It reveals the fundamental problem of induction.
The paradox
Hempel describes the paradox in terms of the hypothesis[1][2]: (1) All ravens are black. In strict logical terms, via the Law of Implication, this statement is equivalent to: (2) Everything that is not black is not a raven. It should be clear that in all circumstances where (2) is true, (1) is also true; and likewise, in all circumstances where (2) is false (i.e. if a world is imagined in which something that was not black, yet was a raven, existed), (1) is also false. This establishes logical equivalence. Given a general statement such as all ravens are black, a form of the same statement that refers to a specific observable instance of the general class would typically be considered to constitute evidence for that general statement. For example, (3) Nevermore, my pet raven, is black. is evidence supporting the hypothesis that all ravens are black. The paradox arises when this same process is applied to statement (2). On sighting a green apple, one can observe: (4) This green (and thus not black) thing is an apple (and thus not a raven).
Non-black non-ravens A black raven
By the same reasoning, this statement is evidence that (2) everything that is not black is not a raven. But since (as above) this statement is logically equivalent to (1) all ravens are black, it follows that the sight of a green apple is evidence supporting the notion that all ravens are black. This conclusion seems paradoxical, because it implies that information has been gained about ravens by looking at an apple.
Two apparently reasonable premises: The Equivalence Condition (EC): If a proposition, X, provides evidence in favor of another proposition Y, then X also provides evidence in favor of any proposition which is logically equivalent to Y. and Nicod's Criterion (NC): A proposition of the form "All P are Q" is supported by the observation of a particular P which is Q. can be combined to reach the seemingly paradoxical conclusion: (PC): The observation of a green apple provides evidence that all ravens are black. A resolution to the paradox must therefore either accept (PC) or reject (EC) or reject (NC) or reject both. A satisfactory resolution should also explain why there naively appears to be a paradox. Solutions which accept the paradoxical conclusion can do this by presenting a proposition which we intuitively know to be false but which is easily confused with (PC), while solutions which reject (EC) or (NC) should present a proposition which we
Raven paradox intuitively know to be true but which is easily confused with (EC) or (NC).[3]
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Approaches which accept the paradoxical conclusion

Hempel's resolution Hempel himself accepted the paradoxical conclusion, arguing that the reason the result appears paradoxical is because we possess prior information without which the observation of a non-black non-raven would indeed provide evidence that all ravens are black. He illustrates this with the example of the generalization "All sodium salts burn yellow", and asks us to consider the observation which occurs when somebody holds a piece of pure ice in a colorless flame which does not turn yellow:[1] This result would confirm the assertion, "Whatever does not burn yellow is not sodium salt", and consequently, by virtue of the equivalence condition, it would confirm the original formulation. Why does this impress us as paradoxical? The reason becomes clear when we compare the previous situation with the case of an experiment where an object whose chemical constitution is as yet unknown to us is held into a flame and fails to turn it yellow, and where subsequent analysis reveals it to contain no sodium salt. This outcome, we should no doubt agree, is what was to be expected on the basis of the hypothesis ... thus the data here obtained constitute confirming evidence for the hypothesis. In the seemingly paradoxical cases of confirmation, we are often not actually judging the relation of the given evidence, E alone to the hypothesis H ... we tacitly introduce a comparison of H with a body of evidence which consists of E in conjunction with an additional amount of information which we happen to have at our disposal; in our illustration, this information includes the knowledge (1) that the substance used in the experiment is ice, and (2) that ice contains no sodium salt. If we assume this additional information as given, then, of course, the outcome of the experiment can add no strength to the hypothesis under consideration. But if we are careful to avoid this tacit reference to additional knowledge ... the paradoxes vanish. The standard Bayesian solution One of the most popular proposed resolutions is to accept the conclusion that the observation of a green apple provides evidence that all ravens are black but to argue that the amount of confirmation provided is very small, due to the large discrepancy between the number of ravens and the number of non-black objects. According to this resolution, the conclusion appears paradoxical because we intuitively estimate the amount of evidence provided by the observation of a green apple to be zero, when it is in fact non-zero but extremely small. I J Good's presentation of this argument in 1960[4] is perhaps the best known, and variations of the argument have been popular ever since [5] although it had been presented in 1958[6] and early forms of the argument appeared as early as 1940.[7] Good's argument involves calculating the weight of evidence provided by the observation of a black raven or a white shoe in favor of the hypothesis that all the ravens in a collection of objects are black. The weight of evidence is the logarithm of the Bayes factor, which in this case is simply the factor by which the odds of the hypothesis changes when the observation is made. The argument goes as follows: ... suppose that there are black, and that the are objects that might be seen at any moment, of which of being seen. Let is are ravens and are objects each have probability 1/ be the hypothesis that there
non-black ravens, and suppose that the hypotheses
are initially equiprobable. Then, if
we happen to see a black raven, the Bayes factor in favour of average
Raven paradox i.e. about 2 if the number of ravens in existence is known to be large. But the factor if we see a white shoe is only average
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and this exceeds unity by only about r/(2N-2b) if N-b is large compared to r. Thus the weight of evidence provided by the sight of a white shoe is positive, but is small if the number of ravens is known to be small compared to the number of non-black objects.[8] Many of the proponents of this resolution and variants of it have been advocates of Bayesian probability, and it is now commonly called the Bayesian Solution, although, as Chihara[9] observes, "there is no such thing as the Bayesian solution. There are many different 'solutions' that Bayesians have put forward using Bayesian techniques." Noteworthy approaches using Bayesian techniques include Earman,[10] Eells,[11] Gibson,[12] Hosaisson-Lindenbaum,[13] Howson and Urbach,[14] Mackie,[15] and Hintikka,[16] who claims that his approach is "more Bayesian than the so-called 'Bayesian solution' of the same paradox." Bayesian approaches which make use of Carnap's theory of inductive inference include Humburg,[17] Maher, [18] and Fitelson et al.[19] Vranas[20] introduced the term "Standard Bayesian Solution" to avoid confusion. Siebel [21] attacks the standard Bayesian solution by claiming that the raven paradox reappears as soon as several non-black non-ravens are observed. Schiller [22] shows that Siebel's objection to the standard Bayesian solution is flawed.
The Carnapian approach

Maher[23] accepts the paradoxical conclusion, and refines it: A non-raven (of whatever color) confirms that all ravens are black because (i) the information that this object is not a raven removes the possibility that this object is a counterexample to the generalization, and (ii) it reduces the probability that unobserved objects are ravens, thereby reducing the probability that they are counterexamples to the generalization. In order to reach (ii), he appeals to Carnap's theory of inductive probability, which is (from the Bayesian point of view) a way of assigning prior probabilities which naturally implements induction. According to Carnap's theory, the posterior probability, , that an object, , will have a predicate, , after the evidence has been observed, is:
where
is the initial probability that , and
has the predicate );
is the number of objects which have been
examined (according to the available evidence have the predicate If is close to zero, , while if have the predicate
is the number of examined objects which turned out to
is a constant which measures resistance to generalization. will be very close to one after a single observation of an object which turned out to is much larger than , will be very close to regardless of
the fraction of observed objects which had the predicate . Using this Carnapian approach, Maher identifies a proposition which we intuitively (and correctly) know to be false, but which we easily confuse with the paradoxical conclusion. The proposition in question is the proposition that observing non-ravens tells us about the color of ravens. While this is intuitively false and is also false according to Carnap's theory of induction, observing non-ravens (according to that same theory) causes us to reduce our estimate of the total number of ravens, and thereby reduces the estimated number of possible counterexamples to the rule that all ravens are black.
Raven paradox Hence, from the Bayesian-Carnapian point of view, the observation of a non-raven does not tell us anything about the color of ravens, but it tells us about the prevalence of ravens, and supports "All ravens are black" by reducing our estimate of the number of ravens which might not be black.
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The role of background knowledge

Much of the discussion of the paradox in general and the Bayesian approach in particular has centred on the relevance of background knowledge. Surprisingly, Maher[23] shows that, for a large class of possible configurations of background knowledge, the observation of a non-black non-raven provides exactly the same amount of confirmation as the observation of a black raven. The configurations of background knowledge which he considers are those which are provided by a sample proposition, namely a proposition which is a conjunction of atomic propositions, each of which ascribes a single predicate to a single individual, with no two atomic propositions involving the same individual. Thus, a proposition of the form "A is a black raven and B is a white shoe" can be considered a sample proposition by taking "black raven" and "white shoe" to be predicates. Maher's proof appears to contradict the result of the Bayesian argument, which was that the observation of a non-black non-raven provides much less evidence than the observation of a black raven. The reason is that the background knowledge which Good and others use can not be expressed in the form of a sample proposition - in particular, variants of the standard Bayesian approach often suppose (as Good did in the argument quoted above) that the total numbers of ravens, non-black objects and/or the total number of objects, are known quantities. Maher comments that, "The reason we think there are more non-black things than ravens is because that has been true of the things we have observed to date. Evidence of this kind can be represented by a sample proposition. But ... given any sample proposition as background evidence, a non-black non-raven confirms A just as strongly as a black raven does ... Thus my analysis suggests that this response to the paradox [i.e. the Standard Bayesian one] cannot be correct." Fitelson et al.[24] examined the conditions under which the observation of a non-black non-raven provides less evidence than the observation of a black raven. They show that, if is an object selected at random, is the proposition that the object is black, and is the proposition that the object is a raven, then the condition:
is sufficient for the observation of a non-black non-raven to provide less evidence than the observation of a black raven. Here, a line over a proposition indicates the logical negation of that proposition. This condition does not tell us how large the difference in the evidence provided is, but a later calculation in the same paper shows that the weight of evidence provided by a black raven exceeds that provided by a non-black non-raven by about . This is equal to the amount of additional information (in bits, if the base of the logarithm is 2) which is provided when a raven of unknown color is discovered to be black, given the hypothesis that not all ravens are black. Fitelson et al.[24] explain that: Under normal circumstances, may be somewhere around 0.9 or 0.95; so is
somewhere around 1.11 or 1.05. Thus, it may appear that a single instance of a black raven does not yield much more support than would a non-black non-raven. However, under plausible conditions it can be shown that a sequence of instances (i.e. of n black ravens, as compared to n non-black non-ravens) yields a ratio of likelihood ratios on the order of , which blows up significantly for large . The authors point out that their analysis is completely consistent with the supposition that a non-black non-raven provides an extremely small amount of evidence although they do not attempt to prove it; they merely calculate the difference between the amount of evidence that a black raven provides and the amount of evidence that a non-black non-raven provides.
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Rejecting Nicod's criterion

The red herring
Good [25] gives an example of background knowledge with respect to which the observation of a black raven decreases the probability that all ravens are black: Suppose that we know we are in one or other of two worlds, and the hypothesis, H, under consideration is that all the ravens in our world are black. We know in advance that in one world there are a hundred black ravens, no non-black ravens, and a million other birds; and that in the other world there are a thousand black ravens, one white raven, and a million other birds. A bird is selected equiprobably at random from all the birds in our world. It turns out to be a black raven. This is strong evidence ... that we are in the second world, wherein not all ravens are black. Good concludes that the white shoe is a "red herring": Sometimes even a black raven can constitute evidence against the hypothesis that all ravens are black, so the fact that the observation of a white shoe can support it is not surprising and not worth attention. Nicod's criterion is false, according to Good, and so the paradoxical conclusion does not follow. Hempel rejected this as a solution to the paradox, insisting that the proposition 'c is a raven and is black' must be considered "by itself and without reference to any other information", and pointing out that it "... was emphasized in section 5.2(b) of my article in Mind ... that the very appearance of paradoxicality in cases like that of the white shoe results in part from a failure to observe this maxim."[26] The question which then arises is whether the paradox is to be understood in the context of absolutely no background information (as Hempel suggests), or in the context of the background information which we actually possess regarding ravens and black objects, or with regard to all possible configurations of background information. Good had shown that, for some configurations of background knowledge, Nicod's criterion is false (provided that we are willing to equate "inductively support" with "increase the probability of" - see below). The possibility remained that, with respect to our actual configuration of knowledge, which is very different from Good's example, Nicod's criterion might still be true and so we could still reach the paradoxical conclusion. Hempel, on the other hand, insists that it is our background knowledge itself which is the red herring, and that we should consider induction with respect to a condition of perfect ignorance.
Good's baby
In his proposed resolution, Maher implicitly made use of the fact that the proposition "All ravens are black" is highly probable when it is highly probable that there are no ravens. Good had used this fact before to respond to Hempel's insistence that Nicod's criterion was to be understood to hold in the absence of background information[27]: ...imagine an infinitely intelligent newborn baby having built-in neural circuits enabling him to deal with formal logic, English syntax, and subjective probability. He might now argue, after defining a raven in detail, that it is extremely unlikely that there are any ravens, and therefore it is extremely likely that all ravens are black, that is, that is true. 'On the other hand', he goes on to argue, 'if there are ravens, then there is a reasonable chance that they are of a variety of colours. Therefore, if I were to discover that even a black raven exists I would consider to be less probable than it was initially.' This, according to Good, is as close as one can reasonably expect to get to a condition of perfect ignorance, and it appears that Nicod's condition is still false. Maher made Good's argument more precise by using Carnap's theory of induction to formalize the notion that if there is one raven, then it is likely that there are many.[28] Maher's argument considers a universe of exactly two objects, each of which is very unlikely to be a raven (a one in a thousand chance) and reasonably unlikely to be black (a one in ten chance). Using Carnap's formula for induction, he finds that the probability that all ravens are black decreases from 0.9985 to 0.8995 when it is discovered that one
Raven paradox of the two objects is a black raven. Maher concludes that not only is the paradoxical conclusion true, but that Nicod's criterion is false in the absence of background knowledge (except for the knowledge that the number of objects in the universe is two and that ravens are less likely than black things).
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Distinguished predicates
Quine[29] argued that the solution to the paradox lies in the recognition that certain predicates, which he called natural kinds, have a distinguished status with respect to induction. This can be illustrated with Nelson Goodman's example of the predicate grue. An object is grue if it is blue before (say) 2015 and green afterwards. Clearly, we expect objects which were blue before 2015 to remain blue afterwards, but we do not expect the objects which were found to be grue before 2015 to be grue afterwards. Quine's explanation is that "blue" is a natural kind; a privileged predicate which can be used for induction, while "grue" is not a natural kind and using induction with it leads to error. This suggests a resolution to the paradox - Nicod's criterion is true for natural kinds, such as "blue" and "black", but is false for artificially contrived predicates, such as "grue" or "non-raven". The paradox arises, according to this resolution, because we implicitly interpret Nicod's criterion as applying to all predicates when in fact it only applies to natural kinds. Another approach which favours specific predicates over others was taken by Hintikka.[16] Hintikka was motivated to find a Bayesian approach to the paradox which did not make use of knowledge about the relative frequencies of ravens and black things. Arguments concerning relative frequencies, he contends, cannot always account for the perceived irrelevance of evidence consisting of observations of objects of type A for the purposes of learning about objects of type not-A. His argument can be illustrated by rephrasing the paradox using predicates other than "raven" and "black". For example, "All men are tall" is equivalent to "All short people are women", and so observing that a randomly selected person is a short woman should provide evidence that all men are tall. Despite the fact that we lack background knowledge to indicate that there are dramatically fewer men than short people, we still find ourselves inclined to reject the conclusion. Hintikka's example is: "... a generalization like 'no material bodies are infinitely divisible' seems to be completely unaffected by questions concerning immaterial entities, independently of what one thinks of the relative frequencies of material and immaterial entities in one's universe of discourse." His solution is to introduce an order into the set of predicates. When the logical system is equipped with this order, it is possible to restrict the scope of a generalization such as "All ravens are black" so that it applies to ravens only and not to non-black things, since the order privileges ravens over non-black things. As he puts it: If we are justified in assuming that the scope of the generalization 'All ravens are black' can be restricted to ravens, then this means that we have some outside information which we can rely on concerning the factual situation. The paradox arises from the fact that this information, which colors our spontaneous view of the situation, is not incorporated in the usual treatments of the inductive situation.[30]
Raven paradox
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Proposed resolutions which reject the equivalence condition

Selective confirmation
Scheffler and Goodman[31] took an approach to the paradox which incorporates Karl Popper's view that scientific hypotheses are never really confirmed, only falsified. The approach begins by noting that the observation of a black raven does not prove that "All ravens are black" but it falsifies the contrary hypothesis, "No ravens are black". A non-black non-raven, on the other hand, is consistent with both "All ravens are black" and with "No ravens are black". As the authors put it: ... the statement that all ravens are black is not merely satisfied by evidence of a black raven but is favored by such evidence, since a black raven disconfirms the contrary statement that all ravens are not black, i.e. satisfies its denial. A black raven, in other words, satisfies the hypothesis that all ravens are black rather than not: it thus selectively confirms that all ravens are black. Selective confirmation violates the equivalence condition since a black raven selectively confirms "All ravens are black" but not "All non-black things are non-ravens". Probabilistic or non-probabilistic induction Scheffler and Goodman's concept of selective confirmation is an example of an interpretation of "provides evidence in favor of" which does not coincide with "increase the probability of". This must be a general feature of all resolutions which reject the equivalence condition, since logically equivalent propositions must always have the same probability. It is impossible for the observation of a black raven to increase the probability of the proposition "All ravens are black" without causing exactly the same change to the probability that "All non-black things are non-ravens". If an observation inductively supports the former but not the latter, then "inductively support" must refer to something other than changes in the probabilities of propositions. A possible loophole is to interpret "All" as "Nearly all" "Nearly all ravens are black" is not equivalent to "Nearly all non-black things are non-ravens", and these propositions can have very different probabilities.[32] This raises the broader question of the relation of probability theory to inductive reasoning. Karl Popper argued that probability theory alone cannot account for induction. His argument involves splitting a hypothesis, , into a part which is deductively entailed by the evidence, First, consider the splitting
[33]
, and another part. This can be done in two ways.
where
and
are probabilistically independent:
and so on. The condition , that is, that is
which is necessary for such a splitting of H and E to be possible is probabilistically supported by . Popper's observation is that the part, , while the part of . Second, the splitting
[34]
, of
which receives support from
actually follows deductively from - that is,
which does not follow deductively from :
receives no support at all from
separates
into
, which as Popper says, "is the logically strongest part of ," and , which, he says, "contains all of
(or of the content of that goes beyond ."
) that follows [deductively] from
He continues: Does , in this case, provide any support for the factor needed to obtain ? The answer is: No. It never does. Indeed,
, which in the presence of countersupports
is alone
unless either
Raven paradox or (which are possibilities of no interest). ...
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This result is completely devastating to the inductive interpretation of the calculus of probability. All probabilistic support is purely deductive: that part of a hypothesis that is not deductively entailed by the evidence is always strongly countersupported by the evidence ... There is such a thing as probabilistic support; there might even be such a thing as inductive support (though we hardly think so). But the calculus of probability reveals that probabilistic support cannot be inductive support.
The orthodox approach

The orthodox Neyman-Pearson theory of hypothesis testing considers how to decide whether to accept or reject a hypothesis, rather than what probability to assign to the hypothesis. From this point of view, the hypothesis that "All ravens are black" is not accepted gradually, as its probability increases towards one when more and more observations are made, but is accepted in a single action as the result of evaluating the data which has already been collected. As Neyman and Pearson put it: Without hoping to know whether each separate hypothesis is true or false, we may search for rules to govern our behaviour with regard to them, in following which we insure that, in the long run of experience, we shall not be too often wrong.[35] According to this approach, it is not necessary to assign any value to the probability of a hypothesis, although one must certainly take into account the probability of the data given the hypothesis, or given a competing hypothesis, when deciding whether to accept or to reject. The acceptance or rejection of a hypothesis carries with it the risk of error. This contrasts with the Bayesian approach, which requires that the hypothesis be assigned a prior probability, which is revised in the light of the observed data to obtain the final probability of the hypothesis. Within the Bayesian framework there is no risk of error since hypotheses are not accepted or rejected; instead they are assigned probabilities. An analysis of the paradox from the orthodox point of view has been performed, and leads to, among other insights, a rejection of the equivalence condition: It seems obvious that one cannot both accept the hypothesis that all P's are Q and also reject the contrapositive, i.e. that all non-Q's are non-P. Yet it is easy to see that on the Neyman-Pearson theory of testing, a test of "All P's are Q" is not necessarily a test of "All non-Q's are non-P" or vice versa. A test of "All P's are Q" requires reference to some alternative statistical hypothesis of the form of all P's are Q, , whereas a test of "All non-Q's are non-P" requires reference to some statistical alternative of the form of all non-Q's are non-P, . But these two sets of possible alternatives are different ... Thus one could have a test of without having a test of its contrapositive.[36]
Rejecting material implication

The following propositions all imply one another: "Every object is either black or not a raven", "Every Raven is black", and "Every non-black object is a non-raven." They are therefore, by definition, logically equivalent. However, the three propositions have different domains: the first proposition says something about "Every object", while the second says something about "Every raven". The first proposition is the only one whose domain is unrestricted ("all objects"), so this is the only one which can be expressed in first order logic. It is logically equivalent to:
and also to
Raven paradox where or ". then indicates the material conditional, according to which "If then " can be understood to mean "
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It has been argued by several authors that material implication does not fully capture the meaning of "If
" (see the paradoxes of material implication). "For every object, , is either black or not a raven" is true when there are no ravens. It is because of this that "All ravens are black" is regarded as true when there are no ravens. Furthermore, the arguments which Good and Maher used to criticize Nicod's criterion (see Good's Baby, above) relied on this fact - that "All ravens are black" is highly probable when it is highly probable that there are no ravens. Some approaches to the paradox have sought to find other ways of interpreting "If then " and "All are " which would eliminate the perceived equivalence between "All ravens are black" and "All non-black things are non-ravens." One such approach involves introducing a many-valued logic according to which "If truth-value , meaning "Indeterminate" or "Inappropriate" when then " is not equivalent to "If is false. then
[37]
then
" has the
In such a system, contraposition is ". Consequently, "All ravens are
not automatically allowed: "If
black" is not equivalent to "All non-black things are non-ravens". In this system, when contraposition occurs, the modality of the conditional involved changes from the indicative ("If that piece of butter has been heated to 32 C then it has melted") to the counterfactual ("If that piece of butter had been heated to 32 C then it would have melted"). According to this argument, this removes the alleged equivalence which is necessary to conclude that yellow cows can inform us about ravens: In proper grammatical usage, a contrapositive argument ought not to be stated entirely in the indicative. Thus: From the fact that if this match is scratched it will light, it follows that if it does not light it was not scratched. is awkward. We should say: From the fact that if this match is scratched it will light, it follows that if it were not to light it would not have been scratched. ... One might wonder what effect this interpretation of the Law of Contraposition has on Hempel's paradox of confirmation. "If is a raven then is black" is equivalent to "If were not black then would not be a raven". Therefore whatever confirms the latter should also, by the Equivalence Condition, confirm the former. True, but yellow cows still cannot figure into the confirmation of "All ravens are black" because, in science, confirmation is accomplished by prediction, and predictions are properly stated in the indicative mood. It is senseless to ask what confirms a counterfactual.[38]
Differing results of accepting the hypotheses

Several commentators have observed that the propositions "All ravens are black" and "All non-black things are non-ravens" suggest different procedures for testing the hypotheses. E.g. Good writes[39]: As propositions the two statements are logically equivalent. But they have a different psychological effect on the experimenter. If he is asked to test whether all ravens are black he will look for a raven and then decide whether it is black. But if he is asked to test whether all non-black things are non-ravens he may look for a non-black object and then decide whether it is a raven. More recently, it has been suggested that "All ravens are black" and "All non-black things are non-ravens" can have different effects when accepted.[40] The argument considers situations in which the total numbers or prevalences of ravens and black objects are unknown, but estimated. When the hypothesis "All ravens are black" is accepted, according to the argument, the estimated number of black objects increases, while the estimated number of ravens does not change. It can be illustrated by considering the situation of two people who have identical information regarding ravens and black objects, and who have identical estimates of the numbers of ravens and black objects. For concreteness,
Raven paradox suppose that there are 100 objects overall, and, according to the information available to the people involved, each object is just as likely to be a non-raven as it is to be a raven, and just as likely to be black as it is to be non-black:
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and the propositions
are independent for different objects
and so on. Then the estimated number of
ravens is 50; the estimated number of black things is 50; the estimated number of black ravens is 25, and the estimated number of non-black ravens (counterexamples to the hypotheses) is 25. One of the people performs a statistical test (e.g. a Neyman-Pearson test or the comparison of the accumulated weight of evidence to a threshold) of the hypothesis that "All ravens are black", while the other tests the hypothesis that "All non-black objects are non-ravens". For simplicity, suppose that the evidence used for the test has nothing to do with the collection of 100 objects dealt with here. If the first person accepts the hypothesis that "All ravens are black" then, according to the argument, about 50 objects whose colors were previously in doubt (the ravens) are now thought to be black, while nothing different is thought about the remaining objects (the non-ravens). Consequently, he should estimate the number of black ravens at 50, the number of black non-ravens at 25 and the number of non-black non-ravens at 25. By specifying these changes, this argument explicitly restricts the domain of "All ravens are black" to ravens. On the other hand, if the second person accepts the hypothesis that "All non-black objects are non-ravens", then the approximately 50 non-black objects about which it was uncertain whether each was a raven, will be thought to be non-ravens. At the same time, nothing different will be thought about the approximately 50 remaining objects (the black objects). Consequently, he should estimate the number of black ravens at 25, the number of black non-ravens at 25 and the number of non-black non-ravens at 50. According to this argument, since the two people disagree about their estimates after they have accepted the different hypotheses, accepting "All ravens are black" is not equivalent to accepting "All non-black things are non-ravens"; accepting the former means estimating more things to be black, while accepting the latter involves estimating more things to be non-ravens. Correspondingly, the argument goes, the former requires as evidence ravens which turn out to be black and the latter requires non-black things which turn out to be non-ravens.[41]
Existential presuppositions
A number of authors have argued that propositions of the form "All which are ... .
[42]
are : and
" presuppose that there are objects
This analysis has been applied to the raven paradox
[43]
: "All ravens are black" and
: "All nonblack things are nonravens" are not strictly equivalent ... due describe the same regularity -
to their different existential presuppositions. Moreover, although
the nonexistence of nonblack ravens - they have different logical forms. The two hypotheses have different senses and incorporate different procedures for testing the regularity they describe. A modified logic can take account of existential presuppositions using the presuppositional operator, '*'. For example,
can denote "All ravens are black" while indicating that it is ravens and not non-black objects which are presupposed to exist in this example. ... the logical form of each hypothesis distinguishes it with respect to its recommended type of supporting evidence: the possibly true substitution instances of each hypothesis relate to different types of objects. The fact that the two hypotheses incorporate different kinds of testing procedures is expressed in the formal language by prefixing the operator '*' to a different predicate. The presuppositional operator thus serves as a relevance operator as well. It is prefixed to the predicate ' is a raven' in because the objects relevant to the testing procedure incorporated in "All raven are black" include only ravens; it is prefixed to the predicate '
Raven paradox is nonblack', in
115 , because the objects relevant to the testing procedure incorporated in "All nonblack things are
nonravens" include only nonblack things. ... Using Fregean terms: whenever their presuppositions hold, the two hypotheses have the same referent (truth-value), but different senses; that is, they express two different ways to determine that truth-value[44]
Notes
[1] Hempel, CG (1945) Studies in the Logic of Confirmation I. Mind Vol 54, No. 213 p.1 JSTOR (http:/ / www. jstor. org/ sici?sici=0026-4423(194501)2:54:213<1:SITLOC>2. 0. CO;2-0) [2] Hempel, CG (1945) Studies in the Logic of Confirmation II. Mind Vol 54, No. 214 p.97 JSTOR (http:/ / www. jstor. org/ sici?sici=0026-4423(194504)2:54:214<97:SITLOC>2. 0. CO;2-M) [3] Maher, P (1999) Inductive Logic and the Ravens Paradox, Philosophy of Science, 66, p.50 JSTOR (http:/ / www. jstor. org/ sici?sici=0031-8248(199903)66:1<50:ILATRP>2. 0. CO;2-9) [4] Good, IJ (1960) The Paradox of Confirmation, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 11, No. 42, 145-149 JSTOR (http:/ / links. jstor. org/ sici?sici=0007-0882(196008)11:42<145:TPOC>2. 0. CO;2-5) [5] Fitelson, B and Hawthorne, J (2006) How Bayesian Confirmation Theory Handles the Paradox of the Ravens, in Probability in Science, Chicago: Open Court Link (http:/ / fitelson. org/ ravens. pdf) [6] Alexander, HG (1958) The Paradoxes of Confirmation, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 9, No. 35, P. 227 JSTOR (http:/ / www. jstor. org/ stable/ 685654?origin=JSTOR-pdf) [7] Hosaisson-Lindenbaum, J (1940) On Confirmation, The Journal of Symbolic Logic, Vol. 5, No. 4, p. 133 JSTOR (http:/ / www. jstor. org/ action/ showArticle?doi=10. 2307/ 2268173) [8] Note: Good used "crow" instead of "raven", but "raven" has been used here throughout for consistency. [9] Chihara, (1987) Some Problems for Bayesian Confirmation Theory, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 38, No. 4 LINK (http:/ / bjps. oxfordjournals. org/ cgi/ reprint/ 38/ 4/ 551) [10] Earman, 1992 Bayes or Bust? A Critical Examination of Bayesian Confirmation Theory, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. [11] Eells, 1982 Rational Decision and Causality. New York: Cambridge University Press [12] Gibson, 1969 On Ravens and Relevance and a Likelihood Solution of the Paradox of Confirmation, LINK (http:/ / www. jstor. org/ stable/ 686720) [13] Hosaisson-Lindenbaum 1940 [14] Howson, Urbach, 1993 Scientific Reasoning: The Bayesian Approach, Open Court Publishing Company [15] Mackie, 1963 The Paradox of Confirmation, Brit. J. Phil. Sci. Vol. 13, No. 52, p. 265 LINK (http:/ / bjps. oxfordjournals. org/ cgi/ content/ citation/ XIII/ 52/ 265) [16] Hintikka, 1969 [17] Humburg 1986, The solution of Hempel's raven paradox in Rudolf Carnap's system of inductive logic, Erkenntnis, Vol. 24, No. 1, pp [18] Maher 1999 [19] Fitelson 2006 [20] Vranas (2002) Hempel's Raven Paradox: A Lacuna in the Standard Bayesian Solution LINK (http:/ / philsci-archive. pitt. edu/ archive/ 00000688/ 00/ hempelacuna. doc) [21] Siebel, M. (2004). Der Rabe und der Bayesianist. Journal for General Philosophy of Science, 35, 313329 LINK (http:/ / www. springerlink. com/ content/ g0r8032u5k1vtju6/ ) [22] Schiller, F. (2012). Why Bayesians Neednt Be Afraid of Observing Many Non-black Non-ravens. Journal for General Philosophy of Science, 34(1) LINK (http:/ / www. springerlink. com/ content/ a884725qv8v3qk05/ ) [23] Maher, 1999 [24] Fitelson, 2006 [25] Good 1967, The White Shoe is a Red Herring, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 17, No. 4, p322 JSTOR (http:/ / www. jstor. org/ stable/ 686774) [26] Hempel 1967, The White Shoe - No Red Herring, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 18, No. 3, p. 239 JSTOR (http:/ / www. jstor. org/ stable/ 686596) [27] Good 1968, The White Shoe qua Red Herring is Pink, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 19, No. 2, p. 156 JSTOR (http:/ / www. jstor. org/ stable/ 686795) [28] Maher 2004, Probability Captures the Logic of Scientific Confirmation LINK (http:/ / patrick. maher1. net/ pctl. pdf) [29] Quine, WV (1969) Natural Kinds, in Ontological Relativity and other Essays. New York:Columbia university Press, p.114 [30] Hintikka J. 1969, Inductive Independence and the Paradoxes of Confirmation LINK (http:/ / books. google. com/ books?id=pWtPcRwuacAC& pg=PA24& lpg=PA24& ots=-1PKZt0Jbz& lr=& sig=EK2qqOZ6-cZR1P1ZKIsndgxttMs) [31] Scheffler I, Goodman NJ, Selective Confirmation and the Ravens, Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 69, No. 3, 1972 JSTOR (http:/ / www. jstor. org/ stable/ 2024647) [32] Gaifman, H (1979) Subjective Probability, Natural Predicates and Hempel's Ravens, Erkenntnis, Vol. 14, p. 105 Springer (http:/ / www. springerlink. com/ content/ vw370x1531q54422/ )
Raven paradox
[33] Popper, K. Realism and the Aim of Science, Routlege, 1992, p. 325 [34] Popper K, Miller D, (1983) A Proof of the Impossibility of Inductive Probability, Nature, Vol. 302, p. 687 Link (http:/ / www. nature. com/ nature/ journal/ v302/ n5910/ abs/ 302687a0. html) [35] Neyman J, Pearson ES (1933) On the Problem of the Most Efficient Tests of Statistical Hypotheses, Phil. Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Vol. 231, p289 JSTOR (http:/ / www. jstor. org/ stable/ 91247) [36] Giere, RN (1970) An Orthodox Statistical Resolution of the Paradox of Confirmation, Philosophy of Science, Vol. 37, No. 3, p.354 JSTOR (http:/ / www. jstor. org/ stable/ 186464) [37] Farrell RJ (1979) Material Implication, Confirmation and Counterfactuals LINK (http:/ / projecteuclid. org/ DPubS/ Repository/ 1. 0/ Disseminate?view=body& id=pdf_1& handle=euclid. ndjfl/ 1093882546) [38] Farrell (1979) [39] Good (1960) [40] O'Flanagan (2008) Judgment LINK (http:/ / philsci-archive. pitt. edu/ archive/ 00003932/ 01/ judgment6. pdf) [41] O'Flanagan (2008) [42] Strawson PF (1952) Introduction to Logical Theory, methuan & Co. London, John Wiley & Sons, New York [43] Cohen Y (1987) Ravens and Relevance, Erkenntnis LINK (http:/ / www. springerlink. com/ content/ hnn2lutn1066xw47/ fulltext. pdf) [44] Cohen (1987)
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References
Franceschi, P. The Doomsday Argument and Hempel's Problem (http://www.paulfranceschi.com/index. php?option=com_content&view=article&id=8:the-doomsday-argument-and-hempels-problem& catid=1:analytic-philosophy&Itemid=2), English translation of a paper initially published in French in the Canadian Journal of Philosophy 29, 139-156, 1999, under the title Comment l'urne de Carter et Leslie se dverse dans celle de Hempel Hempel, C. G. A Purely Syntactical Definition of Confirmation. J. Symb. Logic 8, 122-143, 1943. Hempel, C. G. Studies in the Logic of Confirmation (I) Mind 54, 1-26, 1945. Hempel, C. G. Studies in the Logic of Confirmation (II) Mind 54, 97-121, 1945. Hempel, C. G. Studies in the Logic of Confirmation. In Marguerite H. Foster and Michael L. Martin (http:// www.bu.edu/philo/faculty/martin.html), eds. Probability, Confirmation, and Simplicity. New York: Odyssey Press, 1966. 145-183. Whiteley, C. H. Hempel's Paradoxes of Confirmation. Mind 55, 156-158, 1945.
External links
"Hempels Ravens Paradox," PRIME (Platonic Realms Interactive Mathematics Encyclopedia). (http://www. mathacademy.com/pr/prime/articles/paradox_raven/index.asp) Retrieved November 29, 2010.
Unexpected hanging paradox
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The unexpected hanging paradox, hangman paradox, unexpected exam paradox, surprise test paradox or prediction paradox is a paradox about a person's expectations about the timing of a future event (e.g. a prisoner's hanging, or a school test) which he is told will occur at an unexpected time. Despite significant academic interest, there is no consensus on its precise nature and consequently a final 'correct' resolution has not yet been established.[1] One approach, offered by the logical school of thought, suggests that the problem arises in a self-contradictory self-referencing statement at the heart of the judge's sentence. Another approach, offered by the epistemological school of thought, suggests the unexpected hanging paradox is an example of an epistemic paradox because it turns on our concept of knowledge.[2] Even though it is apparently simple, the paradox's underlying complexities have even led to it being called a "significant problem" for philosophy.[3]
Description of the paradox

The paradox has been described as follows:[4] A judge tells a condemned prisoner that he will be hanged at noon on one weekday in the following week but that the execution will be a surprise to the prisoner. He will not know the day of the hanging until the executioner knocks on his cell door at noon that day. Having reflected on his sentence, the prisoner draws the conclusion that he will escape from the hanging. His reasoning is in several parts. He begins by concluding that the "surprise hanging" can't be on Friday, as if he hasn't been hanged by Thursday, there is only one day left - and so it won't be a surprise if he's hanged on Friday. Since the judge's sentence stipulated that the hanging would be a surprise to him, he concludes it cannot occur on Friday. He then reasons that the surprise hanging cannot be on Thursday either, because Friday has already been eliminated and if he hasn't been hanged by Wednesday night, the hanging must occur on Thursday, making a Thursday hanging not a surprise either. By similar reasoning he concludes that the hanging can also not occur on Wednesday, Tuesday or Monday. Joyfully he retires to his cell confident that the hanging will not occur at all. The next week, the executioner knocks on the prisoner's door at noon on Wednesday which, despite all the above, was an utter surprise to him. Everything the judge said came true. Other versions of the paradox replace the death sentence with a surprise fire drill, examination, or lion behind a door or when the bin will be emptied.[1] The informal nature of everyday language allows for multiple interpretations of the paradox. In the extreme case, a prisoner who is paranoid might feel certain in his knowledge that the executioner will arrive at noon on Monday, then certain that he will come on Tuesday and so forth, thus ensuring that every day really is a "surprise" to him. But even without adding this element to the story, the vagueness of the account prohibits one from being objectively clear about which formalization truly captures its essence. There has been considerable debate between the logical school, which uses mathematical language, and the epistemological school, which employs concepts such as knowledge, belief and memory, over which formulation is correct.
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The logical school

Formulation of the judge's announcement into formal logic is made difficult by the vague meaning of the word "surprise". An attempt at formulation might be: The prisoner will be hanged next week and the date (of the hanging) will not be deducible in advance from the assumption that the hanging will occur during the week (A). Given this announcement the prisoner can deduce that the hanging will not occur on the last day of the week. However, in order to reproduce the next stage of the argument, which eliminates the penultimate day of the week, the prisoner must argue that his ability to deduce, from statement (A), that the hanging will not occur on the last day, implies that a last-day hanging would not be surprising. But since the meaning of "surprising" has been restricted to not deducible from the assumption that the hanging will occur during the week instead of not deducible from statement (A), the argument is blocked. This suggests that a better formulation would in fact be: The prisoner will be hanged next week and its date will not be deducible in advance using this statement as an axiom (B). Some authors have claimed that the self-referential nature of this statement is the source of the paradox. Fitch[5] has shown that this statement can still be expressed in formal logic. Using an equivalent form of the paradox which reduces the length of the week to just two days, he proved that although self-reference is not illegitimate in all circumstances, it is in this case because the statement is self-contradictory.
Objections
The first objection often raised to the logical school's approach is that it fails to explain how the judge's announcement appears to be vindicated after the fact. If the judge's statement is self-contradictory, how does he manage to be right all along? This objection rests on an understanding of the conclusion to be that the judge's statement is self-contradictory and therefore the source of the paradox. However, the conclusion is more precisely that in order for the prisoner to carry out his argument that the judge's sentence cannot be fulfilled, he must interpret the judge's announcement as (B). A reasonable assumption would be that the judge did not intend (B) but that the prisoner misinterprets his words to reach his paradoxical conclusion. The judge's sentence appears to be vindicated afterwards but the statement which is actually shown to be true is that "the prisoner will be psychologically surprised by the hanging". This statement in formal logic would not allow the prisoner's argument to be carried out. A related objection is that the paradox only occurs because the judge tells the prisoner his sentence (rather than keeping it secret) which suggests that the act of declaring the sentence is important. Some have argued that since this action is missing from the logical school's approach, it must be an incomplete analysis. But the action is included implicitly. The public utterance of the sentence and its context changes the judge's meaning to something like "there will be a surprise hanging despite my having told you that there will be a surprise hanging". The logical school's approach does implicitly take this into account.
Leaky inductive argument

The argument that first excludes Friday, and then excludes the last remaining day of the week is an inductive one. The prisoner assumes that by Thursday he will know the hanging is due on Friday, but he does not know that before Thursday. By trying to carry an inductive argument backward in time based on a fact known only by Thursday the prisoner may be making an error. The conditional statement "If I reach Thursday afternoon alive then Friday will be the latest possible day for the hanging" does little to reassure the condemned man. The prisoner's argument in any case carries the seeds of its own destruction because if he is right, then he is wrong, and can be hanged any day including Friday.
Unexpected hanging paradox The counter-argument to this is that in order to claim that a statement will not be a surprise, it is not necessary to predict the truth or falsity of the statement at the time the claim is made, but only to show that such a prediction will become possible in the interim period. It is indeed true that the prisoner does not know on Monday that he will be hanged on Friday, nor that he will still be alive on Thursday. However, he does know on Monday, that if the hangman as it turns out knocks on his door on Friday, he will have already have expected that (and been alive to do so) since Thursday night - and thus, if the hanging occurs on Friday then it will certainly have ceased to be a surprise at some point in the interim period between Monday and Friday. The fact that it has not yet ceased to be a surprise at the moment the claim is made is not relevant. This works for the inductive case too. When the prisoner wakes up on any given day, on which the last possible hanging day is tomorrow, the prisoner will indeed not know for certain that he will survive to see tomorrow. However, he does know that if he does survive today, he will then know for certain that he must be hanged tomorrow, and thus by the time he is actually hanged tomorrow it will have ceased to be a surprise. This removes the leak from the argument. In other words, his reasoning is incorrect, as if the hanging was on Friday, he will have found it unexpected because he would have expected no hanging. It would be true even if the judge said: "You will unexpectedly be hanged today."
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The epistemological school

Various epistemological formulations have been proposed that show that the prisoner's tacit assumptions about what he will know in the future, together with several plausible assumptions about knowledge, are inconsistent. Chow (1998) provides a detailed analysis of a version of the paradox in which a surprise examination is to take place on one of two days. Applying Chow's analysis to the case of the unexpected hanging (again with the week shortened to two days for simplicity), we start with the observation that the judge's announcement seems to affirm three things: S1: The hanging will occur on Monday or Tuesday. S2: If the hanging occurs on Monday, then the prisoner will not know on Sunday evening that it will occur on Monday. S3: If the hanging occurs on Tuesday, then the prisoner will not know on Monday evening that it will occur on Tuesday. As a first step, the prisoner reasons that a scenario in which the hanging occurs on Tuesday is impossible because it leads to a contradiction: on the one hand, by S3, the prisoner would not be able to predict the Tuesday hanging on Monday evening; but on the other hand, by S1 and process of elimination, the prisoner would be able to predict the Tuesday hanging on Monday evening. Chow's analysis points to a subtle flaw in the prisoner's reasoning. What is impossible is not a Tuesday hanging. Rather, what is impossible is a situation in which the hanging occurs on Tuesday despite the prisoner knowing on Monday evening that the judge's assertions S1, S2, and S3 are all true. The prisoner's reasoning, which gives rise to the paradox, is able to get off the ground because the prisoner tacitly assumes that on Monday evening, he will (if he is still alive) know S1, S2, and S3 to be true. This assumption seems unwarranted on several different grounds. It may be argued that the judge's pronouncement that something is true can never be sufficient grounds for the prisoner knowing that it is true. Further, even if the prisoner knows something to be true in the present moment, unknown psychological factors may erase this knowledge in the future. Finally, Chow suggests that because the statement which the prisoner is supposed to "know" to be true is a statement about his inability to "know" certain things, there is reason to believe that the unexpected hanging paradox is simply a more intricate version of Moore's paradox. A suitable analogy can be reached by reducing the length of the week to just one day. Then the judge's sentence becomes: You will be hanged tomorrow, but you do not know that.
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References
[1] T. Y. Chow, "The surprise examination or unexpected hanging paradox," The American Mathematical Monthly Jan 1998 (http:/ / www-math. mit. edu/ ~tchow/ unexpected. pdf) [2] Stanford Encyclopedia discussion of hanging paradox together with other epistemic paradoxes (http:/ / plato. stanford. edu/ entries/ epistemic-paradoxes/ ) [3] R. A. Sorensen, Blindspots, Clarendon Press, Oxford (1988) [4] "Unexpected Hanging Paradox" (http:/ / mathworld. wolfram. com/ UnexpectedHangingParadox. html). Wolfram. . [5] Fitch, F., A Goedelized formulation of the prediction paradox, Amer. Phil. Quart 1 (1964), 161164
Further reading
O'Connor, D. J. (1948). "Pragmatic Paradoxes". Mind 57: 358359. The first appearance of the paradox in print. The author
claims that certain contingent future tense statements cannot come true.
Scriven, M. (1951). "Paradoxical Announcements". Mind 60: 403407. The author critiques O'Connor and discovers the
paradox as we know it today.
Shaw, R. (1958). "The Unexpected Examination". Mind 67: 382384. The author claims that the prisoner's premises are
self-referring.
Wright, C. & Sudbury, A. (1977). "the Paradox of the Unexpected Examination". Australasian Journal of Philosophy 55: 4158. The first complete formalization of the paradox, and a proposed solution to it. Margalit, A. & Bar-Hillel, M. (1983). "Expecting the Unexpected". Philosophia 13: 337344. A history and
bibliography of writings on the paradox up to 1983.
Chihara, C. S. (1985). "Olin, Quine, and the Surprise Examination". Philosophical Studies 47: 1926. The author
claims that the prisoner assumes, falsely, that if he knows some proposition, then he also knows that he knows it.
Kirkham, R. (1991). "On Paradoxes and a Surprise Exam". Philosophia 21: 3151. The author defends and extends
Wright and Sudbury's solution. He also updates the history and bibliography of Margalit and Bar-Hillel up to 1991.
Chow, T. Y. (1998). "The surprise examination or unexpected hanging paradox" (http://www-math.mit.edu/ ~tchow/unexpected.pdf). The American Mathematical Monthly. Franceschi, P. (2005). "Une analyse dichotomique du paradoxe de l'examen surprise". Philosophiques 32 (2): 399421. English translation (http://www.paulfranceschi.com/index.php?option=com_content& view=article&id=6:a-dichotomic-analysis-of-the-surprise-examination-paradox&catid=1:analytic-philosophy& Itemid=2). Gardner, M. (1969). "The Paradox of the Unexpected Hanging". The Unexpected Hanging and Other * Mathematical Diversions. Completely analyzes the paradox and introduces other situations with similar logic. Quine, W. V. O. (1953). "On a So-called Paradox". Mind 62: 6566. Sorensen, R. A. (1982). "Recalcitrant versions of the prediction paradox". Australasian Journal of Philosophy 69: 355362.
What the Tortoise Said to Achilles
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"What the Tortoise Said to Achilles", written by Lewis Carroll in 1895 for the philosophical journal Mind, is a brief dialogue which problematises the foundations of logic. The title alludes to one of Zeno's paradoxes of motion, in which Achilles could never overtake the tortoise in a race. In Carroll's dialogue, the tortoise challenges Achilles to use the force of logic to make him accept the conclusion of a simple deductive argument. Ultimately, Achilles fails, because the clever tortoise leads him into an infinite regression.
Summary of the dialogue

The discussion begins by considering the following logical argument: A: "Things that are equal to the same are equal to each other" (Euclidean relation, a weakened form of the transitive property) B: "The two sides of this triangle are things that are equal to the same" Therefore Z: "The two sides of this triangle are equal to each other" The Tortoise asks Achilles whether the conclusion logically follows from the premises, and Achilles grants that it obviously does. The Tortoise then asks Achilles whether there might be a reader of Euclid who grants that the argument is logically valid, as a sequence, while denying that A and B are true. Achilles accepts that such a reader might exist, and that he would hold that if A and B are true, then Z must be true, while not yet accepting that A and B are true. (A reader who denies the premises.) The Tortoise then asks Achilles whether a second kind of reader might exist, who accepts that A and B are true, but who does not yet accept the principle that if A and B are both true, then Z must be true. Achilles grants the Tortoise that this second kind of reader might also exist. The Tortoise, then, asks Achilles to treat him as a reader of this second kind, and then to logically compel him to accept that Z must be true. (The tortoise is a reader who denies the argument itself, the syllogism's conclusion, structure or validity.) After writing down A, B and Z in his notebook, Achilles asks the Tortoise to accept the hypothetical: C: "If A and B are true, Z must be true" The Tortoise agrees to accept C, if Achilles will write down what he has to accept in his notebook, making the new argument: A: "Things that are equal to the same are equal to each other" B: "The two sides of this triangle are things that are equal to the same" C: "If A and B are true, Z must be true" Therefore Z: "The two sides of this triangle are equal to each other"
But now that the Tortoise accepts premise C, he still refuses to accept the expanded argument. When Achilles demands that "If you accept A and B and C, you must accept Z," the Tortoise remarks that that's another hypothetical proposition, and suggests even if he accepts C, he could still fail to conclude Z if he did not see the truth of: D: "If A and B and C are true, Z must be true" The Tortoise continues to accept each hypothetical premise once Achilles writes it down, but denies that the conclusion necessarily follows, since each time he denies the hypothetical that if all the premises written down so far are true, Z must be true: "And at last we've got to the end of this ideal racecourse! Now that you accept A and B and C and D, of course you accept Z." "Do I?" said the Tortoise innocently. "Let's make that quite clear. I accept A and B and C and D. Suppose I still refused to accept Z?"
What the Tortoise Said to Achilles "Then Logic would take you by the throat, and force you to do it!" Achilles triumphantly replied. "Logic would tell you, 'You can't help yourself. Now that you've accepted A and B and C and D, you must accept Z!' So you've no choice, you see." "Whatever Logic is good enough to tell me is worth writing down," said the Tortoise. "So enter it in your notebook, please. We will call it (E) If A and B and C and D are true, Z must be true. Until I've granted that, of course I needn't grant Z. So it's quite a necessary step, you see?" "I see," said Achilles; and there was a touch of sadness in his tone. Thus, the list of premises continues to grow without end, leaving the argument always in the form: (1): "Things that are equal to the same are equal to each other" (2): "The two sides of this triangle are things that are equal to the same" (3): (1) and (2) (Z) (4): (1) and (2) and (3) (Z) ... (n): (1) and (2) and (3) and (4) and ... and (n 1) (Z) Therefore (Z): "The two sides of this triangle are equal to each other"
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At each step, the Tortoise argues that even though he accepts all the premises that have been written down, there is some further premise (that if all of (1)(n) are true, then (Z) must be true) that he still needs to accept before he is compelled to accept that (Z) is true.
Explanation
Lewis Carroll was showing that there's a regress problem that arises from modus ponens deductions. (1) P Q (2) P --------------Therefore, Q. The regress problem arises, because, in order to explain the logical principle, we have to then propose a prior principle. And, once we explain that principle, then we have to introduce another principle to explain that principle. Thus, if the causal chain is to continue, we are to fall into infinite regress. However, if we introduce a formal system where modus ponens is simply an axiom/rule, then we are to abide by it simply, because it is so. For example, in a chess game there are particular rules, and the rules simply go without question. As players of the chess game, we are to simply follow the rules. Likewise, if we are engaging in a formal system of logic, then we are to simply follow the rules without question. Hence, introducing the formal system of logic stops the infinite regressionthat is, because the regress would stop at the axioms or rules, per se, of the given game, system, etc. Though, it does also state that there's problems with this as well, because, within the system, no proposition or variable carries with it any semantic content. So, the moment you add to any proposition or variable semantic content, the problem arises again, because the propositions and variables with semantic content run outside the system. Thus, if the solution is to be said to work, then it is to be said to work solely within the given formal system, and not otherwise. Some logicians (Kenneth Ross, Charles Wright) draw a firm distinction between the conditional connective (the syntactic sign ""), and the implication relation (the formal object denoted by the double arrow symbol ""). These logicians use the phrase not p or q for the conditional connective and the term implies for the implication relation. Some explain the difference by saying that the conditional is the contemplated relation while the implication is the asserted relation. In most fields of mathematics, it is treated as a variation in the usage of the single sign "," not requiring two separate signs. Not all of those who use the sign "" for the conditional connective regard it as a sign
What the Tortoise Said to Achilles that denotes any kind of object, but treat it as a so-called syncategorematic sign, that is, a sign with a purely syntactic function. For the sake of clarity and simplicity in the present introduction, it is convenient to use the two-sign notation, but allow the sign "" to denote the boolean function that is associated with the truth table of the material conditional. These considerations result in the following scheme of notation.
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The paradox ceases to exist the moment we replace informal logic with propositional logic. The Turtle and Achilles don't agree on any definition of logical implication. In propositional logic the logical implication is defined as follows: P Q if and only if the proposition P Q is a tautology hence de modus ponens [P (P Q)] Q, is a valid logical implication according to the definition of logical implication just stated. There is no need to recurse since the logical implication can be translated into symbols, and propositional operators such as . Demonstrating the logical implication simply translates into verifying that the compound truth table is producing a tautology.
Discussion
Several philosophers have tried to resolve the Carroll paradox. Bertrand Russell discussed the paradox briefly in 38 of The Principles of Mathematics [1] (1903), distinguishing between implication (associated with the form "if p, then q"), which he held to be a relation between unasserted propositions, and inference (associated with the form "p, therefore q"), which he held to be a relation between asserted propositions; having made this distinction, Russell could deny that the Tortoise's attempt to treat inferring Z from A and B is equivalent to, or dependent on, agreeing to the hypothetical "If A and B are true, then Z is true." The Wittgensteinian philosopher Peter Winch discussed the paradox in The Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy (1958), where he argued that the paradox showed that "the actual process of drawing an inference, which is after all at the heart of logic, is something which cannot be represented as a logical formula ... Learning to infer is not just a matter of being taught about explicit logical relations between propositions; it is learning to do something" (p.57). Winch goes on to suggest that the moral of the dialogue is a particular case of a general lesson, to the effect that the proper application of rules governing a form of human activity cannot itself be summed up with a set of further rules, and so that "a form of human activity can never be summed up in a set of explicit precepts" (p.53).
Where to find the article

Carroll, Lewis. "What the Tortoise Said to Achilles". Mind, n.s., 4 (1895), pp.27880. Hofstadter, Douglas. Gdel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid. See the second dialogue, entitled "Two-Part Invention." Dr. Hofstadter appropriated the characters of Achilles and the Tortoise for other, original, dialogues in the book which alternate contrapuntally with prose chapters. A number of websites, including "What the Tortoise Said to Achilles" [2] at the Lewis Carroll Society of North America [3], "What the Tortoise Said to Achilles" [4] at Digital Text International [5], and "What the Tortoise Said to Achilles" [6] at Fair Use Repository [7].
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References
Isashiki Takahiro (1999). What Can We Learn from Lewis Carroll's Paradox? [8]. In Memoirs of the Faculty of Education, Miyazaki University: Humanities, no. 86, pp.7998. The paper is in Japanese only, except for the abstract. A slightly extended version of the English-language abstract is available from [9]. Another author provides a more extended summary at [10] (currently down, and unavailable from archive.org).
References
[1] http:/ / fair-use. org/ bertrand-russell/ the-principles-of-mathematics/ s. 38 [2] http:/ / www. lewiscarroll. org/ achilles. html [3] http:/ / www. lewiscarroll. org [4] http:/ / www. ditext. com/ carroll/ tortoise. html [5] http:/ / www. ditext. com/ [6] http:/ / fair-use. org/ mind/ 1895/ 04/ what-the-tortoise-said-to-achilles [7] http:/ / fair-use. org [8] http:/ / www. miyazaki-u. ac. jp/ ~e02702u/ papers/ carroll_all. html [9] http:/ / www. miyazaki-u. ac. jp/ ~e02702u/ papers/ eng_carroll. html [10] http:/ / homepage2. nifty. com/ Workshop-Alice/ click/ m-t. html
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Mathematics
Accuracy paradox
The accuracy paradox for predictive analytics states that predictive models with a given level of accuracy may have greater predictive power than models with higher accuracy. It may be better to avoid the accuracy metric in favor of other metrics such as precision and recall. Accuracy is often the starting point for analyzing the quality of a predictive model, as well as an obvious criterion for prediction. Accuracy measures the ratio of correct predictions to the total number of cases evaluated. It may seem obvious that the ratio of correct predictions to cases should be a key metric. A predictive model may have high accuracy, but be useless. In an example predictive model for an insurance fraud application, all cases that are predicted as high-risk by the model will be investigated. To evaluate the performance of the model, the insurance company has created a sample data set of 10,000 claims. All 10,000 cases in the validation sample have been carefully checked and it is known which cases are fraudulent. To analyze the quality of the model, the insurance uses the table of confusion. The definition of accuracy, the table of confusion for model M1Fraud, and the calculation of accuracy for model M1Fraud is shown below. where TN is the number of true negative cases FP is the number of false positive cases FN is the number of false negative cases TP is the number of true positive cases Formula 1: Definition of Accuracy
Predicted Negative Predicted Positive Negative Cases 9,700 Positive Cases 50 150 100
Table 1: Table of Confusion for Fraud Model M1Fraud.
Formula 2: Accuracy for model M1Fraud With an accuracy of 98.0% model M1Fraud appears to perform fairly well. The paradox lies in the fact that accuracy can be easily improved to 98.5% by always predicting "no fraud". The table of confusion and the accuracy for this trivial always predict negative model M2Fraud and the accuracy of this model are shown below.
Accuracy paradox
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Predicted Negative Predicted Positive Negative Cases 9,850 Positive Cases 150 0 0
Table 2: Table of Confusion for Fraud Model M2Fraud.
Formula 3: Accuracy for model M2Fraud Model M2Fraudreduces the rate of inaccurate predictions from 2% to 1.5%. This is an apparent improvement of 25%. The new model M2Fraud shows fewer incorrect predictions and markedly improved accuracy, as compared to the original model M1Fraud, but is obviously useless. The alternative model M2Fraud does not offer any value to the company for preventing fraud. The less accurate model is more useful than the more accurate model. Model improvements should not be measured in terms of accuracy gains. It may be going too far to say that accuracy is irrelevant, but caution is advised when using accuracy in the evaluation of predictive models.
Bibliography
Zhu, Xingquan (2007), Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining: Challenges and Realities [1], IGI Global, pp.118119, ISBN978-1-59904-252-7 doi:10.1117/12.785623 pp 86-87 of this Master's thesis [2]
References
[1] http:/ / books. google. com/ ?id=zdJQAAAAMAAJ& q=data+ mining+ challenges+ and+ realities& dq=data+ mining+ challenges+ and+ realities [2] http:/ / www. utwente. nl/ ewi/ trese/ graduation_projects/ 2009/ Abma. pdf
Apportionment paradox
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An apportionment paradox exists when the rules for apportionment in a political system produce results which are unexpected or seem to violate common sense. To apportion is to divide into parts according to some rule, the rule typically being one of proportion. Certain quantities, like milk, can be divided in any proportion whatsoever; others, such as horses, cannotonly whole numbers will do. In the latter case, there is an inherent tension between our desire to obey the rule of proportion as closely as possible and the constraint restricting the size of each portion to discrete values. This results, at times, in unintuitive observations, or paradoxes. Several paradoxes related to apportionment, also called fair division, have been identified. In some cases, simple adjustments to an apportionment methodology can resolve observed paradoxes. Others, such as those relating to the United States House of Representatives, call into question notions that mathematics alone can provide a single, fair resolution.
History
The Alabama paradox was discovered in 1880, when it was found that increasing the total number of seats would decrease Alabama's share from 8 to 7. There was more to come: when Oklahoma became a state in 1907, a recomputation of apportionment showed that the number of seats due to other states would be affected even though Oklahoma would be given a fair share of seats and the total number of seats increased by that number. The method for apportionment used during this period, originally put forth by Alexander Hamilton but not adopted until 1852, was as follows (after meeting the requirements of the United States Constitution, wherein each state must be allocated at least one seat in the House of Representatives, regardless of population): First, the fair share of each state, i.e. the proportional share of seats that each state would get if fractional values were allowed, is computed. Next, the fair shares are rounded down to whole numbers, resulting in unallocated "leftover" seats. These seats are allocated, one each, to the states whose fair share exceeds the rounded-down number by the highest amount.
Impossibility result
In 1982 two mathematicians, Michel Balinski and Peyton Young, proved that any method of apportionment will result in paradoxes whenever there are three or more parties (or states, regions, etc.).[1][2] More precisely, their theorem states that there is no apportionment system that has the following properties (as the example we take the division of seats between parties in a system of proportional representation): It follows the quota rule: Each of the parties gets one of the two numbers closest to its fair share of seats (if the party's fair share is 7.34 seats, it gets either 7 or 8). It does not have the Alabama paradox: If the total number of seats is increased, no party's number of seats decreases. It does not have the population paradox: If party A gets more votes and party B gets fewer votes, no seat will be transferred from A to B.
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Examples of paradoxes
Alabama paradox
The Alabama paradox was the first of the apportionment paradoxes to be discovered. The US House of Representatives is constitutionally required to allocate seats based on population counts, which are required every 10 years. The size of the House is set by statute. After the 1880 census, C. W. Seaton, chief clerk of the United States Census Bureau, computed apportionments for all House sizes between 275 and 350, and discovered that Alabama would get 8 seats with a House size of 299 but only 7 with a House size of 300. In general the term Alabama paradox refers to any apportionment scenario where increasing the total number of items would decrease one of the shares. A similar exercise by the Census Bureau after the 1900 census computed apportionments for all House sizes between 350 and 400: Colorado would have received three seats in all cases, except with a House size of 357 in which case it would have received two.[3] The following is a simplified example (following the largest remainder method) with three states and 10 seats and 11 seats.
With 10 seats With 11 seats
State Population Fair share Seats Fair share Seats A B C 6 6 2 4.286 4.286 1.429 4 4 2 4.714 4.714 1.571 5 5 1
Observe that state C's share decreases from 2 to 1 with the added seat. This occurs because increasing the number of seats increases the fair share faster for the large states than for the small states. In particular, large A and B had their fair share increase faster than small C. Therefore, the fractional parts for A and B increased faster than those for C. In fact, they overtook C's fraction, causing C to lose its seat, since the Hamilton method examines which states have the largest fraction.
New states paradox

Given a fixed number of total representatives (as determined by the United States House of Representatives), adding a new state would in theory reduce the number of representatives for existing states, as under the United States Constitution each state is entitled to at least one representative regardless of its population. However, because of how the particular apportionment rules deal with rounding methods, it is possible for an existing state to get more representatives than if the new state were not added.
Population paradox
The population paradox is a counterintuitive result of some procedures for apportionment. When two states have populations increasing at different rates, a small state with rapid growth can lose a legislative seat to a big state with slower growth. The paradox arises because of rounding in the procedure for dividing the seats. See the apportionment rules for the United States Congress for an example.
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External links
The Constitution and Paradoxes [4] Alabama Paradox [5] New States Paradox [6] Population Paradox [7] Apportionment: Balinski and Young's Contribution [8]
References
[1] Balinski, Michel; H. Peyton Young (1982). Fair Representation: Meeting the Ideal of One Man, One Vote. Yale Univ Pr. ISBN0300027249. [2] Balinski, Michel; H. Peyton Young (2001). Fair Representation: Meeting the Ideal of One Man, One Vote (2nd ed.). Brookings Institution Press. ISBN081570111X. [3] Cut-the-knot: The Constitution and Paradoxes (http:/ / www. cut-the-knot. org/ ctk/ Democracy. shtml) [4] http:/ / www. cut-the-knot. org/ ctk/ Democracy. shtml [5] http:/ / www. cut-the-knot. org/ ctk/ Democracy. shtml#alabama [6] http:/ / www. cut-the-knot. org/ ctk/ Democracy. shtml#new-states [7] http:/ / www. cut-the-knot. org/ ctk/ Democracy. shtml#population [8] http:/ / www. ams. org/ featurecolumn/ archive/ apportionII3. html
BanachTarski paradox
The BanachTarski paradox is a theorem in set theoretic geometry which states the following: Given a solid ball in 3dimensional space, there exists a decomposition of the ball into Can a ball be decomposed into a finite number of point sets and reassembled into two a finite number of non-overlapping balls identical to the original? pieces (i.e. subsets), which can then be put back together in a different way to yield two identical copies of the original ball. The reassembly process involves only moving the pieces around and rotating them, without changing their shape. However, the pieces themselves are not "solids" in the usual sense, but infinite scatterings of points. A stronger form of the theorem implies that given any two "reasonable" solid objects (such as a small ball and a huge ball), either one can be reassembled into the other. This is often stated colloquially as "a pea can be chopped up and reassembled into the Sun". The reason the BanachTarski theorem is called a paradox is that it contradicts basic geometric intuition. "Doubling the ball" by dividing it into parts and moving them around by rotations and translations, without any stretching, bending, or adding new points, seems to be impossible, since all these operations preserve the volume, but the volume is doubled in the end. Unlike most theorems in geometry, this result depends in a critical way on the axiom of choice in set theory. This axiom allows for the construction of nonmeasurable sets, collections of points that do not have a volume in the ordinary sense and for their construction would require performing an uncountably infinite number of choices. It was shown in 2005 that the pieces in the decomposition can be chosen in such a way that they can be moved continuously into place without running into one another.[1]
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Banach and Tarski publication

In a paper published in 1924,[2] Stefan Banach and Alfred Tarski gave a construction of such a "paradoxical decomposition", based on earlier work by Giuseppe Vitali concerning the unit interval and on the paradoxical decompositions of the sphere by Felix Hausdorff, and discussed a number of related questions concerning decompositions of subsets of Euclidean spaces in various dimensions. They proved the following more general statement, the strong form of the BanachTarski paradox: Given any two bounded subsets A and B of a Euclidean space in at least three dimensions, both of which have a non-empty interior, there are partitions of A and B into a finite number of disjoint subsets, A = A1 ... Ak, B = B1 ... Bk, such that for each i between 1 and k, the sets Ai and Bi are congruent. Now let A be the original ball and B be the union of two translated copies of the original ball. Then the proposition means that you can divide the original ball A into a certain number of pieces and then rotate and translate these pieces in such a way that the result is the whole set B, which contains two copies of A. The strong form of the BanachTarski paradox is false in dimensions one and two, but Banach and Tarski showed that an analogous statement remains true if countably many subsets are allowed. The difference between the dimensions 1 and 2 on the one hand, and three and higher, on the other hand, is due to the richer structure of the group Gn of the Euclidean motions in the higher dimensions, which is solvable for n =1, 2 and contains a free group with two generators for n 3. John von Neumann studied the properties of the group of equivalences that make a paradoxical decomposition possible, identifying the class of amenable groups, for which no paradoxical decompositions exist. He also found a form of the paradox in the plane which uses area-preserving affine transformations in place of the usual congruences.
Formal treatment
The BanachTarski paradox states that a ball in the ordinary Euclidean space can be doubled using only the operations of partitioning into subsets, replacing a set with a congruent set, and reassembly. Its mathematical structure is greatly elucidated by emphasizing the role played by the group of Euclidean motions and introducing the notions of equidecomposable sets and paradoxical set. Suppose that G is a group acting on a set X. In the most important special case, X is an n-dimensional Euclidean space, and G consists of all isometries of X, i.e. the transformations of X into itself that preserve the distances. Two geometric figures that can be transformed into each other are called congruent, and this terminology will be extended to the general G-action. Two subsets A and B of X are called G-equidecomposable, or equidecomposable with respect to G, if A and B can be partitioned into the same finite number of respectively G-congruent pieces. It is easy to see that this defines an equivalence relation among all subsets of X. Formally, if
and there are elements g1,...,gk of G such that for each i between 1 and k, gi (Ai ) = Bi , then we will say that A and B are G-equidecomposable using k pieces. If a set E has two disjoint subsets A and B such that A and E, as well as B and E, are G-equidecomposable then E is called paradoxical. Using this terminology, the BanachTarski paradox can be reformulated as follows: A three-dimensional Euclidean ball is equidecomposable with two copies of itself. In fact, there is a sharp result in this case, due to Robinson[3]: doubling the ball can be accomplished with five pieces, and fewer than five pieces will not suffice. The strong version of the paradox claims: Any two bounded subsets of 3-dimensional Euclidean space with non-empty interiors are equidecomposable.
BanachTarski paradox While apparently more general, this statement is derived in a simple way from the doubling of a ball by using a generalization of the BernsteinSchroeder theorem due to Banach that implies that if A is equidecomposable with a subset of B and B is equidecomposable with a subset of A, then A and B are equidecomposable. The BanachTarski paradox can be put in context by pointing out that for two sets in the strong form of the paradox, there is always a bijective function that can map the points in one shape into the other in a one-to-one fashion. In the language of Georg Cantor's set theory, these two sets have equal cardinality. Thus, if one enlarges the group to allow arbitrary bijections of X then all sets with non-empty interior become congruent. Likewise, we can make one ball into a larger or smaller ball by stretching, in other words, by applying similarity transformations. Hence if the group G is large enough, we may find G-equidecomposable sets whose "size" varies. Moreover, since a countable set can be made into two copies of itself, one might expect that somehow, using countably many pieces could do the trick. On the other hand, in the BanachTarski paradox the number of pieces is finite and the allowed equivalences are Euclidean congruences, which preserve the volumes. Yet, somehow, they end up doubling the volume of the ball! While this is certainly surprising, some of the pieces used in the paradoxical decomposition are non-measurable sets, so the notion of volume (more precisely, Lebesgue measure) is not defined for them, and the partitioning cannot be accomplished in a practical way. In fact, the BanachTarski paradox demonstrates that it is impossible to find a finitely-additive measure (or a Banach measure) defined on all subsets of a Euclidean space of three (and greater) dimensions that is invariant with respect to Euclidean motions and takes the value one on a unit cube. In his later work, Tarski showed that, conversely, non-existence of paradoxical decompositions of this type implies the existence of a finitely-additive invariant measure. The heart of the proof of the "doubling the ball" form of the paradox presented below is the remarkable fact that by a Euclidean isometry (and renaming of elements), one can divide a certain set (essentially, the surface of a unit sphere) into four parts, then rotate one of them to become itself plus two of the other parts. This follows rather easily from a F2-paradoxical decomposition of F2, the free group with two generators. Banach and Tarski's proof relied on an analogous fact discovered by Hausdorff some years earlier: the surface of a unit sphere in space is a disjoint union of three sets B, C, D and a countable set E such that, on the one hand, B, C, D are pairwise congruent, and, on the other hand, B is congruent with the union of C and D. This is often called the Hausdorff paradox.
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Connection with earlier work and the role of the axiom of choice
Banach and Tarski explicitly acknowledge Giuseppe Vitali's 1905 construction of the set bearing his name, Hausdorff's paradox (1914), and an earlier (1923) paper of Banach as the precursors to their work. Vitali's and Hausdorff's constructions depend on Zermelo's axiom of choice ("AC"), which is also crucial to the BanachTarski paper, both for proving their paradox and for the proof of another result: Two Euclidean polygons, one of which strictly contains the other, are not equidecomposable. They remark: Le rle que joue cet axiome dans nos raisonnements nous semble mriter l'attention (The role this axiom plays in our reasoning seems to us to deserve attention) and point out that while the second result fully agrees with our geometric intuition, its proof uses AC in an even more substantial way than the proof of the paradox. Thus Banach and Tarski imply that AC should not be rejected simply because it produces a paradoxical decomposition, for such an argument also undermines proofs of geometrically intuitive statements. However, in 1949 A.P. Morse showed that the statement about Euclidean polygons can be proved in ZF set theory and thus does not require the axiom of choice. In 1964, Paul Cohen proved that the axiom of choice cannot be proved from ZF. A weaker version of an axiom of choice is the axiom of dependent choice, DC. It has been shown that The BanachTarski paradox is not a theorem of ZF, nor of ZF+DC (Wagon, Corollary 13.3).
BanachTarski paradox Large amounts of mathematics use AC. As Stan Wagon points out at the end of his monograph, the BanachTarski paradox has been more significant for its role in pure mathematics than for foundational questions: it motivated a fruitful new direction for research, the amenability of groups, which has nothing to do with the foundational questions. In 1991, using then-recent results by Matthew Foreman and Friedrich Wehrung,[4] Janusz Pawlikowski proved that the BanachTarski paradox follows from ZF plus the HahnBanach theorem.[5] The HahnBanach theorem doesn't rely on the full axiom of choice but can be proved using a weaker version of AC called the ultrafilter lemma. So Pawlikowski proved that the set theory needed to prove the BanachTarski paradox, while stronger than ZF, is weaker than full ZFC.
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A sketch of the proof

Here we sketch a proof which is similar but not identical to that given by Banach and Tarski. Essentially, the paradoxical decomposition of the ball is achieved in four steps: 1. Find a paradoxical decomposition of the free group in two generators. 2. Find a group of rotations in 3-d space isomorphic to the free group in two generators. 3. Use the paradoxical decomposition of that group and the axiom of choice to produce a paradoxical decomposition of the hollow unit sphere. 4. Extend this decomposition of the sphere to a decomposition of the solid unit ball. We now discuss each of these steps in more detail.
Step 1
The free group with two generators a and b consists of all finite strings that can be formed from the four symbols a, a1, b and b1 such that no a appears directly next to an a1 and no b appears directly next to a b1. Two such strings can be concatenated and converted into a string of this type by repeatedly replacing the "forbidden" substrings with the empty string. For instance: abab1a1 concatenated with abab1a yields abab1a1abab1a, which contains the substring a1a, and so gets reduced to abaab1a. One can check that the set of those strings with this operation forms a group with identity element the empty string e. We will call this group F2. The group can be "paradoxically decomposed" as follows: let S(a) be the set of all strings that start with a and define S(a1), S(b) and S(b1) similarly. Clearly,
but also
and The notation aS(a1) means take all the strings in S(a1) and concatenate them on the left with a. Make sure that you understand this last line, because it is at the core of the proof. For example, there may be a string in the set which, because of the rule that to the string must not appear next to . In this way, ). , reduces
The sets S(a1) and aS(a1) in the Cayley graph of F2
contains all the (for example the string
strings that start with which reduces to
. Similarly, it contains all the strings that start with
BanachTarski paradox We have cut our group F2 into four pieces (plus the singleton {e}), then "shifted" two of them by multiplying with a or b, then "reassembled" two pieces to make one copy of and the other two to make another copy of . That is exactly what we want to do to the ball.
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Step 2
In order to find a group of rotations of 3D space that behaves just like (or "isomorphic to") the group , we take two orthogonal axes, e.g. the x and z axes, and let A be a rotation of arccos(1/3) about the first, x axis, and B be a rotation of arccos(1/3) about the second, z axis (there are many other suitable pairs of irrational multiples of , that could be used here instead of arccos(1/3) and arccos(1/3), as well). It is somewhat messy but not too difficult to show that these two rotations behave just like the elements a and b in our group . We shall skip it, leaving the exercise to the reader. The new group of rotations generated by A and B will be called H. We now also have a paradoxical decomposition of H. (This step cannot be performed in two dimensions since it involves rotations in three dimensions. If we take two rotations about the same axis, the resulting group is commutative and doesn't have the property required in step 1.)
Step 3
The unit sphere S2 is partitioned into orbits by the action of our group H: two points belong to the same orbit if and only if there's a rotation in H which moves the first point into the second. (Note that the orbit of a point is a dense set in S2.) We can use the axiom of choice to pick exactly one point from every orbit; collect these points into a set M. Now (almost) every point in S2 can be reached in exactly one way by applying the proper rotation from H to the proper element from M, and because of this, the paradoxical decomposition of H then yields a paradoxical decomposition of S2 into four pieces A1, A2, A3, A4 as follows:
where:
(We didn't use the five "paradoxical" parts of F2 directly, as they would leave us with M as an extra piece after doubling, due to the presence of the singleton {e}!) The (majority of the) sphere has now been divided into four sets (each one dense on the sphere), and when two of these are rotated, we end up with double what we had before:
Step 4
Finally, connect every point on S2 with a ray to the origin; the paradoxical decomposition of S2 then yields a paradoxical decomposition of the solid unit ball minus the point at the ball's centre (this center point needs a bit more care, see below). N.B. This sketch glosses over some details. One has to be careful about the set of points on the sphere which happen to lie on the axis of some rotation in H. However, there are only countably many such points, and like the point at the centre of the ball, it is possible to patch the proof to account for them all (see below).
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Some details, fleshed out

In Step 3, we partitioned the sphere into orbits of our group H. To streamline the proof, we omitted the discussion of points that are fixed by some rotation; since the paradoxical decomposition of relies on shifting certain subsets, the fact that some points are fixed might cause some trouble. Since any rotation of S2 (other than the null rotation) has exactly two fixed points, and since H, which is isomorphic to , is countable, there are countably many points of S2 that are fixed by some rotation in H, denote this set of fixed points D. Step 3 proves that S2 D admits a paradoxical decomposition. What remains to be shown is the Claim: S2 D is equidecomposable with S2. Proof. Let be some line through the origin that does not intersect any point in Dthis is possible since D is countable. Let J be the set of angles, , such that for some natural number n, and some P in D, r(n)P is also in D, where r(n) is a rotation about of n. Then J is countable so there exists an angle not in J. Let be the rotation about by , then acts on S2 with no fixed points in D, i.e., n(D) is disjoint from D, and for natural m<n, n(D) is disjoint from m(D). Let E be the disjoint union of n(D) over n = 0,1,2,. Then S2=E(S2E)~(E)(S2E)=(ED)(S2E)=S2 D, where ~ denotes "is equidecomposable to". For step 4, it has already been shown that the ball minus a point admits a paradoxical decomposition; it remains to be shown that the ball minus a point is equidecomposable with the ball. Consider a circle within the ball, containing the point at the centre of the ball. Using an argument like that used to prove the Claim, one can see that the full circle is equidecomposable with the circle minus the point at the ball's centre. (Basically, a countable set of points on the circle can be rotated to give itself plus one more point.) Note that this involves the rotation about a point other than the origin, so the BanachTarski paradox involves isometries of Euclidean 3-space rather than just SO(3). We are using the fact that if A ~ B and B ~ C, then A ~ C. The decomposition of A into C can be done using number of pieces equal to the product of the numbers needed for taking A into B and for taking B into C. The proof sketched above requires 242+8=24 pieces, a factor of 2 to remove fixed points, a factor 4 from step 1, a factor 2 to recreate fixed points, and 8 for the center point of the second ball. But in step 1 when moving {e} and all strings of the form an into S(a1), do this to all orbits except one. Move {e} of this last orbit to the center point of the second ball. This brings the total down to 16+1 pieces. With more algebra one can also decompose fixed orbits into 4 sets as in step 1. This gives 5 pieces and is the best possible.
Obtaining infinitely many balls from one

Using the BanachTarski paradox, it is possible to obtain k copies of a ball in the Euclidean n-space from one, for any integers n3 and k1, i.e. a ball can be cut into k pieces so that each of them is equidecomposable to a ball of the same size as the original. Using the fact that the free group of rank 2 admits a free subgroup of countably infinite rank, a similar proof yields that the unit sphere Sn1 can be partitioned into countably infinitely many pieces, each of which is equidecomposable (with two pieces) to the Sn1 using rotations. By using analytic properties of the rotation group SO(n), which is a connected analytic Lie group, one can further prove that the sphere Sn1 can be partitioned into as many pieces as there are real numbers (that is, pieces), so that each piece is equidecomposable with two pieces to Sn1 using rotations. These results then extend to the unit ball deprived of the origin. In 2010 an article of Vitaly Churkin was published that gives a new proof of the continuous version of the BanachTarski paradox.[6]
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The von Neumann paradox in the Euclidean plane

In the Euclidean plane, two figures that are equidecomposable with respect to the group of Euclidean motions are necessarily of the same area, therefore, a paradoxical decomposition of a square or disk of BanachTarski type that uses only Euclidean congruences is impossible. A conceptual explanation of the distinction between the planar and higher-dimensional cases was given by John von Neumann: unlike the group SO(3) of rotations in three dimensions, the group E(2) of Euclidean motions of the plane is solvable, which implies the existence of a finitely-additive measure on E(2) and R2 which is invariant under translations and rotations, and rules out paradoxical decompositions of non-negligible sets. Von Neumann then posed the following question: can such a paradoxical decomposition be constructed if one allowed a larger group of equivalences? It is clear that if one permits similarities, any two squares in the plane become equivalent even without further subdivision. This motivates restricting one's attention to the group SA2 of area-preserving affine transformations. Since the area is preserved, any paradoxical decomposition of a square with respect to this group would be counterintuitive for the same reasons as the BanachTarski decomposition of a ball. In fact, the group SA2 contains as a subgroup the special linear group SL(2,R), which in its turn contains the free group F2 with two generators as a subgroup. This makes it plausible that the proof of BanachTarski paradox can be imitated in the plane. The main difficulty here lies in the fact that the unit square is not invariant under the action of the linear group SL(2,R), hence one cannot simply transfer a paradoxical decomposition from the group to the square, as in the third step of the above proof of the BanachTarski paradox. Moreover, the fixed points of the group present difficulties (for example, the origin is fixed under all linear transformations). This is why von Neumann used the larger group SA2 including the translations, and he constructed a paradoxical decomposition of the unit square with respect to the enlarged group (in 1929). Applying the BanachTarski method, the paradox for the square can be strengthened as follows: Any two bounded subsets of the Euclidean plane with non-empty interiors are equidecomposable with respect to the area-preserving affine maps. As von Neumann notes,[7] "Infolgedessen gibt es bereits in der Ebene kein nichtnegatives additives Ma (wo das Einheitsquadrat das Ma 1 hat), dass [sic] gegenber allen Abbildungen von A2 invariant wre." "In accordance with this, already in the plane there is no nonnegative additive measure (for which the unit square has a measure of 1), which is invariant with respect to all transformations belonging to A2 [the group of area-preserving affine transformations]." To explain this a bit more, the question of whether a finitely additive measure exists, that is preserved under certain transformations, depends on what transformations are allowed. The Banach measure of sets in the plane, which is preserved by translations and rotations, is not preserved by non-isometric transformations even when they do preserve the area of polygons. The points of the plane (other than the origin) can be divided into two dense sets which we may call A and B. If the A points of a given polygon are transformed by a certain area-preserving transformation and the B points by another, both sets can become subsets of the A points in two new polygons. The new polygons have the same area as the old polygon, but the two transformed sets cannot have the same measure as before (since they contain only part of the A points), and therefore there is no measure that "works". The class of groups isolated by von Neumann in the course of study of BanachTarski phenomenon turned out to be very important for many areas of mathematics: these are amenable groups, or groups with an invariant mean, and include all finite and all solvable groups. Generally speaking, paradoxical decompositions arise when the group used for equivalences in the definition of equidecomposability is not amenable.
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Recent progress
Von Neumann's paper left open the possibility of a paradoxical decomposition of the interior of the unit square with respect to the linear group SL(2,R) (Wagon, Question 7.4). In 2000, Mikls Laczkovich proved that such a decomposition exists.[8] More precisely, let A be the family of all bounded subsets of the plane with non-empty interior and at a positive distance from the origin, and B the family of all planar sets with the property that a union of finitely many translates under some elements of SL(2,R) contains a punctured neighbourhood of the origin. Then all sets in the family A are SL(2,R)-equidecomposable, and likewise for the sets in B. It follows that both families consist of paradoxical sets. Topoi do not assume the axiom of choices, so categorical proofs done on topoi sometimes re-create desired results without the undesired assumption. It had been known for a long time that the full plane was paradoxical with respect to SA2, and that the minimal number of pieces would equal four provided that there exists a locally commutative free subgroup of SA2. In 2003 Kenzi Sat constructed such a subgroup, confirming that four pieces suffice.[9]
Notes
[1] Wilson, TrevorM. (September 2005). "A continuous movement version of the BanachTarski paradox: A solution to De Groot's problem". Journal of Symbolic Logic 70 (3): 946952. doi:10.2178/jsl/1122038921. JSTOR27588401. [2] Banach, Stefan; Tarski, Alfred (1924). "Sur la dcomposition des ensembles de points en parties respectivement congruentes" (http:/ / matwbn. icm. edu. pl/ ksiazki/ fm/ fm6/ fm6127. pdf) (in French). Fundamenta Mathematicae 6: 244277. . [3] Robinson, R. M. (1947). "On the Decomposition of Spheres." Fund. Math. 34:246260. This article, based on an analysis of the Hausdorff paradox, settled a question put forth by von Neumann in 1929. [4] Foreman, M.; Wehrung, F. (1991). "The HahnBanach theorem implies the existence of a non-Lebesgue measurable set" (http:/ / matwbn. icm. edu. pl/ ksiazki/ fm/ fm138/ fm13812. pdf). Fundamenta Mathematicae 138: 1319. . [5] Pawlikowski, Janusz (1991). "The HahnBanach theorem implies the BanachTarski paradox" (http:/ / matwbn. icm. edu. pl/ ksiazki/ fm/ fm138/ fm13813. pdf). Fundamenta Mathematicae 138: 2122. . [6] Churkin, V. A. (2010). "A continuous version of the HausdorffBanachTarski paradox". Algebra and Logic 49 (1): 8189. doi:10.1007/s10469-010-9080-y. [7] On p. 85. Neumann, J. v. (1929). "Zur allgemeinen Theorie des Masses" (http:/ / matwbn. icm. edu. pl/ ksiazki/ fm/ fm13/ fm1316. pdf). Fundamenta Mathematica 13: 73116. . [8] Laczkovich, Mikls (1999). "Paradoxical sets under SL2(R)". Ann. Univ. Sci. Budapest. Etvs Sect. Math. 42: 141145. [9] Sat, Kenzi (2003). "A locally commutative free group acting on the plane". Fundamenta Mathematica 180 (1): 2534.
References
Banach, Stefan; Tarski, Alfred (1924). "Sur la dcomposition des ensembles de points en parties respectivement congruentes" (http://matwbn.icm.edu.pl/ksiazki/fm/fm6/fm6127.pdf) (PDF). Fundamenta Mathematicae 6: 244277. Churkin, V. A. (2010). "A continuous version of the HausdorffBanachTarski paradox". Algebra and Logic 49 (1): 9198. doi:10.1007/s10469-010-9080-y. Edward Kasner & James Newman (1940) Mathematics and the Imagination, pp 2057, Simon & Schuster. Kuro5hin. "Layman's Guide to the BanachTarski Paradox" (http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/5/23/ 134430/275). Stromberg, Karl (March 1979). "The BanachTarski paradox". The American Mathematical Monthly (Mathematical Association of America) 86 (3): 151161. doi:10.2307/2321514. JSTOR2321514. Su, Francis E.. "The BanachTarski Paradox" (http://www.math.hmc.edu/~su/papers.dir/banachtarski.pdf) (PDF). von Neumann, John (1929). "Zur allgemeinen Theorie des Masses" (http://matwbn.icm.edu.pl/ksiazki/fm/ fm13/fm1316.pdf) (PDF). Fundamenta Mathematicae 13: 73116. Wagon, Stan (1994). The BanachTarski Paradox. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN0-521-45704-1.
BanachTarski paradox Wapner, Leonard M. (2005). The Pea and the Sun: A Mathematical Paradox (http://gen.lib.rus.ec/ get?md5=59f223482492f1644b1023fccd4968f1). Wellesley, Mass.: A.K. Peters. ISBN1-56881-213-2.
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External links
The Banach-Tarski Paradox (http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/TheBanachTarskiParadox/) by Stan Wagon (Macalester College), the Wolfram Demonstrations Project. Irregular Webcomic! #2339 (http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2339.html) by David Morgan-Mar provides a non-technical explanation of the paradox. It includes a step-by-step demonstration of how to create two spheres from one. Banach-Tarski Video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFvokQUHh08) Members of the University of Copenhagen mathematics department exploit the BanachTarski paradox, decomposing and reassembling a multitude of oranges to the (slightly modified) tune of Duck Sauce's "Barbara Streisand."
Berkson's paradox
Berkson's paradox or Berkson's fallacy is a result in conditional probability and statistics which is counterintuitive for some people, and hence a veridical paradox. It is a complicating factor arising in statistical tests of proportions. Specifically, it arises when there is an ascertainment bias inherent in a study design. It is often described in the fields of medical statistics or biostatistics, as in the original description of the problem by Joseph Berkson.
Statement
The result is that two independent events become conditionally dependent (negatively dependent) given that at least one of them occurs. Symbolically: if 0 < P(A) < 1 and 0 < P(B) < 1, and P(A|B) = P(A), i.e. they are independent, then P(A|B,C) < P(A|C) where C = AB (i.e. A or B). In words, given two independent events, if you only consider outcomes where at least one occurs, then they become negatively dependent.
Explanation
The cause is that the conditional probability of event A occurring, given that it or B occurs, is inflated: it is higher than the unconditional probability, because we have excluded cases where neither occur. P(A|AB) > P(A) conditional probability inflated relative to unconditional One can see this in tabular form as follows: the gray regions are the outcomes where at least one event occurs (and ~A means "not A").
Berkson's paradox
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A B A&B
~A ~A & B
~B A & ~B ~A & ~B
For instance, if one has a sample of 100, and both A and B occur independently half the time (So P(A) = P(B) = 1/2), one obtains:
A ~A B 25 25
~B 25 25
So in 75 outcomes, either A or B occurs, of which 50 have A occurring, so P(A|AB) = 50/75 = 2/3 > 1/2 = 50/100 = P(A). Thus the probability of A is higher in the subset (of outcomes where it or B occurs), 2/3, than in the overall population, 1/2. Berkson's paradox arises because the conditional probability of A given B within this subset equals the conditional probability in the overall population, but the unconditional probability within the subset is inflated relative to the unconditional probability in the overall population, hence, within the subset, the presence of B decreases the conditional probability of A (back to its overall unconditional probability): P(A|B, AB) = P(A|B) = P(A) P(A|AB) > P(A).
Examples
A classic illustration involves a retrospective study examining a risk factor for a disease in a statistical sample from a hospital in-patient population. If a control group is also ascertained from the in-patient population, a difference in hospital admission rates for the case sample and control sample can result in a spurious association between the disease and the risk factor. As another example, suppose a collector has 1000 postage stamps, of which 300 are pretty and 100 are rare, with 30 being both pretty and rare. 10% of all her stamps are rare and 10% of her pretty stamps are rare, so prettiness tells nothing about rarity. She puts the 370 stamps which are pretty or rare on display. Just over 27% of the stamps on display are rare, but still only 10% of the pretty stamps on display are rare (and 100% of the 70 not-pretty stamps on display are rare). If an observer only considers stamps on display, he will observe a spurious negative relationship between prettiness and rarity as a result of the selection bias (that is, not-prettiness strongly indicates rarity in the display, but not in the total collection).
References
Berkson, J. (1946) "Limitations of the application of fourfold tables to hospital data". Biometrics Bulletin, 2(3), 47-53. The paper is frequently miscited as Berkson, J. (1949) Biological Bulletin 2, 47-53. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.2307/3002000
Bertrand's box paradox
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Bertrand's box paradox is a classic paradox of elementary probability theory. It was first posed by Joseph Bertrand in his Calcul des probabilits, published in 1889. There are three boxes: 1. a box containing two gold coins, 2. a box with two silver coins, and 3. a box with one of each. After choosing a box at random and withdrawing one coin at random, if that happens to be a gold coin, it may seem that the probability that the remaining coin is gold is 12; in fact, the probability is actually 23. Two problems that are logically equivalent are the Monty Hall problem and the Three Prisoners problem. In a 1950 article, Warren Weaver introduced a simple way to conduct the experiment on people: the boxes are replaced by cards, and gold and silver coins are replaced by red and black markings, one marking placed on each of the two faces of each card. In what Martin Gardner has called the three-card swindle, a card is drawn from a hat, and if a red mark is shown, the dealer bets the victim even money that the other side is also red. The victim is convinced that the bet is fair, but the dealer makes money in the long run by winning 23 of the time. These simple but slightly counterintuitive puzzles are used as a standard example in teaching probability theory. Their solution illustrates some basic principles, including the Kolmogorov axioms.
Box version
There are three boxes, each with one drawer on each of two sides. Each drawer contains a coin. One box has a gold coin on each side (GG), one a silver coin on each side (SS), and the other a gold coin on one side and a silver coin on the other (GS). A box is chosen at random, a random drawer is opened, and a gold coin is found inside it. What is the chance of the coin on the other side being gold? The following reasoning appears to give a probability of 12: Originally, all three boxes were equally likely to be chosen. The chosen box cannot be box SS. So it must be box GG or GS. The two remaining possibilities are equally likely, so the probability that the box is GG, and the other coin is also gold, is 12.
The flaw is in the last step. While those two cases were originally equally likely, the fact that you could not have found a silver coin if you had chosen the GG box, but could if you had chosen the GS box, means they do not remain equally likely. Specifically: The probability that GG would produce a gold coin is 1. The probability that SS would produce a gold coin is 0. The probability that GS would produce a gold coin is 12. So the probability that the chosen box is GG becomes:
The correct answer of 23 can also be obtained as follows: Originally, all six coins were equally likely to be chosen. The chosen coin cannot be from drawer S of box GS, or from either drawer of box SS. So it must come from the G drawer of box GS, or either drawer of box GG. The three remaining possibilities are equally likely, so the probability that the drawer is from box GG is 23.
Bertrand's box paradox Alternatively, one can simply note that the chosen box has two coins of the same type 23 of the time. So, regardless of what kind of coin is in the chosen drawer, the box has two coins of that type 23 of the time. In other words, the problem is equivalent to asking the question "What is the probability that I will pick a box with two coins of the same color?". Bertrand's point in constructing this example was to show that merely counting cases is not always proper. Instead, one should sum the probabilities that the cases would produce the observed result; and the two methods are equivalent only if this probability is either 1 or 0 in every case. This condition is correctly applied in the second solution method, but not in the first.
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The paradox as stated by Bertrand

It can be easier to understand the correct answer if you consider the paradox as Bertrand originally described it. After a box has been chosen, but before a drawer is opened to let you observe a coin, the probability is 2/3 that the box has two of the same kind of coin. If the probability of "observing a gold coin" in combination with "the box has two of the same kind of coin" is 1/2, then the probability of "observing a silver coin" in combination with "the box has two of the same kind of coin" must also be 1/2. And if the probability that the box has two like coins changes to 1/2 no matter what kind of coin is shown, the probability would have to be 1/2 even if you hadn't observed a coin this way. Since we know his probability is 2/3, not 1/2, we have an apparent paradox. It can be resolved only by recognizing how the combination of "observing a gold coin" with each possible box can only affect the probability that the box was GS or SS, but not GG.
Card version
Suppose there are three cards: A black card that is black on both sides, A white card that is white on both sides, and A mixed card that is black on one side and white on the other. All the cards are placed into a hat and one is pulled at random and placed on a table. The side facing up is black. What are the odds that the other side is also black? The answer is that the other side is black with probability 23. However, common intuition suggests a probability of 1 2 either because there are two cards with black on them that this card could be, or because there are 3 white and 3 black sides and many people forget to eliminate the possibility of the "white card" in this situation (i.e. the card they flipped CANNOT be the "white card" because a black side was turned over). In a survey of 53 Psychology freshmen taking an introductory probability course, 35 incorrectly responded 12; only 3 students correctly responded 23.53 Another presentation of the problem is to say : pick a random card out of the three, what are the odds that it has the same color on the other side ? Since only one card is mixed and two have the same color on their sides, it is easier to understand that the probability is 23. Also note that saying that the color is black (or the coin is gold) instead of white doesn't matter since it is symmetric: the answer is the same for white. So is the answer for the generic question 'same color on both sides'.
Preliminaries
To solve the problem, either formally or informally, one must assign probabilities to the events of drawing each of the six faces of the three cards. These probabilities could conceivably be very different; perhaps the white card is larger than the black card, or the black side of the mixed card is heavier than the white side. The statement of the question does not explicitly address these concerns. The only constraints implied by the Kolmogorov axioms are that the probabilities are all non-negative, and they sum to 1.
Bertrand's box paradox The custom in problems when one literally pulls objects from a hat is to assume that all the drawing probabilities are equal. This forces the probability of drawing each side to be 16, and so the probability of drawing a given card is 13. In particular, the probability of drawing the double-white card is 13, and the probability of drawing a different card is 2 3. In question, however, one has already selected a card from the hat and it shows a black face. At first glance it appears that there is a 50/50 chance (i.e. probability 12) that the other side of the card is black, since there are two cards it might be: the black and the mixed. However, this reasoning fails to exploit all of the information; one knows not only that the card on the table has at least one black face, but also that in the population it was selected from, only 1 of the 3 black faces was on the mixed card. An easy explanation is that to name the black sides as x, y and z where x and y are on the same card while z is on the mixed card, then the probability is divided on the 3 black sides with 13 each. thus the probability that we chose either x or y is the sum of their probabilities thus 23.
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Solutions
Intuition Intuition tells one that one is choosing a card at random. However, one is actually choosing a face at random. There are 6 faces, of which 3 faces are white and 3 faces are black. Two of the 3 black faces belong to the same card. The chance of choosing one of those 2 faces is 23. Therefore, the chance of flipping the card over and finding another black face is also 23. Another way of thinking about it is that the problem is not about the chance that the other side is black, it's about the chance that you drew the all black card. If you drew a black face, then it's twice as likely that that face belongs to the black card than the mixed card. Alternately, it can be seen as a bet not on a particular color, but a bet that the sides match. Betting on a particular color regardless of the face shown, will always have a chance of 12. However, betting that the sides match is 23, because 2 cards match and 1 does not. Labels One solution method is to label the card faces, for example numbers 1 through 6.Label16 Label the faces of the black card 1 and 2; label the faces of the mixed card 3 (black) and 4 (white); and label the faces of the white card 5 and 6. The observed black face could be 1, 2, or 3, all equally likely; if it is 1 or 2, the other side is black, and if it is 3, the other side is white. The probability that the other side is black is 23. Bayes' theorem Given that the shown face is black, the other face is black if and only if the card is the black card. If the black card is drawn, a black face is shown with probability 1. The total probability of seeing a black face is 12; the total probability of drawing the black card is 13. By Bayes' theorem,Bayes the conditional probability of having drawn the black card, given that a black face is showing, is
Bertrand's box paradox Eliminating the white card Although the incorrect solution reasons that the white card is eliminated, one can also use that information in a correct solution. Modifying the previous method, given that the white card is not drawn, the probability of seeing a black face is 34, and the probability of drawing the black card is 12. The conditional probability of having drawn the black card, given that a black face is showing, is
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Symmetry The probability (without considering the individual colors) that the hidden color is the same as the displayed color is clearly 23, as this holds if and only if the chosen card is black or white, which chooses 2 of the 3 cards. Symmetry suggests that the probability is independent of the color chosen, so that the information about which color is shown does not affect the odds that both sides have the same color. (This argument can be formalized, but requires more advanced mathematics than yet discussed.) Experiment Using specially constructed cards, the choice can be tested a number of times. By constructing a fraction with the denominator being the number of times "B" is on top, and the numerator being the number of times both sides are "B", the experimenter will probably find the ratio to be near 23. Note the logical fact that the B/B card contributes significantly more (in fact twice) to the number of times "B" is on top. With the card B/W there is always a 50% chance W being on top, thus in 50% of the cases card B/W is drawn, the draw affects neither numerator nor denominator and effectively does not count (this is also true for all times W/W is drawn, so that card might as well be removed from the set altogether). Conclusively, the cards B/B and B/W are not of equal chances, because in the 50% of the cases B/W is drawn, this card is simply "disqualified".
Related problems
Boy or Girl paradox Three Prisoners problem Two envelopes problem Sleeping Beauty problem

1. Bar-Hillel and Falk (page 119) 2. Nickerson (page 158) advocates this solution as "less confusing" than other methods. 3. Bar-Hillel and Falk (page 120) advocate using Bayes' Rule. Bar-Hillel, Maya; Falk, Ruma (1982). "Some teasers concerning conditional probabilities". Cognition 11 (2): 10922. doi:10.1016/0010-0277(82)90021-X. PMID7198956. Nickerson, Raymond (2004). Cognition and Chance: The psychology of probabilistic reasoning, Lawrence Erlbaum. Ch. 5, "Some instructive problems: Three cards", pp.157160. ISBN 0-8058-4898-3 Michael Clark, Paradoxes from A to Z, p.16; Howard Margolis, Wason, Monty Hall, and Adverse Defaults [1].
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References
[1] http:/ / harrisschool. uchicago. edu/ About/ publications/ working-papers/ pdf/ wp_05_14. pdf
Bertrand paradox
The Bertrand paradox is a problem within the classical interpretation of probability theory. Joseph Bertrand introduced it in his work Calcul des probabilits (1888) as an example to show that probabilities may not be well defined if the mechanism or method that produces the random variable is not clearly defined.
Bertrand's formulation of the problem

The Bertrand paradox goes as follows: Consider an equilateral triangle inscribed in a circle. Suppose a chord of the circle is chosen at random. What is the probability that the chord is longer than a side of the triangle? Bertrand gave three arguments, all apparently valid, yet yielding different results. The "random endpoints" method: Choose two random points on the circumference of the circle and draw the chord joining them. To calculate the probability in question imagine the triangle rotated so its vertex coincides with one of the chord endpoints. Observe that if the other chord endpoint lies on the arc between the endpoints of the triangle side opposite the first point, the chord is longer than a side of the triangle. The length of the arc is one third of the circumference of the circle, therefore the probability that a random chord is longer than a side of the inscribed triangle is one third.
Random chords, selection method 1; red = longer than triangle side, blue = shorter
The "random radius" method: Choose a radius of the circle, choose a point on the radius and construct the chord through this point and perpendicular to the radius. To calculate the probability in question imagine the triangle rotated so a side is perpendicular to the radius. The chord is longer than a side of the triangle if the chosen point is nearer the center of the circle than the point where the side of the triangle intersects the radius. The side of the triangle bisects the radius, therefore the probability a random chord is longer than a side of the inscribed triangle is one half.
Random chords, selection method 2
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The "random midpoint" method: Choose a point anywhere within the circle and construct a chord with the chosen point as its midpoint. The chord is longer than a side of the inscribed triangle if the chosen point falls within a concentric circle of radius 1/2 the radius of the larger circle. The area of the smaller circle is one fourth the area of the larger circle, therefore the probability a random chord is longer than a side of the inscribed triangle is one fourth. The selection methods can also be visualized as follows. A chord is uniquely identified by its midpoint. Each of the three selection methods presented above yields a different distribution of midpoints. Methods 1 and 2 yield two different nonuniform distributions, while method 3 yields a uniform distribution. On the other hand, if one looks at the images of the chords below, the chords of method 2 give the circle a homogeneously shaded look, while method 1 and 3 do not.
Random chords, selection method 3
Midpoints of chords chosen at random, method 1
Chords chosen at random, method 1
Other distributions can easily be imagined, many of which will yield a different proportion of chords which are longer than a side of the inscribed triangle.
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Classical solution
The problem's classical solution thus hinges on the method by which a chord is chosen "at random". It turns out that if, and only if, the method of random selection is specified, the problem has a well-defined solution. There is no unique selection method, so there cannot be a unique solution. The three solutions presented by Bertrand correspond to different selection methods, and in the absence of further information there is no reason to prefer one over another. This and other paradoxes of the classical interpretation of probability justified more stringent formulations, including frequency probability and subjectivist Bayesian probability.
Jaynes' solution using the "maximum ignorance" principle

In his 1973 paper The Well-Posed Problem,[1] Edwin Jaynes proposed a solution to Bertrand's paradox, based on the principle of "maximum ignorance"that we should not use any information that is not given in the statement of the problem. Jaynes pointed out that Bertrand's problem does not specify the position or size of the circle, and argued that therefore any definite and objective solution must be "indifferent" to size and position. In other words: the solution must be both scale invariant and translation invariant. To illustrate: assume that chords are laid at random onto a circle with a diameter of 2, for example by throwing straws onto it from far away. Now another circle with a smaller diameter (e.g., 1.1) is laid into the larger circle. Then the distribution of the chords on that smaller circle needs to be the same as on the larger circle. If the smaller circle is moved around within the larger circle, the probability must not change either. It can be seen very easily that there would be a change for method 3: the chord distribution on the small red circle looks qualitatively different from the distribution on the large circle:
The same occurs for method 1, though it is harder to see in a graphical representation. Method 2 is the only one that is both scale invariant and translation invariant; method 3 is just scale invariant, method 1 is neither. However, Jaynes did not just use invariances to accept or reject given methods: this would leave the possibility that there is another not yet described method that would meet his common-sense criteria. Jaynes used the integral equations describing the invariances to directly determine the probability distribution. In this problem, the integral
Bertrand paradox equations indeed have a unique solution, and it is precisely what was called "method 2" above, the random radius method.
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Physical experiments
"Method 2" is the only solution that fulfills the transformation invariants that are present in certain physical systemssuch as in statistical mechanics and gas physics as well as in Jaynes's proposed experiment of throwing straws from a distance onto a small circle. Nevertheless, one can design other practical experiments that give answers according to the other methods. For example, in order to arrive at the solution of "method 1", the random endpoints method, one can affix a spinner to the center of the circle, and let the results of two independent spins mark the endpoints of the chord. In order to arrive at the solution of "method 3", one could cover the circle with molasses and mark the first point that a fly lands on as the midpoint of the chord.[2] Several observers have designed experiments in order to obtain the different solutions and verified the results empirically.[3][4]
Notes
[1] Jaynes, E. T. (1973), "The Well-Posed Problem" (http:/ / bayes. wustl. edu/ etj/ articles/ well. pdf) (PDF), Foundations of Physics 3: 477493, doi:10.1007/BF00709116, [2] Gardner, Martin (1987), The Second Scientific American Book of Mathematical Puzzles and Diversions, The University of Chicago Press, pp.223226, ISBN978-0-226-28253-4 [3] Tissler, P.E. (March 1984), "Bertrand's Paradox", The Mathematical Gazette (The Mathematical Association) 68 (443): 1519, doi:10.2307/3615385 [4] Kac, Mark (MayJune 1984), "Marginalia: more on randomness", American Scientist 72 (3): 282283
References
Michael Clark. Paradoxes from A to Z. London: Routledge, 2002.
Birthday problem
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Birthday problem
In probability theory, the birthday problem or birthday paradox[1] concerns the probability that, in a set of n randomly chosen people, some pair of them will have the same birthday. By the pigeonhole principle, the probability reaches 100% when the number of people reaches 366 (since there are 365 possible birthdays, excluding February 29th). However, 99% probability is reached with just 57 people, and 50% probability with 23 people. These conclusions are based on the assumption that each day of the year (except February 29) is equally probable for a birthday. The mathematics behind this problem led to a well-known cryptographic attack called the birthday attack, which uses this probabilistic model to reduce the complexity of cracking a hash function.
Understanding the problem

The birthday problem asks whether any of the people in a given group has a birthday matching any of the others not one in particular. (See "Same birthday as you" below for an analysis of this much less surprising alternative problem.) In the example given earlier, a list of 23 people, comparing the birthday of the first person on the list to the others A graph showing the approximate probability of at least two people sharing a birthday allows 22 chances for a matching amongst a certain number of people. birthday (The second person on the list to the others allows 21 chances for a matching birthday, third person has 20 chances, and so on. Hence total chances are: 22+21+20+....+1 = 253), so comparing every person to all of the others allows 253 distinct chances (combinations): in a group of 23 people there are pairs.
Presuming all birthdays are equally probable,[2][3][4] the probability of a given birthday for a person chosen from the entire population at random is 1/365 (ignoring Leap Day, February 29). Although the pairings in a group of 23 people are not statistically equivalent to 253 pairs chosen independently, the birthday paradox becomes less surprising if a group is thought of in terms of the number of possible pairs, rather than as the number of individuals.
Calculating the probability

The problem is to compute the approximate probability that in a room of n people, at least two have the same birthday. For simplicity, disregard variations in the distribution, such as leap years, twins, seasonal or weekday variations, and assume that the 365 possible birthdays are equally likely. Real-life birthday distributions are not uniform since not all dates are equally likely.[5] If P(A) is the probability of at least two people in the room having the same birthday, it may be simpler to calculate P(A'), the probability of there not being any two people having the same birthday. Then, because P(A) and P(A') are the only two possibilities and are also mutually exclusive, P(A')=1P(A). In deference to widely published solutions concluding that 23 is the number of people necessary to have a P(A) that is greater than 50%, the following calculation of P(A) will use 23 people as an example.
Birthday problem When events are independent of each other, the probability of all of the events occurring is equal to a product of the probabilities of each of the events occurring. Therefore, if P(A') can be described as 23 independent events, P(A') could be calculated as P(1)P(2)P(3)...P(23). The 23 independent events correspond to the 23 people, and can be defined in order. Each event can be defined as the corresponding person not sharing their birthday with any of the previously analyzed people. For Event 1, there are no previously analyzed people. Therefore, the probability, P(1), that person number 1 does not share his/her birthday with previously analyzed people is 1, or 100%. Ignoring leap years for this analysis, the probability of 1 can also be written as 365/365, for reasons that will become clear below. For Event 2, the only previously analyzed people are Person 1. Assuming that birthdays are equally likely to happen on each of the 365 days of the year, the probability, P(2), that Person 2 has a different birthday than Person 1 is 364/365. This is because, if Person 2 was born on any of the other 364 days of the year, Persons 1 and 2 will not share the same birthday. Similarly, if Person 3 is born on any of the 363 days of the year other than the birthdays of Persons 1 and 2, Person 3 will not share their birthday. This makes the probability P(3)=363/365. This analysis continues until Person 23 is reached, whose probability of not sharing their birthday with people analyzed before, P(23), is 343/365. P(A') is equal to the product of these individual probabilities: (1) P(A') = 365/365364/365363/365362/365...343/365 The terms of equation (1) can be collected to arrive at: (2) P(A') = (1/365)23(365364363...343) Evaluating equation (2) gives P(A') =0.492703 Therefore, P(A) =10.492703 =0.507297(50.7297%) This process can be generalized to a group of n people, where p(n) is the probability of at least two of the n people sharing a birthday. It is easier to first calculate the probability p(n) that all n birthdays are different. According to the pigeonhole principle, p(n) is zero whenn>365. Whenn365:
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where ' ! ' is the factorial operator and
is the binomial coefficient.
The equation expresses the fact that for no persons to share a birthday, a second person cannot have the same birthday as the first (364/365), the third cannot have the same birthday as the first two (363/365), and in general the nth birthday cannot be the same as any of the n1 preceding birthdays. The event of at least two of the n persons having the same birthday is complementary to all n birthdays being different. Therefore, its probability p(n) is
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This probability surpasses 1/2 forn=23 (with value about50.7%). The following table shows the probability for some other values of n (this table ignores the existence of leap years, as described above):
The approximate probability that no two people share a birthday in a group of n people. Note that the vertical scale is logarithmic (each step down is 1020 times less likely).
n 10 20 23 30 50 57 11.7% 41.1% 50.7% 70.6% 97.0% 99.0%
p(n)
100 99.99997% 200 99.9999999999999999999999999998% 300 (100 (61080))% 350 (100 (310129))% 365 (100 (1.4510155))% 366 100%
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Approximations
The Taylor series expansion of the exponential function (the constant e = 2.718281828, approximately)
provides a first-order approximation for ex for x << 1:
To apply this approximation to the first expression derived for p(n) set . Then, term in the formula . For i = 1, The first expression derived for p(n) can be approximated as Then for each for p(n)
A graph showing the accuracy of the approximation
Therefore,
An even coarser approximation is given by
which, as the graph illustrates, is still fairly accurate. It's easy to see that the same approach can be applied to any number of "people" and "days". If rather than 365 days there are n, if there are m persons, and if m<<n, then using the same approach as above we achieve the result that if Pr[(n, m)] is the probability that each of m people has a different birthday from a set of n available days is:
A simple exponentiation
The probability of any two people not having the same birthday is 364/365. In a room containing n people, there are C(n,2)=n(n-1)/2 pairs of people, i.e. C(n,2) events. The probability of no two people sharing the same birthday can be approximated by assuming that these events are independent and hence by multiplying their probability together. In short 364/365 can be multiplied by itself C(n,2) times, which gives us
And if this is the probability of no one having the same birthday, then the probability of someone sharing a birthday is
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Poisson approximation
Using the Poisson approximation for the binomial,
Again, this is over 50%.
Approximation of number of people

This can also be approximated using the following formula for the number of people necessary to have at least a 50% chance of matching:
This is a result of the good approximation that an event with 1 in k probability will have a 50% chance of occurring at least once if it is repeated kln2 times.[6]
Probability table
length of hex string 8 16 32 #bits hash space size (2#bits) 4.3 109 1.8 1019 3.4 1038 Number of hashed elements such that (probability of at least one hash collision)=p p = 1018 p = 1015 p = 1012 p = 109 2 6.1 2.6 1010 4.8 1029 8.9 1048 1.6 1068 2 2 2.9 p = 106 93 p= 0.1% p = 1% p = 25% p = 50% p = 75%
32 64 128
2.9 103 9.3 103 5.0 104 7.7 104 1.1 105
1.9 102 6.1 103 1.9 105 6.1 106 1.9 108 6.1 108 3.3 109 5.1 109 7.2 109 8.2 1011 1.5 1031 2.8 1050 5.2 1069 2.6 1013 4.8 1032 8.9 1051 1.6 1071 8.2 1014 1.5 1034 2.8 1053 5.2 1072 2.6 1016 4.8 1035 8.9 1054 1.6 1074 8.3 1017 1.5 1037 2.8 1056 5.2 1075 2.6 1018 4.8 1037 8.9 1056 1.6 1076 1.4 1019 2.6 1038 4.8 1057 8.8 1076 2.2 1019 4.0 1038 7.4 1057 1.4 1077 3.1 1019 5.7 1038 1.0 1058 1.9 1077
64
256
1.2 1077
(96)
(384)
(3.9 10115) 1.3 10154
128
512
The white squares in this table show the number of hashes needed to achieve the given probability of collision (column) given a hashspace of a certain size in bits (row). (Using the birthday analogy: the "hash space size"(row) would be "365 days", the "probability of collision"(column) would be "50%", and the "required number of people" would be "26"(row-col intersection).) One could of course also use this chart to determine the minimum hash size required (given upper bounds on the hashes and probability of error), or the probability of collision (for fixed number of hashes and probability of error). For comparison, 1018 to 1015 is the uncorrectable bit error rate of a typical hard disk [7]. In theory, MD5, 128 bits, should stay within that range until about 820 billion documents, even if its possible outputs are many more.
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An upper bound
The argument below is adapted from an argument of Paul Halmos.[8] As stated above, the probability that no two birthdays coincide is
As in earlier paragraphs, interest lies in the smallest n such that p(n)>1/2; or equivalently, the smallest n such that p(n)<1/2. Using the inequality 1x<ex in the above expression we replace 1k/365 with ek/365. This yields
Therefore, the expression above is not only an approximation, but also an upper bound of p(n). The inequality
implies p(n)<1/2. Solving for n gives Now, 730ln2 is approximately 505.997, which is barely below 506, the value of n2n attained when n=23. Therefore, 23 people suffice. Solving n2n =2365ln2 for n gives, by the way, the approximate formula of Frank H. Mathis cited above. This derivation only shows that at most 23 people are needed to ensure a birthday match with even chance; it leaves open the possibility that, say, n=22 could also work.
Generalizations
Cast as a collision problem
The birthday problem can be generalized as follows: given n random integers drawn from a discrete uniform distribution with range [1,d], what is the probability p(n;d) that at least two numbers are the same? (d=365 gives the usual birthday problem.) The generic results can be derived using the same arguments given above.
Conversely, if n(p;d) denotes the number of random integers drawn from [1,d] to obtain a probability p that at least two numbers are the same, then
The birthday problem in this more generic sense applies to hash functions: the expected number of N-bit hashes that can be generated before getting a collision is not 2N, but rather only 2N/2. This is exploited by birthday attacks on cryptographic hash functions and is the reason why a small number of collisions in a hash table are, for all practical purposes, inevitable.
Birthday problem The theory behind the birthday problem was used by Zoe Schnabel[9] under the name of capture-recapture statistics to estimate the size of fish population in lakes. Generalization to multiple types The basic problem considers all trials to be of one "type". The birthday problem has been generalized to consider an arbitrary number of types.[10] In the simplest extension there are just two types, say m "men" and n "women", and the problem becomes characterizing the probability of a shared birthday between at least one man and one woman. (Shared birthdays between, say, two women do not count.) The probability of no (i.e. zero) shared birthdays here is
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where d=365 and S2 are Stirling numbers of the second kind. Consequently, the desired probability is 1p0. This variation of the birthday problem is interesting because there is not a unique solution for the total number of people m+n. For example, the usual 0.5 probability value is realized for both a 32-member group of 16 men and 16 women and a 49-member group of 43 women and 6 men.
Other birthday problems

Reverse problem
For a fixed probability p: Find the greatest n for which the probability p(n) is smaller than the given p, or Find the smallest n for which the probability p(n) is greater than the given p. Taking the above formula for d=365 we have:
Sample calculations
p n n p(n) n p(n)
0.01 0.14178365 = 2.70864 0.05 0.32029365 = 6.11916 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.5 0.7 0.8 0.9 0.45904365 = 8.77002 0.66805365 = 12.76302 0.84460365 = 16.13607 1.17741365 = 22.49439 1.55176365 = 29.64625 1.79412365 = 34.27666 2.14597365 = 40.99862
2 0.00274 6 0.04046 8 0.07434 12 0.16702 16 0.28360 22 0.47570 29 0.68097 34 0.79532 40 0.89123 46 0.94825 57 0.99012
3 0.00820 7 0.05624 9 0.09462 13 0.19441 17 0.31501 23 0.50730 30 0.70632 35 0.81438 41 0.90315 47 0.95477 58 0.99166
0.95 2.44775365 = 46.76414 0.99 3.03485365 = 57.98081
Note: some values falling outside the bounds have been colored to show that the approximation is not always exact.
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First match
A related question is, as people enter a room one at a time, which one is most likely to be the first to have the same birthday as someone already in the room? That is, for what n is p(n)p(n1) maximum? The answer is 20if there's a prize for first match, the best position in line is 20th.
Same birthday as you

Note that in the birthday problem, neither of the two people is chosen in advance. By way of contrast, the probability q(n) that someone in a room of n other people has the same birthday as a particular person (for example, you), is given by
and for general d by

Comparing p(n) = probability of a birthday match with q(n) = probability of matching your birthday
In the standard case of d = 365 substituting n = 23 gives about 6.1%, which is less than 1 chance in 16. For a greater than 50% chance that one person in a roomful of n people has the same birthday as you, n would need to be at least 253. Note that this number is significantly higher than 365/2 = 182.5: the reason is that it is likely that there are some birthday matches among the other people in the room. It is not a coincidence that ; a similar approximate pattern can be found using a number of
possibilities different from 365, or a target probability different from 50%.
Near matches
Another generalization is to ask what is the probability of finding at least one pair in a group of n people with birthdays within k calendar days of each other's, if there are m equally likely birthdays.
[11]
The number of people required so that the probability that some pair will have a birthday separated by k days or fewer will be higher than 50% is:
k # people required(i.e. n) when m=365 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 23 14 11 9 8 8 7 7
Birthday problem Thus in a group of just seven random people, it is more likely than not that two of them will have a birthday within a week of each other.[11]
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Collision counting
The probability that the kth integer randomly chosen from [1,d] will repeat at least one previous choice equals q(k1;d) above. The expected total number of times a selection will repeat a previous selection as n such integers are chosen equals
Average number of people

In an alternative formulation of the birthday problem, one asks the average number of people required to find a pair with the same birthday. The problem is relevant to several hashing algorithms analyzed by Donald Knuth in his book The Art of Computer Programming. It may be shown[12][13] that if one samples uniformly, with replacement, from a population of size M, the number of trials required for the first repeated sampling of some individual has expected value , where
The function
has been studied by Srinivasa Ramanujan and has asymptotic expansion:
With M=365 days in a year, the average number of people required to find a pair with the same birthday is , slightly more than the number required for a 50% chance. In the best case, two people will suffice; at worst, the maximum possible number of M+1=366 people is needed; but on average, only 25 people are required. An informal demonstration of the problem can be made from the list of Prime Ministers of Australia, in which Paul Keating, the 24th Prime Minister, and Edmund Barton, the first Prime Minister, share same birthday i.e. 18 January. James K. Polk and Warren G. Harding, the 11th and 29th Presidents of the United States, were both born on November 2. Sir John A. Macdonald and Jean Chrtien, the 1st and 20th Prime Ministers of Canada, were both born on January 11. Of the 73 male actors to win the Academy Award for Best Actor, there are six pairs of actors who share the same birthday.[14] Of the 67 actresses to win the Academy Award for Best Actress, there are three pairs of actresses who share the same birthday.[15] Of the 61 directors to win the Academy Award for Best Director, there are five pairs of directors who share the same birthday.[16] Of the 52 people to serve as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, there are two pairs of men who share the same birthday.[17]
Birthday problem
156
Partition problem
A related problem is the partition problem, a variant of the knapsack problem from operations research. Some weights are put on a balance scale; each weight is an integer number of grams randomly chosen between one gram and one million grams (one metric ton). The question is whether one can usually (that is, with probability close to 1) transfer the weights between the left and right arms to balance the scale. (In case the sum of all the weights is an odd number of grams, a discrepancy of one gram is allowed.) If there are only two or three weights, the answer is very clearly no; although there are some combinations which work, the majority of randomly selected combinations of three weights do not. If there are very many weights, the answer is clearly yes. The question is, how many are just sufficient? That is, what is the number of weights such that it is equally likely for it to be possible to balance them as it is to be impossible? Some people's intuition is that the answer is above 100,000. Most people's intuition is that it is in the thousands or tens of thousands, while others feel it should at least be in the hundreds. The correct answer is approximately 23. The reason is that the correct comparison is to the number of partitions of the weights into left and right. There are 2N1 different partitions for N weights, and the left sum minus the right sum can be thought of as a new random quantity for each partition. The distribution of the sum of weights is approximately Gaussian, with a peak at 1,000,000N and width , so that when 2N1 is approximately equal to the transition occurs. 2231 is about 4 million, while the width of the distribution is only 5 million.[18]
Notes
[1] This is not a paradox in the sense of leading to a logical contradiction, but is called a paradox because the mathematical truth contradicts nave intuition: most people estimate that the chance of two individuals sharing the same birthday in a group of 23 is much lower than 50%. [2] In reality, birthdays are not evenly distributed throughout the year; there are more births per day in some seasons than in others, but for the purposes of this problem the distribution is treated as uniform. [3] Murphy, Ron. "An Analysis of the Distribution of Birthdays in a Calendar Year" (http:/ / www. panix. com/ ~murphy/ bday. html). . Retrieved 2011-12-27. [4] MATHERS, C D; R S HARRIS (1983). "Seasonal Distribution of Births in Australia" (http:/ / ije. oxfordjournals. org/ content/ 12/ 3/ 326. abstract). International Journal of Epidemiology 12 (3): 326331. doi:10.1093/ije/12.3.326. . Retrieved 2011-12-27. [5] In particular, many children are born in the summer, especially the months of August and September (for the northern hemisphere) (http:/ / scienceworld. wolfram. com/ astronomy/ LeapDay. html), and in the U.S. it has been noted that many children are conceived around the holidays of Christmas and New Year's Day. Also, because hospitals rarely schedule C-sections and induced labor on the weekend, more Americans are born on Mondays and Tuesdays than on weekends; where many of the people share a birth year (e.g. a class in a school), this creates a tendency toward particular dates. In Sweden 9.3% of the population is born in March and 7.3% in November when a uniform distribution would give 8.3% Swedish statistics board (http:/ / www. scb. se/ statistik/ BE/ BE0101/ 2006A01a/ BE0101_2006A01a_SM_BE12SM0701. pdf) Both of these factors tend to increase the chance of identical birth dates, since a denser subset has more possible pairs (in the extreme case when everyone was born on three days, there would obviously be many identical birthdays). The birthday problem for such non-constant birthday probabilities was first understood by Murray Klamkin in 1967. A formal proof that the probability of two matching birthdays is least for a uniform distribution of birthdays was given by D. Bloom (1973) [6] Mathis, Frank H. (June 1991). "A Generalized Birthday Problem". SIAM Review (Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics) 33 (2): 265270. doi:10.1137/1033051. ISSN0036-1445. JSTOR2031144. OCLC37699182. [7] http:/ / arxiv. org/ abs/ cs/ 0701166 [8] In his autobiography, Halmos criticized the form in which the birthday paradox is often presented, in terms of numerical computation. He believed that it should be used as an example in the use of more abstract mathematical concepts. He wrote:
The reasoning is based on important tools that all students of mathematics should have ready access to. The birthday problem used to be a splendid illustration of the advantages of pure thought over mechanical manipulation; the inequalities can be obtained in a minute or two, whereas the multiplications would take much longer, and be much more subject to error, whether the instrument is a pencil or an old-fashioned desk computer. What calculators do not yield is understanding, or mathematical facility, or a solid basis for more advanced, generalized theories.
[9] Z. E. Schnabel (1938) The Estimation of the Total Fish Population of a Lake, American Mathematical Monthly 45, 348352. [10] M. C. Wendl (2003) Collision Probability Between Sets of Random Variables (http:/ / dx. doi. org/ 10. 1016/ S0167-7152(03)00168-8), Statistics and Probability Letters 64(3), 249254.
Birthday problem
[11] M. Abramson and W. O. J. Moser (1970) More Birthday Surprises, American Mathematical Monthly 77, 856858 [12] D. E. Knuth; The Art of Computer Programming. Vol. 3, Sorting and Searching (Addison-Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts, 1973) [13] P. Flajolet, P. J. Grabner, P. Kirschenhofer, H. Prodinger (1995), On Ramanujan's Q-Function, Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics 58, 103116 [14] They are Spencer Tracy and Gregory Peck (April 5), Rod Steiger and Adrien Brody (April 14), Paul Lukas and John Wayne (May 26), Emil Jannings and Philip Seymour Hoffman (July 23), Robert De Niro and Sean Penn (August 17) and Ben Kingsley and Anthony Hopkins (December 31). [15] They are Jane Wyman and Diane Keaton (January 5), Joanne Woodward and Elizabeth Taylor (February 27) and Barbra Streisand and Shirley MacLaine (April 24). [16] They are Norman Taurog and Victor Fleming (February 23), William Wyler and Sydney Pollack (July 1), Robert Redford and Roman Polanski (August 18), William Friedkin and Richard Attenborough (August 29) and George Stevens and Steven Spielberg (December 18). [17] They are John Major and The Earl of Derby (March 29) and Spencer Perceval and The Viscount Goderich (November 1). [18] C. Borgs, J. Chayes, and B. Pittel (2001) Phase Transition and Finite Size Scaling in the Integer Partition Problem, Random Structures and Algorithms 19(34), 247288.
157
References
John G. Kemeny, J. Laurie Snell, and Gerald Thompson Introduction to Finite Mathematics . The first edition, 1957 E. H. McKinney (1966) Generalized Birthday Problem, American Mathematical Monthly 73, 385387. M. Klamkin and D. Newman (1967) Extensions of the Birthday Surprise, Journal of Combinatorial Theory 3, 279282. M. Abramson and W. O. J. Moser (1970) More Birthday Surprises, American Mathematical Monthly 77, 856858 D. Bloom (1973) A Birthday Problem, American Mathematical Monthly 80, 11411142. Shirky, Clay Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, (2008.) New York. 2527.
External links
Coincidences: the truth is out there (http://www.rsscse-edu.org.uk/tsj/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/ matthews.pdf) Experimental test of the Birthday Paradox and other coincidences http://www.efgh.com/math/birthday.htm http://planetmath.org/encyclopedia/BirthdayProblem.html Weisstein, Eric W., " Birthday Problem (http://mathworld.wolfram.com/BirthdayProblem.html)" from MathWorld. A humorous article explaining the paradox (http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=402) SOCR EduMaterials activities birthday experiment (http://wiki.stat.ucla.edu/socr/index.php/ SOCR_EduMaterials_Activities_BirthdayExperiment) Understanding the Birthday Problem (Better Explained) (http://betterexplained.com/articles/ understanding-the-birthday-paradox/)
BorelKolmogorov paradox
158
BorelKolmogorov paradox
In probability theory, the BorelKolmogorov paradox (sometimes known as Borel's paradox) is a paradox relating to conditional probability with respect to an event of probability zero (also known as a null set). It is named after mile Borel and Andrey Kolmogorov. The paradox lies in the fact that a conditional distribution with respect to such an event is ambiguous unless it is viewed as an observation from a continuous random variable. Furthermore, it is dependent on how this random variable is defined.
A great circle puzzle

Suppose that a random variable has a uniform distribution on the surface of a sphere. What is its conditional distribution on a great circle? Because of the symmetry of the sphere, one might expect that the distribution is uniform and independent of the choice of coordinates. However, two analyses give contradictory results: 1. If the coordinates are chosen so that the great circle is an equator (latitude =0), the conditional distribution for a longitude defined on the interval (,) is [1]
2. If the great circle is a line of longitude with =0, the conditional distribution for on the interval (/2,/2) is [1]
One distribution is uniform, the other is not. Yet both seem to be referring to the same great circle in different coordinate systems. Many quite futile arguments have raged - between otherwise competent probabilists - over which of these results is 'correct'. E.T. Jaynes[1]
Explanation and implications

In case (1) above, the conditional probability that the longitude lies in a set E given that = 0 can be written P( E | = 0). Elementary probability theory suggests this can be computed as P( E and =0)/P(=0), but that expression is not well-defined since P(=0) = 0. Measure theory provides a way to define a conditional probability, using the family of events Rab = { : a < < b} which are horizontal rings consisting of all points with latitude between a and b. Rab can be used to construct a function fE() = P( E|=), which can then be evaluated at fE(0) to give P( E|=0). See conditional expectation for more information. The resolution of the paradox is to notice that in case (2), P( F | =0) is defined using the events Lab = { : a < < b}, which are vertical wedges (more precisely lunes), consisting of all points whose longitude varies between a and b. So although P(|=0) and P(|=0) each provide a probability distribution on a great circle, one of them is defined using rings, and the other using lunes. Thus it is not surprising after all that P(|=0) and P(|=0) have different distributions. The concept of a conditional probability with regard to an isolated hypothesis whose probability equals 0 is inadmissible. For we can obtain a probability distribution for [the latitude] on the meridian circle only if we regard this circle as an element of the decomposition of the entire spherical surface onto meridian circles with the given poles Andrey Kolmogorov[2]
BorelKolmogorov paradox the term 'great circle' is ambiguous until we specify what limiting operation is to produce it. The intuitive symmetry argument presupposes the equatorial limit; yet one eating slices of an orange might presuppose the other. E.T. Jaynes[1]
159
Further example
An implication is that conditional density functions are not invariant under coordinate transformation of the conditioning variable. Consider two continuous random variables (U,V) with joint density pUV. Now, let W = V / g(U) for some positive-valued, continuous function g. By change of variables, the joint density of (U,W) is:
Note that W = 0 if and only if V = 0, so it would appear that the conditional distribution of U should be the same under each of these events. However:
whereas
which are not equal unless g is constant.
Notes
[1] Jaynes 2003 [2] Originally Kolmogorov (1933), translated in Kolmogorov (1956). Sourced from Pollard (2002)
References and further reading

Jaynes, E.T. (2003). "15.7 The Borel-Kolmogorov paradox". Probability Theory: The Logic of Science. Cambridge University Press. pp.467470. ISBN0521592712. MR1992316. Fragmentary Edition (1994) (pp. 15141517) (http://omega.math.albany.edu:8008/ETJ-PS/cc15w.ps) (PostScript format) Kolmogorov, Andrey (1933) (in German). Grundbegriffe der Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung. Berlin: Julius Springer. Translation: Kolmogorov, Andrey (1956). "Chapter V, 2. Explanation of a Borel Paradox" (http://www. mathematik.com/Kolmogorov/0029.html). Foundations of the Theory of Probability (http://www. mathematik.com/Kolmogorov/index.html) (2nd ed.). New York: Chelsea. pp.5051. ISBN0828400237. Pollard, David (2002). "Chapter 5. Conditioning, Example 17.". A User's Guide to Measure Theoretic Probability. Cambridge University Press. pp.122123. ISBN0521002893. MR1873379.
Boy or Girl paradox
160
Boy or Girl paradox

The Boy or Girl paradox surrounds a well-known set of questions in probability theory which are also known as The Two Child Problem,[1] Mr. Smith's Children[2] and the Mrs. Smith Problem. The initial formulation of the question dates back to at least 1959, when Martin Gardner published one of the earliest variants of the paradox in Scientific American. Titled The Two Children Problem, he phrased the paradox as follows: Mr. Jones has two children. The older child is a girl. What is the probability that both children are girls? Mr. Smith has two children. At least one of them is a boy. What is the probability that both children are boys? Gardner initially gave the answers 1/2 and 1/3, respectively; but later acknowledged that the second question was ambiguous.[1] Its answer could be 1/2, depending on how you found out that one child was a boy. The ambiguity, depending on the exact wording and possible assumptions, was confirmed by Bar-Hillel and Falk,[3] and Nickerson.[4] Other variants of this question, with varying degrees of ambiguity, have been recently popularized by Ask Marilyn in Parade Magazine,[5] John Tierney of The New York Times,[6] and Leonard Mlodinow in Drunkard's Walk.[7] One scientific study[2] showed that when identical information was conveyed, but with different partially ambiguous wordings that emphasized different points, that the percentage of MBA students who answered 1/2 changed from 85% to 39%. The paradox has frequently stimulated a great deal of controversy.[4] Many people argued strongly for both sides with a great deal of confidence, sometimes showing disdain for those who took the opposing view. The paradox stems from whether the problem setup is similar for the two questions.[2][7] The intuitive answer is 1/2.[2] This answer is intuitive if the question leads the reader to believe that there are two equally likely possibilities for the sex of the second child (i.e., boy and girl),[2][8] and that the probability of these outcomes is absolute, not conditional.[9]
Common assumptions
The two possible answers share a number of assumptions. First, it is assumed that the space of all possible events can be easily enumerated, providing an extensional definition of outcomes: {BB, BG, GB, GG}.[10] This notation indicates that there are four possible combinations of children, labeling boys B and girls G, and using the first letter to represent the older child. Second, it is assumed that these outcomes are equally probable.[10] This implies the following model, a Bernoulli process with : 1. Each child is either male or female. 2. Each child has the same chance of being male as of being female. 3. The sex of each child is independent of the sex of the other. In reality, this is an incomplete model,[10] since it ignores (amongst other factors) the fact that the ratio of boys to girls is not exactly 50:50, the possibility of identical twins (who are always the same sex), and the possibility of an intersex child. However, this problem is about probability and not biology. The mathematical outcome would be the same if it were phrased in terms of a gold coin and a silver coin.
Boy or Girl paradox
161
First question
Mr. Jones has two children. The older child is a girl. What is the probability that both children are girls? Under the forementioned assumptions, in this problem, a random family is selected. In this sample space, there are four equally probable events:
Older child Younger child Girl Girl Boy Boy Girl Boy Girl Boy
Only two of these possible events meet the criteria specified in the question (e.g., GG, GB). Since both of the two possibilities in the new sample space {GG, GB} are equally likely, and only one of the two, GG, includes two girls, the probability that the younger child is also a girl is 1/2.
Second question
Mr. Smith has two children. At least one of them is a boy. What is the probability that both children are boys? This question is identical to question one, except that instead of specifying that the older child is a boy, it is specified that at least one of them is a boy. In response to reader criticism of the question posed in 1959, Gardner agreed that a precise formulation of the question is critical to getting different answers for question 1 and 2. Specifically, Gardner argued that a "failure to specify the randomizing procedure" could lead readers to interpret the question in two distinct ways: From all families with two children, at least one of whom is a boy, a family is chosen at random. This would yield the answer of 1/3. From all families with two children, one child is selected at random, and the sex of that child is specified. This would yield an answer of 1/2.[3][4] Grinstead and Snell argue that the question is ambiguous in much the same way Gardner did.[11] For example, if you see the children in the garden, you may see a boy. The other child may be hidden behind a tree. In this case, the statement is equivalent to the second (the child that you can see is a boy). The first statement does not match as one case is one boy, one girl. Then the girl may be visible. (The first statement says that it can be either.) While it is certainly true that every possible Mr. Smith has at least one boy - i.e., the condition is necessary - it is not clear that every Mr. Smith with at least one boy is intended. That is, the problem statement does not say that having a boy is a sufficient condition for Mr. Smith to be identified as having a boy this way. Commenting on Gardner's version of the problem, Bar-Hillel and Falk [3] note that "Mr. Smith, unlike the reader, is presumably aware of the sex of both of his children when making this statement", i.e. that 'I have two children and at least one of them is a boy.' If it is further assumed that Mr Smith would report this fact if it were true then the correct answer is 1/3 as Gardner intended.
Boy or Girl paradox
162
Analysis of the ambiguity

If it is assumed that this information was obtained by looking at both children to see if there is at least one boy, the condition is both necessary and sufficient condition. Three of the four equally probable events for a two-child family in the sample space above meet the condition:
Older child Younger child Girl Girl Boy Boy Girl Boy Girl Boy
Thus, if it is assumed that both children were considered while looking for a boy, the answer to question 2 is 1/3. However, if the family was first selected and then a random, true statement was made about the gender of one child (whether or not both were considered), the correct way to calculate the conditional probability is not to count the cases that match. Instead, one must add the probabilities that the condition will be satisfied in each case[11]:
Older child Younger child P(this case) P("at least one boy" given this case) P(both this case, and "at least one boy") Girl Girl Boy Boy Girl Boy Girl Boy 1/4 1/4 1/4 1/4 0 1/2 1/2 1 0 1/8 1/8 1/4
The answer is found by adding the numbers in the last column wherever you woud have counted that case: (1/4)/(0+1/8+1/8+1/4)=1/2. Note that this is not necessarily the same as reporting the gender of a specific child, although doing so will produce the same result by a different calculation. For instance, if the younger child is picked, the calculation is (1/4)/(0+1/4+0+1/4)=1/2. In general, 1/2 is a better answer any time a Mr. Smith with a boy and a girl could have been identified as having at least one girl.
Variants of the question

Following the popularization of the paradox by Gardner it has been presented and discussed in various forms. The first variant presented by Bar-Hillel & Falk [3] is worded as follows: Mr. Smith is the father of two. We meet him walking along the street with a young boy whom he proudly introduces as his son. What is the probability that Mr. Smiths other child is also a boy? Bar-Hillel & Falk use this variant to highlight the importance of considering the underlying assumptions. The intuitive answer is 1/2 and, when making the most natural assumptions, this is correct. However, someone may argue that ...before Mr. Smith identifies the boy as his son, we know only that he is either the father of two boys, BB, or of two girls, GG, or of one of each in either birth order, i.e., BG or GB. Assuming again independence and equiprobability, we begin with a probability of 1/4 that Smith is the father of two boys. Discovering that he has at least one boy rules out the event GG. Since the remaining three events were equiprobable, we obtain a probability of 1/3 for BB.[3] Bar-Hillel & Falk say that the natural assumption is that Mr Smith selected the child companion at random but, if so, the three combinations of BB, BG and GB are no longer equiprobable. For this to be the case each combination would need to be equally likely to produce a boy companion but it can be seen that in the BB combination a boy companion is guaranteed whereas in the other two combinations this is not the case. When the correct calculations are made, if the walking companion was chosen at random then the probability that the other child is also a boy is
Boy or Girl paradox 1/2. Bar-Hillel & Falk suggest an alternative scenario. They imagine a culture in which boys are invariably chosen over girls as walking companions. With this assumption the combinations of BB, BG and GB are equally likely to be represented by a boy walking companion and then the probability that the other child is also a boy is 1/3. In 1991, Marilyn vos Savant responded to a reader who asked her to answer a variant of the Boy or Girl paradox that included beagles.[5] In 1996, she published the question again in a different form. The 1991 and 1996 questions, respectively were phrased: A shopkeeper says she has two new baby beagles to show you, but she doesn't know whether they're male, female, or a pair. You tell her that you want only a male, and she telephones the fellow who's giving them a bath. "Is at least one a male?" she asks him. "Yes!" she informs you with a smile. What is the probability that the other one is a male? Say that a woman and a man (who are unrelated) each has two children. We know that at least one of the woman's children is a boy and that the man's oldest child is a boy. Can you explain why the chances that the woman has two boys do not equal the chances that the man has two boys? With regard to the second formulation Vos Savant gave the classic answer that the chances that the woman has two boys are about 1/3 whereas the chances that the man has two boys are about 1/2. In response to reader response that questioned her analysis vos Savant conducted a survey of readers with exactly two children, at least one of which is a boy. Of 17,946 responses, 35.9% reported two boys.[10] Vos Savant's articles were discussed by Carlton and Stansfield[10] in a 2005 article in The American Statistician. The authors do not discuss the possible ambiguity in the question and conclude that her answer is correct from a mathematical perspective, given the assumptions that the likelihood of a child being a boy or girl is equal, and that the sex of the second child is independent of the first. With regard to her survey they say it "at least validates vos Savants correct assertion that the chances posed in the original question, though similar-sounding, are different, and that the first probability is certainly nearer to 1 in 3 than to 1 in 2." Carlton and Stansfield go on to discuss the common assumptions in the Boy or Girl paradox. They demonstrate that in reality male children are actually more likely than female children, and that the sex of the second child is not independent of the sex of the first. The authors conclude that, although the assumptions of the question run counter to observations, the paradox still has pedagogical value, since it "illustrates one of the more intriguing applications of conditional probability."[10] Of course, the actual probability values do not matter; the purpose of the paradox is to demonstrate seemingly contradictory logic, not actual birth rates.
163
Psychological investigation
From the position of statistical analysis the relevant question is often ambiguous and as such there is no correct answer. However, this does not exhaust the boy or girl paradox for it is not necessarily the ambiguity that explains how the intuitive probability is derived. A survey such as vos Savants suggests that the majority of people adopt an understanding of Gardners problem that if they were consistent would lead them to the 1/3 probability answer but overwhelmingly people intuitively arrive at the 1/2 probability answer. Ambiguity notwithstanding, this makes the problem of interest to psychological researchers who seek to understand how humans estimate probability. Fox & Levav (2004) used the problem (called the Mr. Smith problem, credited to Gardner, but not worded exactly the same as Gardner's version) to test theories of how people estimate conditional probabilities.[2] In this study, the paradox was posed to participants in two ways: "Mr. Smith says: 'I have two children and at least one of them is a boy.' Given this information, what is the probability that the other child is a boy?" "Mr. Smith says: 'I have two children and it is not the case that they are both girls.' Given this information, what is the probability that both children are boys?"
Boy or Girl paradox The authors argue that the first formulation gives the reader the mistaken impression that there are two possible outcomes for the "other child",[2] whereas the second formulation gives the reader the impression that there are four possible outcomes, of which one has been rejected (resulting in 1/3 being the probability of both children being boys, as there are 3 remaining possible outcomes, only one of which is that both of the children are boys). The study found that 85% of participants answered 1/2 for the first formulation, while only 39% responded that way to the second formulation. The authors argued that the reason people respond differently to this question (along with other similar problems, such as the Monty Hall Problem and the Bertrand's box paradox) is because of the use of naive heuristics that fail to properly define the number of possible outcomes.[2]
164
References
[1] Martin Gardner (1954). The Second Scientific American Book of Mathematical Puzzles and Diversions. Simon & Schuster. ISBN978-0226282534.. [2] Craig R. Fox & Jonathan Levav (2004). "PartitionEditCount: Naive Extensional Reasoning in Judgment of Conditional Probability". Journal of Experimental Psychology 133 (4): 626642. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.133.4.626. PMID15584810. [3] Maya Bar-Hillel and Ruma Falk (1982). "Some teasers concerning conditional probabilities". Cognition 11 (2): 109122. doi:10.1016/0010-0277(82)90021-X. PMID7198956. [4] Raymond S. Nickerson (May 2004). Cognition and Chance: The Psychology of Probabilistic Reasoning. Psychology Press. ISBN0805848991. [5] Ask Marilyn. Parade Magazine. October 13, 1991; January 5, 1992; May 26, 1996; December 1, 1996; March 30, 1997; July 27, 1997; October 19, 1997. [6] Tierney, John (2008-04-10). "The psychology of getting suckered" (http:/ / tierneylab. blogs. nytimes. com/ 2008/ 04/ 10/ the-psychology-of-getting-suckered/ ). The New York Times. . Retrieved 24 February 2009. [7] Leonard Mlodinow (2008). Pantheon. ISBN0375424040. [8] Nikunj C. Oza (1993). "On The Confusion in Some Popular Probability Problems" (http:/ / citeseerx. ist. psu. edu/ viewdoc/ download?doi=10. 1. 1. 44. 2448& rep=rep1& type=pdf). . Retrieved 25 February 2009. [9] P.J. Laird et al. (1999). "Naive Probability: A Mental Model Theory of Extensional Reasoning". Psychological Review. [10] Matthew A. CARLTON and William D. STANSFIELD (2005). "Making Babies by the Flip of a Coin?". The American Statistician. [11] Charles M. Grinstead and J. Laurie Snell. "Grinstead and Snell's Introduction to Probability" (http:/ / math. dartmouth. edu/ ~prob/ prob/ prob. pdf). The CHANCE Project. .
See Also
Necktie paradox St. Petersburg paradox Sleeping Beauty problem Monty Hall problem Two envelopes problem
External links
Boy or Girl: Two Interpretations (http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/52186.html) At Least One Girl (http://www.mathpages.com/home/kmath036.htm) at MathPages A Problem With Two Bear Cubs (http://www.cut-the-knot.org/bears.shtml) Lewis Carroll's Pillow Problem (http://www.cut-the-knot.org/carroll.shtml) When intuition and math probably look wrong (http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/60598/title/ Math_Trek__When_intuition_and_math_probably_look_wrong)
Burali-Forti paradox
165
In set theory, a field of mathematics, the Burali-Forti paradox demonstrates that navely constructing "the set of all ordinal numbers" leads to a contradiction and therefore shows an antinomy in a system that allows its construction. It is named after Cesare Burali-Forti, who discovered it in 1897.
Stated in terms of von Neumann ordinals

The reason is that the set of all ordinal numbers carries all properties of an ordinal number and would have to be , which is strictly greater than . since contains all ordinal numbers, and we arrive at: considered an ordinal number itself. Then, we can construct its successor However, this ordinal number must be an element of and
Stated more generally

The version of the paradox above is anachronistic, because it presupposes the definition of the ordinals due to John von Neumann, under which each ordinal is the set of all preceding ordinals, which was not known at the time the paradox was framed by Burali-Forti. Here is an account with fewer presuppositions: suppose that we associate with each well-ordering an object called its "order type" in an unspecified way (the order types are the ordinal numbers). The "order types" (ordinal numbers) themselves are well-ordered in a natural way, and this well-ordering must have an order type . It is easily shown in nave set theory (and remains true in ZFC but not in New Foundations) that the order type of all ordinal numbers less than a fixed is itself. So the order type of all ordinal numbers less than is itself. But this means that , being the order type of a proper initial segment of the ordinals, is strictly less than the order type of all the ordinals, but the latter is itself by definition. This is a contradiction. If we use the von Neumann definition, under which each ordinal is identified as the set of all preceding ordinals, the paradox is unavoidable: the offending proposition that the order type of all ordinal numbers less than a fixed is itself must be true. The collection of von Neumann ordinals, like the collection in the Russell paradox, cannot be a set in any set theory with classical logic. But the collection of order types in New Foundations (defined as equivalence classes of well-orderings under similarity) is actually a set, and the paradox is avoided because the order type of the ordinals less than turns out not to be .
Resolution of the paradox

Modern axiomatic set theory such as ZF and ZFC circumvents this antinomy by simply not allowing construction of sets with unrestricted comprehension terms like "all sets with the property ", as it was for example possible in Gottlob Frege's axiom system. New Foundations uses a different solution.
References
Burali-Forti, Cesare (1897), "Una questione sui numeri transfiniti", Rendiconti del Circolo Matematico di Palermo 11: 154164, doi:10.1007/BF03015911
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External links
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "Paradoxes and Contemporary Logic [1]" -- by Andrea Cantini.
References
[1] http:/ / plato. stanford. edu/ entries/ paradoxes-contemporary-logic/
Cantor's paradox
In set theory, Cantor's paradox is derivable from the theorem that there is no greatest cardinal number, so that the collection of "infinite sizes" is itself infinite. The difficulty is handled in axiomatic set theory by declaring that this collection is not a set but a proper class; in von NeumannBernaysGdel set theory it follows from this and the axiom of limitation of size that this proper class must be in bijection with the class of all sets. Thus, not only are there infinitely many infinities, but this infinity is larger than any of the infinities it enumerates. This paradox is named for Georg Cantor, who is often credited with first identifying it in 1899 (or between 1895 and 1897). Like a number of "paradoxes" it is not actually contradictory but merely indicative of a mistaken intuition, in this case about the nature of infinity and the notion of a set. Put another way, it is paradoxical within the confines of nave set theory and therefore demonstrates that a careless axiomatization of this theory is inconsistent.
Statements and proofs

In order to state the paradox it is necessary to understand that the cardinal numbers admit an ordering, so that one can speak about one being greater or less than another. Then Cantor's paradox is: Theorem: There is no greatest cardinal number. This fact is a direct consequence of Cantor's theorem on the cardinality of the power set of a set. Proof: Assume the contrary, and let C be the largest cardinal number. Then (in the von Neumann formulation of cardinality) C is a set and therefore has a power set 2C which, by Cantor's theorem, has cardinality strictly larger than that of C. Demonstrating a cardinality (namely that of 2C) larger than C, which was assumed to be the greatest cardinal number, falsifies the definition of C. This contradiction establishes that such a cardinal cannot exist. Another consequence of Cantor's theorem is that the cardinal numbers constitute a proper class. That is, they cannot all be collected together as elements of a single set. Here is a somewhat more general result. Theorem: If S is any set then S cannot contain elements of all cardinalities. In fact, there is a strict upper bound on the cardinalities of the elements of S. Proof: Let S be a set, and let T be the union of the elements of S. Then every element of S is a subset of T, and hence is of cardinality less than or equal to the cardinality of T. Cantor's theorem then implies that every element of S is of cardinality strictly less than the cardinality of 2lTl.
Discussion and consequences

Since the cardinal numbers are well-ordered by indexing with the ordinal numbers (see Cardinal number, formal definition), this also establishes that there is no greatest ordinal number; conversely, the latter statement implies Cantor's paradox. By applying this indexing to the Burali-Forti paradox we obtain another proof that the cardinal numbers are a proper class rather than a set, and (at least in ZFC or in von NeumannBernaysGdel set theory) it follows from this that there is a bijection between the class of cardinals and the class of all sets. Since every set is a subset of this latter class, and every cardinality is the cardinality of a set (by definition!) this intuitively means that
Cantor's paradox the "cardinality" of the collection of cardinals is greater than the cardinality of any set: it is more infinite than any true infinity. This is the paradoxical nature of Cantor's "paradox".
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Historical note
While Cantor is usually credited with first identifying this property of cardinal sets, some mathematicians award this distinction to Bertrand Russell, who defined a similar theorem in 1899 or 1901.
References
Anellis, I.H. (1991). Drucker, Thomas. ed. "The first Russell paradox," Perspectives on the History of Mathematical Logic. Cambridge, Mass.: Birkuser Boston. pp.3346. Moore, G.H. and Garciadiego, A. (1981). "Burali-Forti's paradox: a reappraisal of its origins". Historia Math 8 (3): 319350. doi:10.1016/0315-0860(81)90070-7.
External links
An Historical Account of Set-Theoretic Antinomies Caused by the Axiom of Abstraction [1]: report by Justin T. Miller, Department of Mathematics, University of Arizona. PlanetMath.org [2]: article.
References
[1] http:/ / citeseer. ist. psu. edu/ 496807. html [2] http:/ / planetmath. org/ encyclopedia/ CantorsParadox. html
Coastline paradox
The coastline paradox is the counterintuitive observation that the coastline of a landmass does not have a well-defined length. This results from the fractal-like properties of coastlines.[1][2] It was first observed by Lewis Fry Richardson. More concretely, the length of the coastline depends on the method used to measure it. Since a landmass has features at all scales, from hundreds of kilometers in size to tiny fractions of a millimeter and below, there is no obvious limit
Coastline paradox to the size of the smallest feature that should not be measured around, and hence no single well-defined perimeter to the landmass. Various approximations exist when specific assumptions are made about minimum feature size. For practical considerations, an appropriate choice of minimum feature size is on the order of the units being used to measure. If a coastline is measured in kilometers, then small variations much smaller than one kilometer are easily ignored. To measure the coastline in centimeters, tiny variations the size of centimeters must be considered. However, at scales on the order of centimeters various arbitrary and non-fractal assumptions must be made, such as where an estuary joins the sea, or where in a broad tidal flat the coastline measurements ought to be taken. Extreme cases of the coastline paradox include the fjord-heavy coastlines of Norway, Chile and the Pacific Northwest of North America. From the southern tip of Vancouver Island northwards to the southern tip of the Alaska Panhandle, the convolutions of the coastline of the Canadian province of British Columbia make it over 10% of the entire Canadian coastline25725km (unknown operator: u'strong'mi) vs 243042 km (unknown operator: u'strong' mi) over a linear distance of only 965km (unknown operator: u'strong'mi), including the maze of islands of the Arctic archipelago.[3]
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Notes
[1] Weisstein, Eric W., " Coastline Paradox (http:/ / mathworld. wolfram. com/ CoastlineParadox. html)" from MathWorld. [2] Mandelbrot, Benoit (1983). The Fractal Geometry of Nature. W.H. Freeman and Co.. 2533. ISBN978-0-7167-1186-5. [3] Sebert, L.M., and M. R. Munro. 1972. Dimensions and Areas of Maps of the National Topographic System of Canada. Technical Report 72-1. Ottawa: Department of Energy, Mines and Resources, Surveys and Mapping Branch.
External links
The Atlas of Canada Coastline and Shoreline (http://atlas.nrcan.gc.ca/site/english/learningresources/facts/ coastline.html) La costa infinita (animation of a coastline with fractal details) (http://cibermitanios.com.ar/2008/01/ la-costa-infinita.html)
Cramer's paradox
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Cramer's paradox
In mathematics, Cramer's paradox (named after Gabriel Cramer but apparently not discovered by him) is the statement that the number of points of intersection of two higher-order curves can be greater than the number of arbitrary points needed to define one such curve. Cramer's paradox is the result of two theorems: Bzout's theorem (the number of points of intersection of two algebraic curves is equal to the product of their degrees) and a theorem of Cramer (a curve of degree n is determined by n(n+3)/2 points). Observe that for n3, it is the case that n2 is greater than or equal to n(n+3)/2.
No paradox for lines and conics

For first order curves (that is lines) the paradox does not occur. In general two lines L1 and L2 intersect at a single point P unless the lines are of equal gradient. A single point is not sufficient to define a line (two are needed); through the point P there pass not only the two given lines but an infinite number of other lines as well. Similarly two conics intersect at 4 points, and 5 points are needed to define a conic.
The paradox illustrated: cubics and higher curves

By Bzout's theorem two cubics (curves of degree3) intersect in 9 points. By Cramer's theorem, 9arbitrary points define a unique cubic. At first thought it may seem that the number of intersection points is too high, defining a unique cubic rather than the two separate cubics that meet there. Similarly for two curves of degree4, there will be 16 points of intersection. Through 16 points (assuming they are arbitrarily given) we will usually not be able to draw any quartic curve (14 points suffice), let alone two intersecting quartics.
References
Weisstein, Eric W., "Cramr-Euler Paradox [1]" from MathWorld.
External links
Ed Sandifer "Cramers Paradox" [2]
References
[1] http:/ / mathworld. wolfram. com/ Cramer-EulerParadox. html [2] http:/ / www. maa. org/ editorial/ euler/ How%20Euler%20Did%20It%2010%20Cramers%20Paradox. pdf
Elevator paradox
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Elevator paradox
This article refers to the elevator paradox for the transport device. For the elevator paradox for the hydrometer, see elevator paradox (physics). The elevator paradox is a paradox first noted by Marvin Stern and George Gamow, physicists who had offices on different floors of a multi-story building. Gamow, who had an office near the bottom of the building noticed that the first elevator to stop at his floor was most often going down, while Stern, who had an office near the top, noticed that the first elevator to stop at his floor was most often going up. At first sight, this created the impression that perhaps elevator cars were being manufactured in the middle of the building and sent upwards to the roof and downwards to the basement to be dismantled. Clearly this was not the case. But how could the observation be explained?
Modeling the elevator problem

Several attempts (beginning with Gamow and Stern) were made to analyze the reason for this phenomenon: the basic analysis is simple, while detailed analysis is more difficult than it would at first appear. Simply, if one is on the top floor of a building, all elevators will come from below (none can come from above), and then depart going down, while if one is on the second from top floor, an elevator going to the top floor will pass first on the way up, and then shortly afterward on the way down thus, while an equal number will pass Near the top floor, elevators to the top come down shortly after they go up. going up as going down, downwards elevators will generally shortly follow upwards elevators (unless the elevator idles on the top floor), and thus the first elevator observed will usually be going up. The first elevator observed will be going down only if one begins observing in the short interval after an elevator has passed going up, while the rest of the time the first elevator observed will be going up. In more detail, the explanation is as follows: a single elevator spends most of its time in the larger section of the building, and thus is more likely to approach from that direction when the prospective elevator user arrives. An observer who remains by the elevator doors for hours or days, observing every elevator arrival, rather than only observing the first elevator to arrive, would note an equal number of elevators traveling in each direction. This then becomes a sampling problem the observer is sampling stochastically a non uniform interval. To help visualize this, consider a thirty-story building, plus lobby, with only one slow elevator. The elevator is so slow because it stops at every floor on the way up, and then on every floor on the way down. It takes a minute to travel between floors and wait for passengers. Here is the arrival schedule for people unlucky enough to work in this building; as depicted above, it forms a triangle wave:
Elevator paradox
171
Floor Lobby 1st floor 2nd floor ...
Time on way up Time on way down 8:00, 9:00, ... 8:01, 9:01, ... 8:02, 9:02, ... ... n/a 8:59, 9:59, ... 8:58, 9:58, ... ... 8:31, 9:31, ... 8:30, 9:30, ...
29th floor 8:29, 9:29, ... 30th floor n/a
If you were on the first floor and walked up randomly to the elevator, chances are the next elevator would be heading down. The next elevator would be heading up only during the first two minutes at each hour, e.g., at 9:00 and 9:01. The number of elevator stops going upwards and downwards are the same, but the odds that the next elevator is going up is only 2 in 60. A similar effect can be observed in railway stations where a station near the end of the line will likely have the next train headed for the end of the line. Another visualization is to imagine sitting in bleachers near one end of an oval racetrack: if you are waiting for a single car to pass in front of you, it will be more likely to pass on the straight-away before entering the turn.
More than one elevator

Interestingly, if there is more than one elevator in a building, the bias decreases since there is a greater chance that the intending passenger will arrive at the elevator lobby during the time that at least one elevator is below them; with an infinite number of elevators, the probabilities would be equal.[1] In the example above, if there are 30 floors and 58 elevators, so at every minute there are 2 elevators on each floor, one going up and one going down (save at the top and bottom), the bias is eliminated every minute, one elevator arrives going up and another going down. This also occurs with 30 elevators spaced 2 minutes apart on odd floors they alternate up/down arrivals, while on even floors they arrive simultaneously every two minutes. Watching cars pass on an oval racetrack, one perceives little bias if the time between cars is small compared to the time required for a car to return past the observer.
The real-world case

In a real building, there are complicated factors such as the tendency of elevators to be frequently required on the ground or first floor, and to return there when idle. These factors tend to shift the frequency of observed arrivals, but do not eliminate the paradox entirely. In particular, a user very near the top floor will perceive the paradox even more strongly, as elevators are infrequently present or required above their floor. There are other complications of a real building: such as lopsided demand where everyone wants to go down at the end of the day; the way full elevators skip extra stops; or the effect of short trips where the elevator stays idle. These complications make the paradox harder to visualize than the race track examples.
Elevator paradox
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Popular culture
The elevator paradox was mentioned by Charlie Eppes on the television show Numb3rs in the episode entitled "Chinese Box".[2]
References
[1] Knuth, Donald E. (1969-7). "The Gamow-Stern Elevator Problem" (http:/ / www. baywood. com/ journals/ previewjournals. asp?Id=0022-412x). Journal of Recreational Mathematics (Baywood Publishing Company, Inc.) 2: 131137. ISSN: 0022-412x. . [2] Numb3rs Episode 410: Chinese Box: Wolfram Research Math Notes (http:/ / numb3rs. wolfram. com/ 410/ )
Martin Gardner, Knotted Doughnuts and Other Mathematical Entertainments, chapter 10. W H Freeman & Co.; (October 1986). ISBN 0-7167-1799-9. Martin Gardner, Aha! Gotcha, page 96. W H Freeman & Co.; 1982. ISBN 0-7167-1414-0
External links
A detailed treatment, part 1 (http://www.kwansei.ac.jp/hs/z90010/english/sugakuc/toukei/elevator/ elevator.htm) by Tokihiko Niwa Part 2: the multi-elevator case (http://www.kwansei.ac.jp/hs/z90010/english/sugakuc/toukei/elevator2/ elevator2.htm) MathWorld article (http://mathworld.wolfram.com/ElevatorParadox.html) on the elevator paradox
False positive paradox

The false positive paradox is a statistical result where false positive tests are more probable than true positive tests, occurring when the overall population has a low incidence of a condition and the incidence rate is lower than the false positive rate. The probability of a positive test result is determined not only by the accuracy of the test but by the characteristics of the sampled population (see Bayes' theorem).[1] When the incidence, the proportion of those who have a given condition, is lower than the test's false positive rate, even tests that have a very low chance of giving a false positive in an individual case will give more false than true positives overall.[2] So, in a society with very few infected peoplefewer proportionately than the test gives false positivesthere will actually be more who test positive for a disease incorrectly and don't have it than those who test positive accurately and do. The paradox has surprised many.[3] It is especially counter-intuitive when interpreting a positive result in a test on a low-incidence population after having dealt with positive results drawn from a high-incidence population.[2] If the false positive rate of the test is higher than the proportion of the new population with the condition, then a test administrator whose experience has been drawn from testing in a high-incidence population may conclude from experience that a positive test result usually indicates a positive subject, when in fact a false positive is far more likely to have occurred. Not adjusting to the scarcity of the condition in the new population, and concluding that a positive test result probably indicates a positive subject, even though population incidence is below the false positive rate is a "base rate fallacy".
False positive paradox
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Example
High-incidence population
Imagine running an HIV test on population A, in which 200 out of 10,000 (2%) are infected. The test has a false positive rate of .0004 (.04%) and no false negative rate. The expected outcome of a million tests on population A would be: Unhealthy and test indicates disease (true positive) 1,000,000 (200/10000) = 20,000 people would receive a true positive Healthy and test indicates disease (false positive) 1,000,000 (9800/10000) .0004 = 392 people would receive a false positive (The remaining 979,608 tests are correctly negative.) So, in population A, a person receiving a positive test could be over 98% confident (20,000/20,392) that it correctly indicates infection.
Low-incidence population
Now consider the same test applied to population B, in which only 1 person in 10,000 (.01%) is infected . The expected outcome of a million tests on population B would be: Unhealthy and test indicates disease (true positive) 1,000,000 (1/10,000) = 100 people would receive a true positive Healthy and test indicates disease (false positive) 1,000,000 (9999/10,000) .0004 400 people would receive a false positive (The remaining 999,500 tests are correctly negative.) In population B, only 100 of the 500 total people with a positive test result are actually infected. So, the probability of actually being infected after you are told you are infected is only 20% (100/500) for a test that otherwise appears to be "over 99.95% accurate". A tester with experience of group A might find it a paradox that in group B, a result that had almost always indicated infection is now usually a false positive. The confusion of the posterior probability of infection with the prior probability of receiving a false negative is a natural error after receiving a life-threatening test result.
References
[1] Rheinfurth, M. H.; Howell, L. W. (March 1998). Probability and statistics in aerospace engineering (http:/ / ntrs. nasa. gov/ archive/ nasa/ casi. ntrs. nasa. gov/ 19980045313_1998119122. pdf) (pdf). NASA. p.16. . "MESSAGE: False positive tests are more probable than true positive tests when the overall population has a low incidence of the disease. This is called the false-positive paradox." [2] Vacher, H. L. (May 2003). "Quantitative literacy - drug testing, cancer screening, and the identification of igneous rocks" (http:/ / findarticles. com/ p/ articles/ mi_qa4089/ is_200305/ ai_n9252796/ pg_2/ ). Journal of Geoscience Education: 2. . "At first glance, this seems perverse: the less the students as a whole use steroids, the more likely a student identified as a user will be a non-user. This has been called the False Positive Paradox" - Citing: Smith, W. (1993). The cartoon guide to statistics. New York: Harper Collins. p.49. [3] Madison, B. L. (August 2007). "Mathematical Proficiency for Citizenship" (http:/ / books. google. com/ books?id=5gQz0akjYcwC& pg=113#v=onepage& q& f=false). In Schoenfeld, A. H.. Assessing Mathematical Proficiency. Mathematical Sciences Research Institute Publications (New ed.). Cambridge University Press. p.122. ISBN9780521697668. . "The correct [probability estimate...] is surprising to many; hence, the term paradox."
Gabriel's Horn
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Gabriel's Horn
Gabriel's Horn (also called Torricelli's trumpet) is a geometric figure which has infinite surface area, but finite volume. The name refers to the tradition identifying the Archangel Gabriel as the angel who blows the horn to announce Judgment Day, associating the divine, or infinite, with the finite. The properties of this figure were first studied by Italian physicist and mathematician Evangelista Torricelli.
3D illustration of Gabriel's Horn.
Mathematical definition
Gabriel's horn is formed by taking the graph of domain , with the
(thus avoiding the asymptote at x = 0) and rotating it in
three dimensions about the x-axis. The discovery was made using Cavalieri's principle before the invention of calculus, but today calculus can be used to calculate the volume and surface area of the horn between x = 1 and x = a, where a > 1. Using integration (see Solid of revolution and Surface of revolution for details), it is possible to find the volume and the surface area :
Graph of y = 1/x
can be as large as required, but it can be seen from the equation that the volume of the part of the horn between and will never exceed ; however, it will get closer and closer to as becomes larger. Mathematically, the volume approaches volume may be expressed as: as approaches infinity. Using the limit notation of calculus, the
This is so because as
approaches infinity,
approaches zero. This means the volume approaches times the natural logarithm of
(1 - 0)
which equals . As for the area, the above shows that the area is greater than bound for the natural logarithm of surface area. That is to say; as or
. There is no upper
as it approaches infinity. That means, in this case, that the horn has an infinite
Gabriel's Horn
175
Apparent paradox
When the properties of Gabriel's Horn were discovered, the fact that the rotation of an infinite curve about the x-axis generates an object of finite volume was considered paradoxical. However, the explanation is that the bounding curve, , is simply a special casejust like the simple harmonic series (x-1)for which the successive area 2 'segments' do not decrease rapidly enough to allow for convergence to a limit. For volume segments (1/x ) however, and in fact for any generally constructed higher degree curve (eg y = 1/x1.001), the same is not true and the rate of decrease in the associated series is sufficiently rapid for convergence to a (finite) limiting sum. The apparent paradox formed part of a great dispute over the nature of infinity involving many of the key thinkers of the time including Thomas Hobbes, John Wallis and Galileo Galilei.[1] The paradox can also be considered from a non-mathematical perspective. If Gabriels Horn existed in reality, it could be filled with a finite amount of paint since it has a finite volume; yet it could never be completely filled, because the first drop would never reach the bottom. But even ignoring this latter consideration, the Horn has an infinite area; so an infinite amount of paint would therefore be required to cover its inner surface: it seems nonsensical to be able to completely fill a space with paint, yet fail to cover all that space's internal surface. The real-world solution to the paradox is that paint is not infinitely divisible; at some point, the throat of the Horn will become too small to allow even a single paint molecule to pass. When considering the Horn to this limited length, the practicably paintable surface of the inner surface is less than the amount of paint needed to fill it to that point. (If paint were infinitely divisible, however, a coat of paint could conceivably have zero thickness, thus making the amount of paint required to cover an infinite surface negligible; and no paradox would result.)[2]
References
[1] Havil, Julian (2007). Nonplussed!: mathematical proof of implausible ideas. Princeton University Press. pp.8291. ISBN0691120560. [2] Clegg, Brian (2003). Infinity: The Quest to Think the Unthinkable. Robinson (Constable & Robinson Ltd). pp.239242. ISBN978-1-84119-650-3.
External links
Information and diagrams about Gabriel's Horn (http://curvebank.calstatela.edu/torricelli/torricelli.htm) Torricelli's Trumpet at PlanetMath (http://planetmath.org/encyclopedia/TorricellisTrumpet.html) Weisstein, Eric W., " Gabriel's Horn (http://mathworld.wolfram.com/GabrielsHorn.html)" from MathWorld. "Gabriel's Horn" (http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/GabrielsHorn/) by John Snyder, the Wolfram Demonstrations Project, 2007.
Galileo's paradox
176
Galileo's paradox
Galileo's paradox is a demonstration of one of the surprising properties of infinite sets. In his final scientific work, the Two New Sciences, Galileo Galilei made two apparently contradictory statements about the positive whole numbers. First, some numbers are perfect squares (i.e., the square of some integer, in the following just called a square), while others are not; therefore, all the numbers, including both squares and non-squares, must be more numerous than just the squares. And yet, for every square there is exactly one number that is its square root, and for every number there is exactly one square; hence, there cannot be more of one than of the other. This is an early use, though not the first, of a proof by one-to-one correspondence of infinite sets. Galileo concluded that the ideas of less, equal, and greater apply to finite sets, but not to infinite sets. In the nineteenth century, using the same methods, Cantor showed that the general conclusion does not follow in two respects. It is possible to define comparisons amongst infinite sets in a meaningful way (by which definition the two sets he considers, integers and squares, have "the same size"), and that by this definition some infinite sets are strictly larger than others.
Galileo on infinite sets

The relevant section of Two New Sciences is excerpted below:[1] Simplicio: Here a difficulty presents itself which appears to me insoluble. Since it is clear that we may have one line greater than another, each containing an infinite number of points, we are forced to admit that, within one and the same class, we may have something greater than infinity, because the infinity of points in the long line is greater than the infinity of points in the short line. This assigning to an infinite quantity a value greater than infinity is quite beyond my comprehension. Salviati: This is one of the difficulties which arise when we attempt, with our finite minds, to discuss the infinite, assigning to it those properties which we give to the finite and limited; but this I think is wrong, for we cannot speak of infinite quantities as being the one greater or less than or equal to another. To prove this I have in mind an argument which, for the sake of clearness, I shall put in the form of questions to Simplicio who raised this difficulty. I take it for granted that you know which of the numbers are squares and which are not. Simplicio: I am quite aware that a squared number is one which results from the multiplication of another number by itself; this 4, 9, etc., are squared numbers which come from multiplying 2, 3, etc., by themselves. Salviati: Very well; and you also know that just as the products are called squares so the factors are called sides or roots; while on the other hand those numbers which do not consist of two equal factors are not squares. Therefore if I assert that all numbers, including both squares and non-squares, are more than the squares alone, I shall speak the truth, shall I not? Simplicio: Most certainly. Salviati: If I should ask further how many squares there are one might reply truly that there are as many as the corresponding number of roots, since every square has its own root and every root its own square, while no square has more than one root and no root more than one square. Simplicio: Precisely so. Salviati: But if I inquire how many roots there are, it cannot be denied that there are as many as the numbers because every number is the root of some square. This being granted, we must say that there are as many squares as there are numbers because they are just as numerous as their roots, and all the numbers are roots. Yet at the outset we said that there are many more numbers than squares, since the
Galileo's paradox larger portion of them are not squares. Not only so, but the proportionate number of squares diminishes as we pass to larger numbers, Thus up to 100 we have 10 squares, that is, the squares constitute 1/10 part of all the numbers; up to 10000, we find only 1/100 part to be squares; and up to a million only 1/1000 part; on the other hand in an infinite number, if one could conceive of such a thing, he would be forced to admit that there are as many squares as there are numbers taken all together. Sagredo: What then must one conclude under these circumstances? Salviati: So far as I see we can only infer that the totality of all numbers is infinite, that the number of squares is infinite, and that the number of their roots is infinite; neither is the number of squares less than the totality of all the numbers, nor the latter greater than the former; and finally the attributes "equal," "greater," and "less," are not applicable to infinite, but only to finite, quantities. When therefore Simplicio introduces several lines of different lengths and asks me how it is possible that the longer ones do not contain more points than the shorter, I answer him that one line does not contain more or less or just as many points as another, but that each line contains an infinite number. Galileo, Two New Sciences
177

The paradox is quickly resolved by noticing that two different notions of being bigger are used in the paradox. For the sake of simplicity, let us write S for the set of square natural numbers. If one says that the natural numbers are more numerous than the squares, one means that the squares form a proper subset of the natural numbers (i.e. S N) and thus N is bigger than S (this is the first notion of being bigger). On the other hand, one notices that the squaring function N S, n n2 is a bijection between N and S (i.e. these two sets have the same cardinality) and thus they are equally big (this is the second notion of being bigger). While these two notions are equivalent in the finite case, they do not agree in the infinite case (as seen above). To wit, if A, B are finite sets with A B then A B if and only if #A < #B, where # is the cardinality symbol. Or put differently (still in the case where A B are finite) A = B #A = #B.
References
[1] Galilei, Galileo (1954) [1638]. Dialogues concerning two new sciences. Transl. Crew and de Salvio. New York: Dover. pp.3133. ISBN4-86600-998-.
External links
Philosophical Method and Galileo's Paradox of Infinity (http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00004276/), Matthew W. Parker, in the PhilSci Archive
Gambler's fallacy
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Gambler's fallacy
The Gambler's fallacy, also known as the Monte Carlo fallacy (because its most famous example happened in a Monte Carlo Casino in 1913),[1][2] and also referred to as the fallacy of the maturity of chances, is the belief that if deviations from expected behaviour are observed in repeated independent trials of some random process, future deviations in the opposite direction are then more likely.
An example: coin-tossing
The gambler's fallacy can be illustrated by considering the repeated toss of a fair coin. With a fair coin, the outcomes in different tosses are statistically independent and the probability of getting heads on a single toss is exactly 12 (one in two). It follows that the probability of getting two heads in two tosses is 14 (one in four) and the probability of getting three heads in three tosses is 18 (one in eight). In general, if we let Ai be the event that toss i of a fair coin comes up heads, then we have, . Now suppose that we have just tossed four heads in a row, so that if the next coin toss were also to come up heads, it would complete a run of five successive heads. Since the probability of a run of five successive heads is only 132 (one in thirty-two), a believer in the gambler's fallacy might believe that this next flip is less likely to be heads than to be tails. However, this is not correct, and is a manifestation of the gambler's fallacy; the event of 5 heads in a row and the event of "first 4 heads, then a tails" are equally likely, each having probability 132. Given the first four rolls turn up heads, the probability that the next toss is a head is in fact, . While a run of five heads is only 132 = 0.03125, it is only that before the coin is first tossed. After the first four tosses the results are no longer unknown, so their probabilities are 1. Reasoning that it is more likely that the next toss will be a tail than a head due to the past tosses, that a run of luck in the past somehow influences the odds in the future, is the fallacy.
Simulation of coin tosses: Each frame, a coin is flipped which is red on one side and blue on the other. The result of each flip is added as a colored dot in the corresponding column. As the pie chart shows, the proportion of red versus blue approaches 50-50 (the Law of Large Numbers). But the difference between red and blue does not systematically decrease to zero.
Explaining why the probability is 1/2 for a fair coin

We can see from the above that, if one flips a fair coin 21 times, then the probability of 21 heads is 1 in 2,097,152. However, the probability of flipping a head after having already flipped 20 heads in a row is simply 12. This is an application of Bayes' theorem. This can also be seen without knowing that 20 heads have occurred for certain (without applying of Bayes' theorem). Consider the following two probabilities, assuming a fair coin: probability of 20 heads, then 1 tail = 0.520 0.5 = 0.521 probability of 20 heads, then 1 head = 0.520 0.5 = 0.521 The probability of getting 20 heads then 1 tail, and the probability of getting 20 heads then another head are both 1 in 2,097,152. Therefore, it is equally likely to flip 21 heads as it is to flip 20 heads and then 1 tail when flipping a fair coin 21 times. Furthermore, these two probabilities are equally as likely as any other 21-flip combinations that can
Gambler's fallacy be obtained (there are 2,097,152 total); all 21-flip combinations will have probabilities equal to 0.521, or 1 in 2,097,152. From these observations, there is no reason to assume at any point that a change of luck is warranted based on prior trials (flips), because every outcome observed will always have been as likely as the other outcomes that were not observed for that particular trial, given a fair coin. Therefore, just as Bayes' theorem shows, the result of each trial comes down to the base probability of the fair coin: 12.
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Other examples
There is another way to emphasize the fallacy. As already mentioned, the fallacy is built on the notion that previous failures indicate an increased probability of success on subsequent attempts. This is, in fact, the inverse of what actually happens, even on a fair chance of a successful event, given a set number of iterations. Assume a fair 16-sided die, where a win is defined as rolling a 1. Assume a player is given 16 rolls to obtain at least one win (1p(rolling no ones)). The low winning odds are just to make the change in probability more noticeable. The probability of having at least one win in the 16 rolls is:
However, assume now that the first roll was a loss (93.75% chance of that, 1516). The player now only has 15 rolls left and, according to the fallacy, should have a higher chance of winning since one loss has occurred. His chances of having at least one win are now:
Simply by losing one toss the player's probability of winning dropped by 2%. By the time this reaches 5 losses (11 rolls left), his probability of winning on one of the remaining rolls will have dropped to ~50%. The player's odds for at least one win in those 16 rolls has not increased given a series of losses; his odds have decreased because he has fewer iterations left to win. In other words, the previous losses in no way contribute to the odds of the remaining attempts, but there are fewer remaining attempts to gain a win, which results in a lower probability of obtaining it. The player becomes more likely to lose in a set number of iterations as he fails to win, and eventually his probability of winning will again equal the probability of winning a single toss, when only one toss is left: 6.25% in this instance. Some lottery players will choose the same numbers every time, or intentionally change their numbers, but both are equally likely to win any individual lottery draw. Copying the numbers that won the previous lottery draw gives an equal probability, although a rational gambler might attempt to predict other players' choices and then deliberately avoid these numbers. Low numbers (below 31 and especially below 12) are popular because people play birthdays as their so-called lucky numbers; hence a win in which these numbers are over-represented is more likely to result in a shared payout. A joke told among mathematicians demonstrates the nature of the fallacy. When flying on an aircraft, a man decides to always bring a bomb with him. "The chances of an aircraft having a bomb on it are very small," he reasons, "and certainly the chances of having two are almost none!" A similar example is in the book The World According to Garp when the hero Garp decides to buy a house a moment after a small plane crashes into it, reasoning that the chances of another plane hitting the house have just dropped to zero.
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Reverse fallacy
The reversal is also a fallacy (not to be confused with the inverse gambler's fallacy) in which a gambler may instead decide that tails are more likely out of some mystical preconception that fate has thus far allowed for consistent results of tails. Believing the odds to favor tails, the gambler sees no reason to change to heads. Again, the fallacy is the belief that the "universe" somehow carries a memory of past results which tend to favor or disfavor future outcomes. The conclusion of this reversed gambler's fallacy may be correct, however, if the empirical evidence suggests that an initial assumption about the probability distribution is false. If a coin is tossed ten times and lands heads ten times, the gambler's fallacy would suggest an even-money bet on tails, while the reverse gambler's fallacy would suggest an even-money bet on heads. In this case, the smart bet is "heads" because the empirical evidenceten "heads" in a rowsuggests that the coin is likely to be biased toward "heads", contradicting the general assumption that the coin is fair.
Child birth
Instances of the gamblers fallacy when applied to childbirth can be traced all the way back to 1796, in Pierre-Simon Laplaces A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities. Laplace wrote of the ways men calculated their probability of having sons: "I have seen men, ardently desirous of having a son, who could learn only with anxiety of the births of boys in the month when they expected to become fathers. Imagining that the ratio of these births to those of girls ought to be the same at the end of each month, they judged that the boys already born would render more probable the births next of girls." In short, the expectant fathers feared that if more sons were born in the surrounding community, then they themselves would be more likely to have a daughter. [3] Some expectant parents believe that, after having multiple children of the same sex, they are "due" to have a child of the opposite sex. While the TriversWillard hypothesis predicts that birth sex is dependent on living conditions (i.e. more male children are born in "good" living conditions, while more female children are born in poorer living conditions), the probability of having a child of either gender is still regarded as 50/50.
Monte Carlo Casino

The most famous example happened in a Monte Carlo Casino in the summer of 1913, when the ball fell in black 26 times in a row, an extremely uncommon occurrence (but no more or less common than any of the other 67,108,863 sequences of 26 balls, neglecting the 0 slot on the wheel), and gamblers lost millions of francs betting against black after the black streak happened. Gamblers reasoned incorrectly that the streak was causing an "imbalance" in the randomness of the wheel, and that it had to be followed by a long streak of red.[1]
Non-examples of the fallacy

There are many scenarios where the gambler's fallacy might superficially seem to apply, but actually does not. When the probability of different events is not independent, the probability of future events can change based on the outcome of past events (see statistical permutation). Formally, the system is said to have memory. An example of this is cards drawn without replacement. For example, if an ace is drawn from a deck and not reinserted, the next draw is less likely to be an ace and more likely to be of another rank. The odds for drawing another ace, assuming that it was the first card drawn and that there are no jokers, have decreased from 452 (7.69%) to 351 (5.88%), while the odds for each other rank have increased from 452 (7.69%) to 451 (7.84%). This type of effect is what allows card counting schemes to work (for example in the game of blackjack). Meanwhile, the reversed gambler's fallacy may appear to apply in the story of Joseph Jagger, who hired clerks to record the results of roulette wheels in Monte Carlo. He discovered that one wheel favored nine numbers and won large sums of money until the casino started rebalancing the roulette wheels daily. In this situation, the observation
Gambler's fallacy of the wheel's behavior provided information about the physical properties of the wheel rather than its "probability" in some abstract sense, a concept which is the basis of both the gambler's fallacy and its reversal. Even a biased wheel's past results will not affect future results, but the results can provide information about what sort of results the wheel tends to produce. However, if it is known for certain that the wheel is completely fair, then past results provide no information about future ones. The outcome of future events can be affected if external factors are allowed to change the probability of the events (e.g., changes in the rules of a game affecting a sports team's performance levels). Additionally, an inexperienced player's success may decrease after opposing teams discover his or her weaknesses and exploit them. The player must then attempt to compensate and randomize his strategy. (See Game theory). Many riddles trick the reader into believing that they are an example of the gambler's fallacy, such as the Monty Hall problem.
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Non-example: unknown probability of event

When the probability of repeated events are not known, outcomes may not be equally probable. In the case of coin tossing, as a run of heads gets longer and longer, the likelihood that the coin is biased towards heads increases. If one flips a coin 21 times in a row and obtains 21 heads, one might rationally conclude a high probability of bias towards heads, and hence conclude that future flips of this coin are also highly likely to be heads. In fact, Bayesian inference can be used to show that when the long-run proportion of different outcomes are unknown but exchangeable (meaning that the random process from which they are generated may be biased but is equally likely to be biased in any direction) previous observations demonstrate the likely direction of the bias, such that the outcome which has occurred the most in the observed data is the most likely to occur again.[4]
Psychology behind the fallacy

Origins
Gambler's fallacy arises out of a belief in the law of small numbers, or the erroneous belief that small samples must be representative of the larger population. According to the fallacy, "streaks" must eventually even out in order to be representative. [5] Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman first proposed that the gambler's fallacy is a cognitive bias produced by a psychological heuristic called the representativeness heuristic, which states that people evaluate the probability of a certain event by assessing how similar it is to events they have experienced before, and how similar the events surrounding those two processes are.[6][7] According to this view, "after observing a long run of red on the roulette wheel, for example, most people erroneously believe that black will result in a more representative sequence than the occurrence of an additional red",[8] so people expect that a short run of random outcomes should share properties of a longer run, specifically in that deviations from average should balance out. When people are asked to make up a random-looking sequence of coin tosses, they tend to make sequences where the proportion of heads to tails stays closer to 0.5 in any short segment than would be predicted by chance (insensitivity to sample size);[9] Kahneman and Tversky interpret this to mean that people believe short sequences of random events should be representative of longer ones.[10] The representativeness heuristic is also cited behind the related phenomenon of the clustering illusion, according to which people see streaks of random events as being non-random when such streaks are actually much more likely to occur in small samples than people expect.[11] The gambler's fallacy can also be attributed to the mistaken belief that gambling (or even chance itself) is a fair process that can correct itself in the event of streaks, otherwise known as the just-world hypothesis. [12] Other researchers believe that individuals with an internal locus of control - that is, people who believe that the gambling outcomes are the result of their own skill - are more susceptible to the gambler's fallacy because they reject the idea that chance could overcome skill or talent. [13]
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Variations of the gambler's fallacy

Some researchers believe that there are actually two types of gambler's fallacy: Type I and Type II. Type I is the "classic" gambler's fallacy, when individuals believe that a certain outcome is "due" after a long streak of another outcome. Type II gambler's fallacy, as defined by Gideon Keren and Charles Lewis, occurs when a gambler underestimates how many observations are needed to detect a favorable outcome (such as watching a roulette wheel for a length of time and then betting on the numbers that appear most often). Detecting a bias that will lead to a favorable outcome takes an impractically large amount of time and is very difficult, if not impossible, to do, therefore people fall prey to the Type II gambler's fallacy. [14] The two types are different in that Type I wrongly assumes that gambling conditions are fair and perfect, while Type II assumes that the conditions are biased, and that this bias can be detected after a certain amount of time. Another variety, known as the retrospective gambler's fallacy, occurs when individuals judge that a seemingly rare event must come from a longer sequence than a more common event does. For example, people believe that an imaginary sequence of die rolls is more than three times as long when a set of three 6's is observed as opposed to when there are only two 6's. This effect can be observed in isolated instances, or even sequentially. A real world example is when a teenager becomes pregnant after having unprotected sex, people assume that she has been engaging in unprotected sex for longer than someone who has been engaging in unprotected sex and is not pregnant.
[15]
Relationship to hot-hand fallacy

Another psychological perspective states that gambler's fallacy can be seen as the counterpart to basketball's Hot-hand fallacy. In the hot-hand fallacy, people tend to predict the same outcome of the last event (positive recency) - that a high scorer will continue to score. In gambler's fallacy, however, people predict the opposite outcome of the last event (negative recency) - that, for example, since the roulette wheel has landed on black the last six times, it is due to land on red the next. Ayton and Fischer have theorized that people display positive recency for the hot-hand fallacy because the fallacy deals with human performance, and that people do not believe that an inanimate object can become "hot." [16] Human performance is not perceived as "random," and people are more likely to continue streaks when they believe that the process generating the results is nonrandom. [17] Usually, when a person exhibits the gambler's fallacy, they are more likely to exhibit the hot-hand fallacy as well, suggesting that one construct is responsible for the two fallacies. [18] The difference between the two fallacies is also represented in economic decision-making. A study by Huber, Kirchler, and Stockl (2010) examined how the hot hand and the gambler's fallacy are exhibited in the financial market. The researchers gave their participants a choice: they could either bet on the outcome of a series of coin tosses, use an "expert" opinion to sway their decision, or choose a risk-free alternative instead for a smaller financial reward. Participants turned to the "expert" opinion to make their decision 24% of the time based on their past experience of success, which exemplifies the hot-hand. If the expert was correct, 78% of the participants chose the expert's opinion again, as opposed to 57% doing so when the expert was wrong. The participants also exhibited the gambler's fallacy, with their selection of either heads or tails decreasing after noticing a streak of that outcome. This experiment helped bolster Ayton and Fischer's theory that people put more faith in human performance than they do in seemingly random processes. [19]
Neurophysiology
While the representativeness heuristic and other cognitive biases are the most commonly cited cause of the gambler's fallacy, research suggests that there may be a neurological component to it as well. Functional magnetic resonance imaging has revealed that, after losing a bet or gamble ("riskloss"), the frontoparietal network of the brain is activated, resulting in more risk-taking behavior. In contrast, there is decreased activity in the amygdala, caudate and ventral striatum after a riskloss. Activation in the amygdala is negatively correlated with gambler's fallacy - the more
Gambler's fallacy activity exhibited in the amygdala, the less likely an individual is to fall prey to the gambler's fallacy. These results suggest that gambler's fallacy relies more on the prefrontal cortex (responsible for executive, goal-directed processes) and less on the brain areas that control affective decision-making. The desire to continue gambling or betting is controlled by the striatum, which supports a choice-outcome contingency learning method. The striatum processes the errors in prediction and the behavior changes accordingly. After a win, the positive behavior is reinforced and after a loss, the behavior is conditioned to be avoided. In individuals exhibiting the gambler's fallacy, this choice-outcome contingency method is impaired, and they continue to make risks after a series of losses.[20]
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Possible solutions
The gambler's fallacy is a deep-seated cognitive bias and therefore very difficult to eliminate. For the most part, educating individuals about the nature of randomness has not proven effective in reducing or eliminating any manifestation of the gambler's fallacy. Participants in an early study by Beach and Swensson (1967) were shown a shuffled deck of index cards with shapes on them, and were told to guess which shape would come next in a sequence. The experimental group of participants was informed about the nature and existence of the gambler's fallacy, and were explicitly instructed not to rely on "run dependency" to make their guesses. The control group was not given this information. Even so, the response styles of the two groups were similar, indicating that the experimental group still based their choices on the length of the run sequence. Clearly, instructing individuals about randomness is not sufficient in lessening the gambler's fallacy. [21] It does appear, however, that an individual's susceptibility to the gambler's fallacy decreases with age. Fischbein and Schnarch (1997) administered a questionnaire to five groups: students in grades 5, 7, 9, 11, and college students specializing in teaching mathematics. None of the participants had received any prior education regarding probability. The question was, "Ronni flipped a coin three times and in all cases heads came up. Ronni intends to flip the coin again. What is the chance of getting heads the fourth time?" The results indicated that as the older the students got, the less likely they were to answer with "smaller than the chance of getting tails," which would indicate a negative recency effect. 35% of the 5th graders, 35% of the 7th graders, and 20% of the 9th graders exhibited the negative recency effect. Only 10% of the 11th graders answered this way, however, and none of the college students did. Fischbein and Schnarch therefore theorized that an individual's tendency to rely on the representativeness heuristic and other cognitive biases can be overcome with age. [22] Another possible solution that could be seen as more proactive comes from Roney and Trick, Gestalt psychologists who suggest that the fallacy may be eliminated as a result of grouping. When a future event (ex: a coin toss) is described as part of a sequence, no matter how arbitrarily, a person will automatically consider the event as it relates to the past events, resulting in the gambler's fallacy. When a person considers every event as independent, however, the fallacy can be greatly reduced. [23] In their experiment, Roney and Trick told participants that they were betting on either two blocks of six coin tosses, or on two blocks of seven coin tosses. The fourth, fifth, and sixth tosses all had the same outcome, either three heads or three tails. The seventh toss was grouped with either the end of one block, or the beginning of the next block. Participants exhibited the strongest gambler's fallacy when the seventh trial was part of the first block, directly after the sequence of three heads or tails. Additionally, the researchers pointed out how insidious the fallacy can be - the participants that did not show the gambler's fallacy showed less confident in their bets and bet fewer times than the participants who picked "with" the gambler's fallacy. However, when the seventh trial was grouped with the second block (and was therefore perceived as not being part of a streak), the gambler's fallacy did not occur. Roney and Trick argue that a solution to gambler's fallacy could be, instead of teaching individuals about the nature of randomness, training people to treat each event as if it is a beginning and not a continuation of previous events. This would prevent people from gambling when they are losing in the vain hope that their chances of winning are due to increase.
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References
[1] [2] [3] [4] Lehrer, Jonah (2009). How We Decide. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p.66. ISBN978-0-618-62011-1. Blog - "Fallacy Files" (http:/ / www. fallacyfiles. org/ gamblers. html) What happened at Monte Carlo in 1913. Barron, G. and Leider, S. (2010). The role of experience in the gambler's fallacy. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 23, 117-129. O'Neill, B. and Puza, B.D. (2004) Dice have no memories but I do: A defence of the reverse gambler's belief. (http:/ / cbe. anu. edu. au/ research/ papers/ pdf/ STAT0004WP. pdf). Reprinted in abridged form as O'Neill, B. and Puza, B.D. (2005) In defence of the reverse gambler's belief. The Mathematical Scientist 30(1), pp. 1316. [5] Burns, B.D. and Corpus, B. (2004). Randomness and inductions from streaks: "Gambler's fallacy" versus "hot hand." Psychonomic Bulletin and Review. 11, 179-184 [6] Tversky, Amos; Daniel Kahneman (1974). "Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases". Science 185 (4157): 11241131. doi:10.1126/science.185.4157.1124. PMID17835457. [7] Tversky, Amos; Daniel Kahneman (1971). "Belief in the law of small numbers". Psychological Bulletin 76 (2): 105110. doi:10.1037/h0031322. [8] Tversky & Kahneman, 1974. [9] Tune, G.S. (1964). "Response preferences: A review of some relevant literature". Psychological Bulletin 61 (4): 286302. doi:10.1037/h0048618. PMID14140335. [10] Tversky & Kahneman, 1971. [11] Gilovich, Thomas (1991). How we know what isn't so. New York: The Free Press. pp.1619. ISBN0-02-911706-2. [12] Rogers, P. (1998). The cognitive psychology of lottery gambling: A theoretical review. Journal of Gambling Studies, 14, 111-134 [13] Sundali, J. and Croson, R. (2006). Biases in casino betting: The hot hand and the gambler's fallacy. Judgment and Decision Making, 1, 1-12. [14] Keren, G. and Lewis, C. (1994). The two fallacies of gamblers: Type I and Type II. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 60, 75-89. [15] Oppenheimer, D.M. and Monin, B. (2009). The retrospective gambler's fallacy: Unlikely events, constructing the past, and multiple universes. Judgment and Decision Making, 4, 326-334. [16] Ayton, P. & Fischer, I. (2004). The hot hand fallacy and the gambler's fallacy: Two faces of subjective randomness? Memory and Cognition, 32, 1369-1378. [17] Burns, B.D. and Corpus, B. (2004). Randomness and inductions from streaks: "Gambler's fallacy" versus "hot hand." Psychonomic Bulletin and Review. 11, 179-184 [18] Sundali, J. and Croson, R. (2006). Biases in casino betting: The hot hand and the gambler's fallacy. Judgment and Decision Making, 1, 1-12. [19] Huber, J., Kirchler, M., and Stockl, T. (2010). The hot hand belief and the gambler's fallacy in investment decisions under risk. Theory and Decision, 68, 445-462. [20] Xue, G., Lu, Z., Levin, I.P., and Bechara, A. (2011). An fMRI study of risk-taking following wins and losses: Implications for the gambler's fallacy. Human Brain Mapping, 32, 271-281. [21] Beach, L.R. and Swensson, R.G. (1967). Instructions about randomness and run dependency in two-choice learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 75, 279-282. [22] Fischbein, E. and Schnarch, D. (1997). The evolution with age of probabilistic, intuitively based misconceptions. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 28, 96-105. [23] Roney, C.J. and Trick, L.M. (2003). Grouping and gambling: A gestalt approach to understanding the gambler's fallacy. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 57, 69-75.
Gdel's incompleteness theorems
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Gdel's incompleteness theorems are two theorems of mathematical logic that establish inherent limitations of all but the most trivial axiomatic systems capable of doing arithmetic. The theorems, proven by Kurt Gdel in 1931, are important both in mathematical logic and in the philosophy of mathematics. The two results are widely, but not universally, interpreted as showing that Hilbert's program to find a complete and consistent set of axioms for all mathematics is impossible, giving a negative answer to Hilbert's second problem. The first incompleteness theorem states that no consistent system of axioms whose theorems can be listed by an "effective procedure" (e.g., a computer program, but it could be any sort of algorithm) is capable of proving all truths about the relations of the natural numbers (arithmetic). For any such system, there will always be statements about the natural numbers that are true, but that are unprovable within the system. The second incompleteness theorem, a corollary of the first, shows that such a system cannot demonstrate its own consistency.
Background
Because statements of a formal theory are written in symbolic form, it is possible to mechanically verify that a formal proof from a finite set of axioms is valid. This task, known as automatic proof verification, is closely related to automated theorem proving. The difference is that instead of constructing a new proof, the proof verifier simply checks that a provided formal proof (or, in some cases, instructions that can be followed to create a formal proof) is correct. This process is not merely hypothetical; systems such as Isabelle are used today to formalize proofs and then check their validity. Many theories of interest include an infinite set of axioms, however. To verify a formal proof when the set of axioms is infinite, it must be possible to determine whether a statement that is claimed to be an axiom is actually an axiom. This issue arises in first order theories of arithmetic, such as Peano arithmetic, because the principle of mathematical induction is expressed as an infinite set of axioms (an axiom schema). A formal theory is said to be effectively generated if its set of axioms is a recursively enumerable set. This means that there is a computer program that, in principle, could enumerate all the axioms of the theory without listing any statements that are not axioms. This is equivalent to the existence of a program that enumerates all the theorems of the theory without enumerating any statements that are not theorems. Examples of effectively generated theories with infinite sets of axioms include Peano arithmetic and ZermeloFraenkel set theory. In choosing a set of axioms, one goal is to be able to prove as many correct results as possible, without proving any incorrect results. A set of axioms is complete if, for any statement in the axioms' language, either that statement or its negation is provable from the axioms. A set of axioms is (simply) consistent if there is no statement such that both the statement and its negation are provable from the axioms. In the standard system of first-order logic, an inconsistent set of axioms will prove every statement in its language (this is sometimes called the principle of explosion), and is thus automatically complete. A set of axioms that is both complete and consistent, however, proves a maximal set of non-contradictory theorems. Gdel's incompleteness theorems show that in certain cases it is not possible to obtain an effectively generated, complete, consistent theory.
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First incompleteness theorem

Gdel's first incompleteness theorem states that: Any effectively generated theory capable of expressing elementary arithmetic cannot be both consistent and complete. In particular, for any consistent, effectively generated formal theory that proves certain basic arithmetic truths, there is an arithmetical statement that is true,[1] but not provable in the theory (Kleene 1967, p.250). The true but unprovable statement referred to by the theorem is often referred to as the Gdel sentence for the theory. The proof constructs a specific Gdel sentence for each effectively generated theory, but there are infinitely many statements in the language of the theory that share the property of being true but unprovable. For example, the conjunction of the Gdel sentence and any logically valid sentence will have this property. For each consistent formal theory T having the required small amount of number theory, the corresponding Gdel sentence G asserts: G cannot be proved within the theoryT. This interpretation of G leads to the following informal analysis. If G were provable under the axioms and rules of inference of T, then T would have a theorem, G, which effectively contradicts itself, and thus the theory T would be inconsistent. This means that if the theory T is consistent then G cannot be proved within it, and so the theory T is incomplete. Moreover, the claim G makes about its own unprovability is correct. In this sense G is not only unprovable but true, and provability-within-the-theory-T is not the same as truth. This informal analysis can be formalized to make a rigorous proof of the incompleteness theorem, as described in the section "Proof sketch for the first theorem" below. The formal proof reveals exactly the hypotheses required for the theory T in order for the self-contradictory nature of G to lead to a genuine contradiction. Each effectively generated theory has its own Gdel statement. It is possible to define a larger theory T that contains the whole of T, plus G as an additional axiom. This will not result in a complete theory, because Gdel's theorem will also apply to T, and thus T cannot be complete. In this case, G is indeed a theorem in T, because it is an axiom. Since G states only that it is not provable in T, no contradiction is presented by its provability in T. However, because the incompleteness theorem applies to T: there will be a new Gdel statement G for T, showing that T is also incomplete. G will differ from G in that G will refer to T, rather thanT. To prove the first incompleteness theorem, Gdel represented statements by numbers. Then the theory at hand, which is assumed to prove certain facts about numbers, also proves facts about its own statements, provided that it is effectively generated. Questions about the provability of statements are represented as questions about the properties of numbers, which would be decidable by the theory if it were complete. In these terms, the Gdel sentence states that no natural number exists with a certain, strange property. A number with this property would encode a proof of the inconsistency of the theory. If there were such a number then the theory would be inconsistent, contrary to the consistency hypothesis. So, under the assumption that the theory is consistent, there is no such number.
Meaning of the first incompleteness theorem

Gdel's first incompleteness theorem shows that any consistent effective formal system that includes enough of the theory of the natural numbers is incomplete: there are true statements expressible in its language that are unprovable. Thus no formal system (satisfying the hypotheses of the theorem) that aims to characterize the natural numbers can actually do so, as there will be true number-theoretical statements which that system cannot prove. This fact is sometimes thought to have severe consequences for the program of logicism proposed by Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell, which aimed to define the natural numbers in terms of logic (Hellman 1981, p.451468). Some (like Bob Hale and Crispin Wright) argue that it is not a problem for logicism because the incompleteness theorems apply equally to second order logic as they do to arithmetic. They argue that only those who believe that the natural numbers are to be defined in terms of first order logic have this problem. The existence of an incomplete formal system is, in itself, not particularly surprising. A system may be incomplete simply because not all the necessary axioms have been discovered. For example, Euclidean geometry without the
Gdel's incompleteness theorems parallel postulate is incomplete; it is not possible to prove or disprove the parallel postulate from the remaining axioms. Gdel's theorem shows that, in theories that include a small portion of number theory, a complete and consistent finite list of axioms can never be created, nor even an infinite list that can be enumerated by a computer program. Each time a new statement is added as an axiom, there are other true statements that still cannot be proved, even with the new axiom. If an axiom is ever added that makes the system complete, it does so at the cost of making the system inconsistent. There are complete and consistent list of axioms for arithmetic that cannot be enumerated by a computer program. For example, one might take all true statements about the natural numbers to be axioms (and no false statements), which gives the theory known as "true arithmetic". The difficulty is that there is no mechanical way to decide, given a statement about the natural numbers, whether it is an axiom of this theory, and thus there is no effective way to verify a formal proof in this theory. Many logicians believe that Gdel's incompleteness theorems struck a fatal blow to David Hilbert's second problem, which asked for a finitary consistency proof for mathematics. The second incompleteness theorem, in particular, is often viewed as making the problem impossible. Not all mathematicians agree with this analysis, however, and the status of Hilbert's second problem is not yet decided (see "Modern viewpoints on the status of the problem").
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Relation to the liar paradox

The liar paradox is the sentence "This sentence is false." An analysis of the liar sentence shows that it cannot be true (for then, as it asserts, it is false), nor can it be false (for then, it is true). A Gdel sentence G for a theory T makes a similar assertion to the liar sentence, but with truth replaced by provability: G says "G is not provable in the theory T." The analysis of the truth and provability of G is a formalized version of the analysis of the truth of the liar sentence. It is not possible to replace "not provable" with "false" in a Gdel sentence because the predicate "Q is the Gdel number of a false formula" cannot be represented as a formula of arithmetic. This result, known as Tarski's undefinability theorem, was discovered independently by Gdel (when he was working on the proof of the incompleteness theorem) and by Alfred Tarski.
Original statements
The first incompleteness theorem first appeared as "Theorem VI" in Gdel's 1931 paper On Formally Undecidable Propositions in Principia Mathematica and Related Systems I. The second incompleteness theorem appeared as "Theorem XI" in the same paper.
Extensions of Gdel's original result

Gdel demonstrated the incompleteness of the theory of Principia Mathematica, a particular theory of arithmetic, but a parallel demonstration could be given for any effective theory of a certain expressiveness. Gdel commented on this fact in the introduction to his paper, but restricted the proof to one system for concreteness. In modern statements of the theorem, it is common to state the effectiveness and expressiveness conditions as hypotheses for the incompleteness theorem, so that it is not limited to any particular formal theory. The terminology used to state these conditions was not yet developed in 1931 when Gdel published his results. Gdel's original statement and proof of the incompleteness theorem requires the assumption that the theory is not just consistent but -consistent. A theory is -consistent if it is not -inconsistent, and is -inconsistent if there is a predicate P such that for every specific natural number n the theory proves ~P(n), and yet the theory also proves that there exists a natural number n such that P(n). That is, the theory says that a number with property P exists while denying that it has any specific value. The -consistency of a theory implies its consistency, but consistency does
Gdel's incompleteness theorems not imply -consistency. J. Barkley Rosser (1936) strengthened the incompleteness theorem by finding a variation of the proof (Rosser's trick) that only requires the theory to be consistent, rather than -consistent. This is mostly of technical interest, since all true formal theories of arithmetic (theories whose axioms are all true statements about natural numbers) are -consistent, and thus Gdel's theorem as originally stated applies to them. The stronger version of the incompleteness theorem that only assumes consistency, rather than -consistency, is now commonly known as Gdel's incompleteness theorem and as the GdelRosser theorem.
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Second incompleteness theorem

Gdel's second incompleteness theorem can be stated as follows: For any formal effectively generated theory T including basic arithmetical truths and also certain truths about formal provability, if T includes a statement of its own consistency then T is inconsistent. This strengthens the first incompleteness theorem, because the statement constructed in the first incompleteness theorem does not directly express the consistency of the theory. The proof of the second incompleteness theorem is obtained by formalizing the proof of the first incompleteness theorem within the theory itself. A technical subtlety in the second incompleteness theorem is how to express the consistency of T as a formula in the language of T. There are many ways to do this, and not all of them lead to the same result. In particular, different formalizations of the claim that T is consistent may be inequivalent in T, and some may even be provable. For example, first-order Peano arithmetic (PA) can prove that the largest consistent subset of PA is consistent. But since PA is consistent, the largest consistent subset of PA is just PA, so in this sense PA "proves that it is consistent". What PA does not prove is that the largest consistent subset of PA is, in fact, the whole of PA. (The term "largest consistent subset of PA" is technically ambiguous, but what is meant here is the largest consistent initial segment of the axioms of PA ordered according to some criteria; for example, by "Gdel numbers", the numbers encoding the axioms as per the scheme used by Gdel mentioned above). For Peano arithmetic, or any familiar explicitly axiomatized theory T, it is possible to canonically define a formula Con(T) expressing the consistency of T; this formula expresses the property that "there does not exist a natural number coding a sequence of formulas, such that each formula is either of the axioms of T, a logical axiom, or an immediate consequence of preceding formulas according to the rules of inference of first-order logic, and such that the last formula is a contradiction". The formalization of Con(T) depends on two factors: formalizing the notion of a sentence being derivable from a set of sentences and formalizing the notion of being an axiom of T. Formalizing derivability can be done in canonical fashion: given an arithmetical formula A(x) defining a set of axioms, one can canonically form a predicate ProvA(P) which expresses that P is provable from the set of axioms defined by A(x). In addition, the standard proof of the second incompleteness theorem assumes that ProvA(P) satisfies that HilbertBernays provability conditions. Letting #(P) represent the Gdel number of a formula P, the derivability conditions say: 1. If T proves P, then T proves ProvA(#(P)). 2. T proves 1.; that is, T proves that if T proves P, then T proves ProvA(#(P)). In other words, T proves that ProvA(#(P)) implies ProvA(#(ProvA(#(P)))). 3. T proves that if T proves that (P Q) and T proves P then T proves Q. In other words, T proves that ProvA(#(P Q)) and ProvA(#(P)) imply ProvA(#(Q)).
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Implications for consistency proofs

Gdel's second incompleteness theorem also implies that a theory T1 satisfying the technical conditions outlined above cannot prove the consistency of any theory T2 which proves the consistency of T1. This is because such a theory T1 can prove that if T2 proves the consistency of T1, then T1 is in fact consistent. For the claim that T1 is consistent has form "for all numbers n, n has the decidable property of not being a code for a proof of contradiction in T1". If T1 were in fact inconsistent, then T2 would prove for some n that n is the code of a contradiction in T1. But if T2 also proved that T1 is consistent (that is, that there is no such n), then it would itself be inconsistent. This reasoning can be formalized in T1 to show that if T2 is consistent, then T1 is consistent. Since, by second incompleteness theorem, T1 does not prove its consistency, it cannot prove the consistency of T2 either. This corollary of the second incompleteness theorem shows that there is no hope of proving, for example, the consistency of Peano arithmetic using any finitistic means that can be formalized in a theory the consistency of which is provable in Peano arithmetic. For example, the theory of primitive recursive arithmetic (PRA), which is widely accepted as an accurate formalization of finitistic mathematics, is provably consistent in PA. Thus PRA cannot prove the consistency of PA. This fact is generally seen to imply that Hilbert's program, which aimed to justify the use of "ideal" (infinitistic) mathematical principles in the proofs of "real" (finitistic) mathematical statements by giving a finitistic proof that the ideal principles are consistent, cannot be carried out. The corollary also indicates the epistemological relevance of the second incompleteness theorem. It would actually provide no interesting information if a theory T proved its consistency. This is because inconsistent theories prove everything, including their consistency. Thus a consistency proof of T in T would give us no clue as to whether T really is consistent; no doubts about the consistency of T would be resolved by such a consistency proof. The interest in consistency proofs lies in the possibility of proving the consistency of a theory T in some theory T which is in some sense less doubtful than T itself, for example weaker than T. For many naturally occurring theories T and T, such as T = ZermeloFraenkel set theory and T = primitive recursive arithmetic, the consistency of T is provable in T, and thus T can't prove the consistency of T by the above corollary of the second incompleteness theorem. The second incompleteness theorem does not rule out consistency proofs altogether, only consistency proofs that could be formalized in the theory that is proved consistent. For example, Gerhard Gentzen proved the consistency of Peano arithmetic (PA) in a different theory which includes an axiom asserting that the ordinal called 0 is wellfounded; see Gentzen's consistency proof. Gentzen's theorem spurred the development of ordinal analysis in proof theory.
Examples of undecidable statements

There are two distinct senses of the word "undecidable" in mathematics and computer science. The first of these is the proof-theoretic sense used in relation to Gdel's theorems, that of a statement being neither provable nor refutable in a specified deductive system. The second sense, which will not be discussed here, is used in relation to computability theory and applies not to statements but to decision problems, which are countably infinite sets of questions each requiring a yes or no answer. Such a problem is said to be undecidable if there is no computable function that correctly answers every question in the problem set (see undecidable problem). Because of the two meanings of the word undecidable, the term independent is sometimes used instead of undecidable for the "neither provable nor refutable" sense. The usage of "independent" is also ambiguous, however. Some use it to mean just "not provable", leaving open whether an independent statement might be refuted. Undecidability of a statement in a particular deductive system does not, in and of itself, address the question of whether the truth value of the statement is well-defined, or whether it can be determined by other means. Undecidability only implies that the particular deductive system being considered does not prove the truth or falsity of the statement. Whether there exist so-called "absolutely undecidable" statements, whose truth value can never be known or is ill-specified, is a controversial point in the philosophy of mathematics.
Gdel's incompleteness theorems The combined work of Gdel and Paul Cohen has given two concrete examples of undecidable statements (in the first sense of the term): The continuum hypothesis can neither be proved nor refuted in ZFC (the standard axiomatization of set theory), and the axiom of choice can neither be proved nor refuted in ZF (which is all the ZFC axioms except the axiom of choice). These results do not require the incompleteness theorem. Gdel proved in 1940 that neither of these statements could be disproved in ZF or ZFC set theory. In the 1960s, Cohen proved that neither is provable from ZF, and the continuum hypothesis cannot be proven from ZFC. In 1973, the Whitehead problem in group theory was shown to be undecidable, in the first sense of the term, in standard set theory. In 1977, Paris and Harrington proved that the Paris-Harrington principle, a version of the Ramsey theorem, is undecidable in the first-order axiomatization of arithmetic called Peano arithmetic, but can be proven in the larger system of second-order arithmetic. Kirby and Paris later showed Goodstein's theorem, a statement about sequences of natural numbers somewhat simpler than the Paris-Harrington principle, to be undecidable in Peano arithmetic. Kruskal's tree theorem, which has applications in computer science, is also undecidable from Peano arithmetic but provable in set theory. In fact Kruskal's tree theorem (or its finite form) is undecidable in a much stronger system codifying the principles acceptable based on a philosophy of mathematics called predicativism. The related but more general graph minor theorem (2003) has consequences for computational complexity theory. Gregory Chaitin produced undecidable statements in algorithmic information theory and proved another incompleteness theorem in that setting. Chaitin's incompleteness theorem states that for any theory that can represent enough arithmetic, there is an upper bound c such that no specific number can be proven in that theory to have Kolmogorov complexity greater than c. While Gdel's theorem is related to the liar paradox, Chaitin's result is related to Berry's paradox.
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Limitations of Gdel's theorems

The conclusions of Gdel's theorems are only proven for the formal theories that satisfy the necessary hypotheses. Not all axiom systems satisfy these hypotheses, even when these systems have models that include the natural numbers as a subset. For example, there are first-order axiomatizations of Euclidean geometry, of real closed fields, and of arithmetic in which multiplication is not provably total; none of these meet the hypotheses of Gdel's theorems. The key fact is that these axiomatizations are not expressive enough to define the set of natural numbers or develop basic properties of the natural numbers. Regarding the third example, Dan E. Willard (Willard 2001) has studied many weak systems of arithmetic which do not satisfy the hypotheses of the second incompleteness theorem, and which are consistent and capable of proving their own consistency (see self-verifying theories). Gdel's theorems only apply to effectively generated (that is, recursively enumerable) theories. If all true statements about natural numbers are taken as axioms for a theory, then this theory is a consistent, complete extension of Peano arithmetic (called true arithmetic) for which none of Gdel's theorems apply in a meaningful way, because this theory is not recursively enumerable. The second incompleteness theorem only shows that the consistency of certain theories cannot be proved from the axioms of those theories themselves. It does not show that the consistency cannot be proved from other (consistent) axioms. For example, the consistency of the Peano arithmetic can be proved in ZermeloFraenkel set theory (ZFC), or in theories of arithmetic augmented with transfinite induction, as in Gentzen's consistency proof.
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Relationship with computability

The incompleteness theorem is closely related to several results about undecidable sets in recursion theory. Stephen Cole Kleene (1943) presented a proof of Gdel's incompleteness theorem using basic results of computability theory. One such result shows that the halting problem is undecidable: there is no computer program that can correctly determine, given a program P as input, whether P eventually halts when run with some given input. Kleene showed that the existence of a complete effective theory of arithmetic with certain consistency properties would force the halting problem to be decidable, a contradiction. This method of proof has also been presented by Shoenfield (1967, p.132); Charlesworth (1980); and Hopcroft and Ullman (1979). Franzn (2005, p.73) explains how Matiyasevich's solution to Hilbert's 10th problem can be used to obtain a proof to Gdel's first incompleteness theorem. Matiyasevich proved that there is no algorithm that, given a multivariate polynomial p(x1, x2,...,xk) with integer coefficients, determines whether there is an integer solution to the equation p = 0. Because polynomials with integer coefficients, and integers themselves, are directly expressible in the language of arithmetic, if a multivariate integer polynomial equation p = 0 does have a solution in the integers then any sufficiently strong theory of arithmetic T will prove this. Moreover, if the theory T is -consistent, then it will never prove that some polynomial equation has a solution when in fact there is no solution in the integers. Thus, if T were complete and -consistent, it would be possible to determine algorithmically whether a polynomial equation has a solution by merely enumerating proofs of T until either "p has a solution" or "p has no solution" is found, in contradiction to Matiyasevich's theorem. Moreover, for each consistent effectively generated theory T, it is possible to effectively generate a multivariate polynomial p over the integers such that the equation p = 0 has no solutions over the integers, but the lack of solutions cannot be proved in T (Davis 2006:416, Jones 1980). Smorynski (1977, p.842) shows how the existence of recursively inseparable sets can be used to prove the first incompleteness theorem. This proof is often extended to show that systems such as Peano arithmetic are essentially undecidable (see Kleene 1967, p.274). Chaitin's incompleteness theorem gives a different method of producing independent sentences, based on Kolmogorov complexity. Like the proof presented by Kleene that was mentioned above, Chaitin's theorem only applies to theories with the additional property that all their axioms are true in the standard model of the natural numbers. Gdel's incompleteness theorem is distinguished by its applicability to consistent theories that nonetheless include statements that are false in the standard model; these theories are known as -inconsistent.
Proof sketch for the first theorem

The proof by contradiction has three essential parts. To begin, choose a formal system that meets the proposed criteria: 1. Statements in the system can be represented by natural numbers (known as Gdel numbers). The significance of this is that properties of statementssuch as their truth and falsehoodwill be equivalent to determining whether their Gdel numbers have certain properties, and that properties of the statements can therefore be demonstrated by examining their Gdel numbers. This part culminates in the construction of a formula expressing the idea that "statement S is provable in the system" (which can be applied to any statement "S" in the system). 2. In the formal system it is possible to construct a number whose matching statement, when interpreted, is self-referential and essentially says that it (i.e. the statement itself) is unprovable. This is done using a technique called "diagonalization" (so-called because of its origins as Cantor's diagonal argument). 3. Within the formal system this statement permits a demonstration that it is neither provable nor disprovable in the system, and therefore the system cannot in fact be -consistent. Hence the original assumption that the proposed system met the criteria is false.
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Arithmetization of syntax
The main problem in fleshing out the proof described above is that it seems at first that to construct a statement p that is equivalent to "p cannot be proved", p would somehow have to contain a reference to p, which could easily give rise to an infinite regress. Gdel's ingenious technique is to show that statements can be matched with numbers (often called the arithmetization of syntax) in such a way that "proving a statement" can be replaced with "testing whether a number has a given property". This allows a self-referential formula to be constructed in a way that avoids any infinite regress of definitions. The same technique was later used by Alan Turing in his work on the Entscheidungsproblem. In simple terms, a method can be devised so that every formula or statement that can be formulated in the system gets a unique number, called its Gdel number, in such a way that it is possible to mechanically convert back and forth between formulas and Gdel numbers. The numbers involved might be very long indeed (in terms of number of digits), but this is not a barrier; all that matters is that such numbers can be constructed. A simple example is the way in which English is stored as a sequence of numbers in computers using ASCII or Unicode: The word HELLO is represented by 72-69-76-76-79 using decimal ASCII, ie the number 7269767679. The logical statement x=y => y=x is represented by 120-061-121-032-061-062-032-121-061-120 using octal ASCII, ie the number 120061121032061062032121061120. In principle, proving a statement true or false can be shown to be equivalent to proving that the number matching the statement does or doesn't have a given property. Because the formal system is strong enough to support reasoning about numbers in general, it can support reasoning about numbers which represent formulae and statements as well. Crucially, because the system can support reasoning about properties of numbers, the results are equivalent to reasoning about provability of their equivalent statements.
Construction of a statement about "provability"

Having shown that in principle the system can indirectly make statements about provability, by analyzing properties of those numbers representing statements it is now possible to show how to create a statement that actually does this. A formula F(x) that contains exactly one free variable x is called a statement form or class-sign. As soon as x is replaced by a specific number, the statement form turns into a bona fide statement, and it is then either provable in the system, or not. For certain formulas one can show that for every natural number n, F(n) is true if and only if it can be proven (the precise requirement in the original proof is weaker, but for the proof sketch this will suffice). In particular, this is true for every specific arithmetic operation between a finite number of natural numbers, such as "23=6". Statement forms themselves are not statements and therefore cannot be proved or disproved. But every statement form F(x) can be assigned a Gdel number denoted by G(F). The choice of the free variable used in the form F(x) is not relevant to the assignment of the Gdel number G(F). Now comes the trick: The notion of provability itself can also be encoded by Gdel numbers, in the following way. Since a proof is a list of statements which obey certain rules, the Gdel number of a proof can be defined. Now, for every statement p, one may ask whether a number x is the Gdel number of its proof. The relation between the Gdel number of p and x, the potential Gdel number of its proof, is an arithmetical relation between two numbers. Therefore there is a statement form Bew(y) that uses this arithmetical relation to state that a Gdel number of a proof of y exists: Bew(y) = x ( y is the Gdel number of a formula and x is the Gdel number of a proof of the formula encoded by y). The name Bew is short for beweisbar, the German word for "provable"; this name was originally used by Gdel to denote the provability formula just described. Note that "Bew(y)" is merely an abbreviation that represents a particular, very long, formula in the original language of T; the string "Bew" itself is not claimed to be part of this
Gdel's incompleteness theorems language. An important feature of the formula Bew(y) is that if a statement p is provable in the system then Bew(G(p)) is also provable. This is because any proof of p would have a corresponding Gdel number, the existence of which causes Bew(G(p)) to be satisfied.
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Diagonalization
The next step in the proof is to obtain a statement that says it is unprovable. Although Gdel constructed this statement directly, the existence of at least one such statement follows from the diagonal lemma, which says that for any sufficiently strong formal system and any statement form F there is a statement p such that the system proves p F(G(p)). By letting F be the negation of Bew(x), p is obtained: p roughly states that its own Gdel number is the Gdel number of an unprovable formula. The statement p is not literally equal to ~Bew(G(p)); rather, p states that if a certain calculation is performed, the resulting Gdel number will be that of an unprovable statement. But when this calculation is performed, the resulting Gdel number turns out to be the Gdel number of p itself. This is similar to the following sentence in English: ", when preceded by itself in quotes, is unprovable.", when preceded by itself in quotes, is unprovable. This sentence does not directly refer to itself, but when the stated transformation is made the original sentence is obtained as a result, and thus this sentence asserts its own unprovability. The proof of the diagonal lemma employs a similar method.
Proof of independence
Now assume that the formal system is -consistent. Let p be the statement obtained in the previous section. If p were provable, then Bew(G(p)) would be provable, as argued above. But p asserts the negation of Bew(G(p)). Thus the system would be inconsistent, proving both a statement and its negation. This contradiction shows that p cannot be provable. If the negation of p were provable, then Bew(G(p)) would be provable (because p was constructed to be equivalent to the negation of Bew(G(p))). However, for each specific number x, x cannot be the Gdel number of the proof of p, because p is not provable (from the previous paragraph). Thus on one hand the system supports construction of a number with a certain property (that it is the Gdel number of the proof of p), but on the other hand, for every specific number x, it can be proved that the number does not have this property. This is impossible in an -consistent system. Thus the negation of p is not provable. Thus the statement p is undecidable: it can neither be proved nor disproved within the chosen system. So the chosen system is either inconsistent or incomplete. This logic can be applied to any formal system meeting the criteria. The conclusion is that all formal systems meeting the criteria are either inconsistent or incomplete. It should be noted that p is not provable (and thus true) in every consistent system. The assumption of -consistency is only required for the negation of p to be not provable. So: In an -consistent formal system, neither p nor its negation can be proved, and so p is undecidable. In a consistent formal system either the same situation occurs, or the negation of p can be proved; In the later case, a statement ("not p") is false but provable. Note that if one tries to fix this by "adding the missing axioms" to avoid the undecidability of the system, then one has to add either p or "not p" as axioms. But this then creates a new formal system2 (old system + p), to which exactly the same process can be applied, creating a new statement form Bew2(x) for this new system. When the diagonal lemma is applied to this new form Bew2, a new statement p2 is obtained; this statement will be different from the previous one, and this new statement will be undecidable in the new system if it is -consistent, thus showing that system2 is equally inconsistent. So adding extra axioms cannot fix the problem.
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Proof via Berry's paradox

George Boolos (1989) sketches an alternative proof of the first incompleteness theorem that uses Berry's paradox rather than the liar paradox to construct a true but unprovable formula. A similar proof method was independently discovered by Saul Kripke (Boolos 1998, p.383). Boolos's proof proceeds by constructing, for any computably enumerable set S of true sentences of arithmetic, another sentence which is true but not contained in S. This gives the first incompleteness theorem as a corollary. According to Boolos, this proof is interesting because it provides a "different sort of reason" for the incompleteness of effective, consistent theories of arithmetic (Boolos 1998, p.388).
Formalized proofs
Formalized proofs of versions of the incompleteness theorem have been developed by Natarajan Shankar in 1986 using Nqthm (Shankar 1994) and by Russell O'Connor in 2003 using Coq (O'Connor 2005).
Proof sketch for the second theorem

The main difficulty in proving the second incompleteness theorem is to show that various facts about provability used in the proof of the first incompleteness theorem can be formalized within the system using a formal predicate for provability. Once this is done, the second incompleteness theorem follows by formalizing the entire proof of the first incompleteness theorem within the system itself. Let p stand for the undecidable sentence constructed above, and assume that the consistency of the system can be proven from within the system itself. The demonstration above shows that if the system is consistent, then p is not provable. The proof of this implication can be formalized within the system, and therefore the statement "p is not provable", or "not P(p)" can be proven in the system. But this last statement is equivalent to p itself (and this equivalence can be proven in the system), so p can be proven in the system. This contradiction shows that the system must be inconsistent.
Discussion and implications

The incompleteness results affect the philosophy of mathematics, particularly versions of formalism, which use a single system formal logic to define their principles. One can paraphrase the first theorem as saying the following: An all-encompassing axiomatic system can never be found that is able to prove all mathematical truths, but no falsehoods. On the other hand, from a strict formalist perspective this paraphrase would be considered meaningless because it presupposes that mathematical "truth" and "falsehood" are well-defined in an absolute sense, rather than relative to each formal system. The following rephrasing of the second theorem is even more unsettling to the foundations of mathematics: If an axiomatic system can be proven to be consistent from within itself, then it is inconsistent. Therefore, to establish the consistency of a system S, one needs to use some other more powerful system T, but a proof in T is not completely convincing unless T's consistency has already been established without using S. Theories such as Peano arithmetic, for which any computably enumerable consistent extension is incomplete, are called essentially undecidable or essentially incomplete.
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Minds and machines

Authors including J. R. Lucas have debated what, if anything, Gdel's incompleteness theorems imply about human intelligence. Much of the debate centers on whether the human mind is equivalent to a Turing machine, or by the ChurchTuring thesis, any finite machine at all. If it is, and if the machine is consistent, then Gdel's incompleteness theorems would apply to it. Hilary Putnam (1960) suggested that while Gdel's theorems cannot be applied to humans, since they make mistakes and are therefore inconsistent, it may be applied to the human faculty of science or mathematics in general. Assuming that it is consistent, either its consistency cannot be proved or it cannot be represented by a Turing machine. Avi Wigderson (2010) has proposed that the concept of mathematical "knowability" should be based on computational complexity rather than logical decidability. He writes that "when knowability is interpreted by modern standards, namely via computational complexity, the Gdel phenomena are very much with us."
Paraconsistent logic
Although Gdel's theorems are usually studied in the context of classical logic, they also have a role in the study of paraconsistent logic and of inherently contradictory statements (dialetheia). Graham Priest (1984, 2006) argues that replacing the notion of formal proof in Gdel's theorem with the usual notion of informal proof can be used to show that naive mathematics is inconsistent, and uses this as evidence for dialetheism. The cause of this inconsistency is the inclusion of a truth predicate for a theory within the language of the theory (Priest 2006:47). Stewart Shapiro (2002) gives a more mixed appraisal of the applications of Gdel's theorems to dialetheism. Carl Hewitt (2008) has proposed that (inconsistent) paraconsistent logics that prove their own Gdel sentences may have applications in software engineering.
Appeals to the incompleteness theorems in other fields

Appeals and analogies are sometimes made to the incompleteness theorems in support of arguments that go beyond mathematics and logic. Several authors have commented negatively on such extensions and interpretations, including Torkel Franzn (2005); Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont (1999); and Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom (2006). Bricmont and Stangroom (2006, p.10), for example, quote from Rebecca Goldstein's comments on the disparity between Gdel's avowed Platonism and the anti-realist uses to which his ideas are sometimes put. Sokal and Bricmont (1999, p.187) criticize Rgis Debray's invocation of the theorem in the context of sociology; Debray has defended this use as metaphorical (ibid.).
The role of self-reference

Torkel Franzn (2005, p.46) observes: Gdel's proof of the first incompleteness theorem and Rosser's strengthened version have given many the impression that the theorem can only be proved by constructing self-referential statements [...] or even that only strange self-referential statements are known to be undecidable in elementary arithmetic. To counteract such impressions, we need only introduce a different kind of proof of the first incompleteness theorem. He then proposes the proofs based on Computability, or on information theory, as described earlier in this article, as examples of proofs that should "counteract such impressions".
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History
After Gdel published his proof of the completeness theorem as his doctoral thesis in 1929, he turned to a second problem for his habilitation. His original goal was to obtain a positive solution to Hilbert's second problem (Dawson 1997, p.63). At the time, theories of the natural numbers and real numbers similar to second-order arithmetic were known as "analysis", while theories of the natural numbers alone were known as "arithmetic". Gdel was not the only person working on the consistency problem. Ackermann had published a flawed consistency proof for analysis in 1925, in which he attempted to use the method of -substitution originally developed by Hilbert. Later that year, von Neumann was able to correct the proof for a theory of arithmetic without any axioms of induction. By 1928, Ackermann had communicated a modified proof to Bernays; this modified proof led Hilbert to announce his belief in 1929 that the consistency of arithmetic had been demonstrated and that a consistency proof of analysis would likely soon follow. After the publication of the incompleteness theorems showed that Ackermann's modified proof must be erroneous, von Neumann produced a concrete example showing that its main technique was unsound (Zach 2006, p.418, Zach 2003, p.33). In the course of his research, Gdel discovered that although a sentence which asserts its own falsehood leads to paradox, a sentence that asserts its own non-provability does not. In particular, Gdel was aware of the result now called Tarski's indefinability theorem, although he never published it. Gdel announced his first incompleteness theorem to Carnap, Feigel and Waismann on August 26, 1930; all four would attend a key conference in Knigsberg the following week.
Announcement
The 1930 Knigsberg conference was a joint meeting of three academic societies, with many of the key logicians of the time in attendance. Carnap, Heyting, and von Neumann delivered one-hour addresses on the mathematical philosophies of logicism, intuitionism, and formalism, respectively (Dawson 1996, p.69). The conference also included Hilbert's retirement address, as he was leaving his position at the University of Gttingen. Hilbert used the speech to argue his belief that all mathematical problems can be solved. He ended his address by saying, "For the mathematician there is no Ignorabimus, and, in my opinion, not at all for natural science either. ... The true reason why [no one] has succeeded in finding an unsolvable problem is, in my opinion, that there is no unsolvable problem. In contrast to the foolish Ignoramibus, our credo avers: We must know. We shall know!" This speech quickly became known as a summary of Hilbert's beliefs on mathematics (its final six words, "Wir mssen wissen. Wir werden wissen!", were used as Hilbert's epitaph in 1943). Although Gdel was likely in attendance for Hilbert's address, the two never met face to face (Dawson 1996, p.72). Gdel announced his first incompleteness theorem at a roundtable discussion session on the third day of the conference. The announcement drew little attention apart from that of von Neumann, who pulled Gdel aside for conversation. Later that year, working independently with knowledge of the first incompleteness theorem, von Neumann obtained a proof of the second incompleteness theorem, which he announced to Gdel in a letter dated November 20, 1930 (Dawson 1996, p.70). Gdel had independently obtained the second incompleteness theorem and included it in his submitted manuscript, which was received by Monatshefte fr Mathematik on November 17, 1930. Gdel's paper was published in the Monatshefte in 1931 under the title ber formal unentscheidbare Stze der Principia Mathematica und verwandter Systeme I (On Formally Undecidable Propositions in Principia Mathematica and Related Systems I). As the title implies, Gdel originally planned to publish a second part of the paper; it was never written.
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Generalization and acceptance

Gdel gave a series of lectures on his theorems at Princeton in 19331934 to an audience that included Church, Kleene, and Rosser. By this time, Gdel had grasped that the key property his theorems required is that the theory must be effective (at the time, the term "general recursive" was used). Rosser proved in 1936 that the hypothesis of -consistency, which was an integral part of Gdel's original proof, could be replaced by simple consistency, if the Gdel sentence was changed in an appropriate way. These developments left the incompleteness theorems in essentially their modern form. Gentzen published his consistency proof for first-order arithmetic in 1936. Hilbert accepted this proof as "finitary" although (as Gdel's theorem had already shown) it cannot be formalized within the system of arithmetic that is being proved consistent. The impact of the incompleteness theorems on Hilbert's program was quickly realized. Bernays included a full proof of the incompleteness theorems in the second volume of Grundlagen der Mathematik (1939), along with additional results of Ackermann on the -substitution method and Gentzen's consistency proof of arithmetic. This was the first full published proof of the second incompleteness theorem.
Criticism
In September 1931, Ernst Zermelo wrote Gdel to announce what he described as an "essential gap" in Gdels argument (Dawson:76). In October, Gdel replied with a 10-page letter (Dawson:76, Grattan-Guinness:512-513). But Zermelo did not relent and published his criticisms in print with a rather scathing paragraph on his young competitor (Grattan-Guinness:513). Gdel decided that to pursue the matter further was pointless, and Carnap agreed (Dawson:77). Much of Zermelo's subsequent work was related to logics stronger than first-order logic, with which he hoped to show both the consistency and categoricity of mathematical theories. Paul Finsler (1926) used a version of Richard's paradox to construct an expression that was false but unprovable in a particular, informal framework he had developed. Gdel was unaware of this paper when he proved the incompleteness theorems (Collected Works Vol. IV., p.9). Finsler wrote Gdel in 1931 to inform him about this paper, which Finsler felt had priority for an incompleteness theorem. Finsler's methods did not rely on formalized provability, and had only a superficial resemblance to Gdel's work (van Heijenoort 1967:328). Gdel read the paper but found it deeply flawed, and his response to Finsler laid out concerns about the lack of formalization (Dawson:89). Finsler continued to argue for his philosophy of mathematics, which eschewed formalization, for the remainder of his career. Wittgenstein and Gdel Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote several passages about the incompleteness theorems that were published posthumously in his 1953 Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics. Gdel was a member of the Vienna Circle during the period in which Wittgenstein's early ideal language philosophy and Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus dominated the circle's thinking. Writings in Gdel's Nachlass express the belief that Wittgenstein deliberately misread his ideas. Multiple commentators have read Wittgenstein as misunderstanding Gdel (Rodych 2003), although Juliet Floyd and Hilary Putnam (2000), as well as Graham Priest (2004) have provided textual readings arguing that most commentary misunderstands Wittgenstein. On their release, Bernays, Dummett, and Kreisel wrote separate reviews on Wittgenstein's remarks, all of which were extremely negative (Berto 2009:208). The unanimity of this criticism caused Wittgenstein's remarks on the incompleteness theorems to have little impact on the logic community. In 1972, Gdel, stated: "Has Wittgenstein lost his mind? Does he mean it seriously?" (Wang 1996:197) And wrote to Karl Menger that Wittgenstein's comments demonstrate a willful misunderstanding of the incompleteness theorems writing: "It is clear from the passages you cite that Wittgenstein did "not" understand [the first incompleteness theorem] (or pretended not to understand it). He interpreted it as a kind of logical paradox, while in fact is just
Gdel's incompleteness theorems the opposite, namely a mathematical theorem within an absolutely uncontroversial part of mathematics (finitary number theory or combinatorics)." (Wang 1996:197) Since the publication of Wittgenstein's Nachlass in 2000, a series of papers in philosophy have sought to evaluate whether the original criticism of Wittgenstein's remarks was justified. Floyd and Putnam (2000) argue that Wittgenstein had a more complete understanding of the incompleteness theorem than was previously assumed. They are particularly concerned with the interpretation of a Gdel sentence for an -inconsistent theory as actually saying "I am not provable", since the theory has no models in which the provability predicate corresponds to actual provability. Rodych (2003) argues that their interpretation of Wittgenstein is not historically justified, while Bays (2004) argues against Floyd and Putnam's philosophical analysis of the provability predicate. Berto (2009) explores the relationship between Wittgenstein's writing and theories of paraconsistent logic.
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Notes
[1] The word "true" is used disquotationally here: the Gdel sentence is true in this sense because it "asserts its own unprovability and it is indeed unprovable" (Smoryski 1977 p. 825; also see Franzn 2005 pp. 2833). It is also possible to read "GT is true" in the formal sense that primitive recursive arithmetic proves the implication Con(T)GT, where Con(T) is a canonical sentence asserting the consistency of T (Smoryski 1977 p. 840, Kikuchi and Tanaka 1994 p. 403)
References
Articles by Gdel
1931, ber formal unentscheidbare Stze der Principia Mathematica und verwandter Systeme, I. Monatshefte fr Mathematik und Physik 38: 173-98. 1931, ber formal unentscheidbare Stze der Principia Mathematica und verwandter Systeme, I. and On formally undecidable propositions of Principia Mathematica and related systems I in Solomon Feferman, ed., 1986. Kurt Gdel Collected works, Vol. I. Oxford University Press: 144-195. The original German with a facing English translation, preceded by a very illuminating introductory note by Kleene. Hirzel, Martin, 2000, On formally undecidable propositions of Principia Mathematica and related systems I. (http://www.research.ibm.com/people/h/hirzel/papers/canon00-goedel.pdf). A modern translation by Hirzel. 1951, Some basic theorems on the foundations of mathematics and their implications in Solomon Feferman, ed., 1995. Kurt Gdel Collected works, Vol. III. Oxford University Press: 304-23.
Translations, during his lifetime, of Gdels paper into English

None of the following agree in all translated words and in typography. The typography is a serious matter, because Gdel expressly wished to emphasize those metamathematical notions that had been defined in their usual sense before . . ."(van Heijenoort 1967:595). Three translations exist. Of the first John Dawson states that: The Meltzer translation was seriously deficient and received a devastating review in the Journal of Symbolic Logic; Gdel also complained about Braithwaites commentary (Dawson 1997:216). Fortunately, the Meltzer translation was soon supplanted by a better one prepared by Elliott Mendelson for Martin Daviss anthology The Undecidable . . . he found the translation not quite so good as he had expected . . . [but because of time constraints he] agreed to its publication (ibid). (In a footnote Dawson states that he would regret his compliance, for the published volume was marred throughout by sloppy typography and numerous misprints (ibid)). Dawson states that The translation that Gdel favored was that by Jean van Heijenoort(ibid). For the serious student another version exists as a set of lecture notes recorded by Stephen Kleene and J. B. Rosser "during lectures given by Gdel at to the Institute for Advanced Study during the spring of 1934" (cf commentary by Davis 1965:39 and beginning on p.41); this version is titled "On Undecidable Propositions of Formal Mathematical Systems". In their order of publication:
Gdel's incompleteness theorems B. Meltzer (translation) and R. B. Braithwaite (Introduction), 1962. On Formally Undecidable Propositions of Principia Mathematica and Related Systems, Dover Publications, New York (Dover edition 1992), ISBN 0-486-66980-7 (pbk.) This contains a useful translation of Gdel's German abbreviations on pp.3334. As noted above, typography, translation and commentary is suspect. Unfortunately, this translation was reprinted with all its suspect content by Stephen Hawking editor, 2005. God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs That Changed History, Running Press, Philadelphia, ISBN 0-7624-1922-9. Gdels paper appears starting on p. 1097, with Hawkings commentary starting on p. 1089. Martin Davis editor, 1965. The Undecidable: Basic Papers on Undecidable Propositions, Unsolvable problems and Computable Functions, Raven Press, New York, no ISBN. Gdels paper begins on page 5, preceded by one page of commentary. Jean van Heijenoort editor, 1967, 3rd edition 1967. From Frege to Gdel: A Source Book in Mathematical Logic, 1979-1931, Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass., ISBN 0-674-32449-8 (pbk). van Heijenoort did the translation. He states that Professor Gdel approved the translation, which in many places was accommodated to his wishes.(p.595). Gdels paper begins on p.595; van Heijenoorts commentary begins on p.592. Martin Davis editor, 1965, ibid. "On Undecidable Propositions of Formal Mathematical Systems." A copy with Gdel's corrections of errata and Gdel's added notes begins on page 41, preceded by two pages of Davis's commentary. Until Davis included this in his volume this lecture existed only as mimeographed notes.
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Articles by others
George Boolos, 1989, "A New Proof of the Gdel Incompleteness Theorem", Notices of the American Mathematical Society v. 36, pp.388390 and p.676, reprinted in Boolos, 1998, Logic, Logic, and Logic, Harvard Univ. Press. ISBN 0-674-53766-1 Arthur Charlesworth, 1980, "A Proof of Godel's Theorem in Terms of Computer Programs," Mathematics Magazine, v. 54 n. 3, pp.109121. JStor (http://links.jstor.org/ sici?sici=0025-570X(198105)54:3<109:APOGTI>2.0.CO;2-1&size=LARGE&origin=JSTOR-enlargePage) Martin Davis, " The Incompleteness Theorem (http://www.ams.org/notices/200604/fea-davis.pdf)", in Notices of the AMS vol. 53 no. 4 (April 2006), p.414. Jean van Heijenoort, 1963. "Gdel's Theorem" in Edwards, Paul, ed., Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 3. Macmillan: 348-57. Geoffrey Hellman, How to Gdel a Frege-Russell: Gdel's Incompleteness Theorems and Logicism. Nos, Vol. 15, No. 4, Special Issue on Philosophy of Mathematics. (Nov., 1981), pp.451468. David Hilbert, 1900, " Mathematical Problems. (http://aleph0.clarku.edu/~djoyce/hilbert/problems. html#prob2)" English translation of a lecture delivered before the International Congress of Mathematicians at Paris, containing Hilbert's statement of his Second Problem. Kikuchi, Makoto; Tanaka, Kazuyuki (1994), "On formalization of model-theoretic proofs of Gdel's theorems", Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 35 (3): 403412, doi:10.1305/ndjfl/1040511346, ISSN0029-4527, MR1326122 Stephen Cole Kleene, 1943, "Recursive predicates and quantifiers," reprinted from Transactions of the American Mathematical Society, v. 53 n. 1, pp.4173 in Martin Davis 1965, The Undecidable (loc. cit.) pp.255287. John Barkley Rosser, 1936, "Extensions of some theorems of Gdel and Church," reprinted from the Journal of Symbolic Logic vol. 1 (1936) pp.8791, in Martin Davis 1965, The Undecidable (loc. cit.) pp.230235. John Barkley Rosser, 1939, "An Informal Exposition of proofs of Gdel's Theorem and Church's Theorem", Reprinted from the Journal of Symbolic Logic, vol. 4 (1939) pp.5360, in Martin Davis 1965, The Undecidable (loc. cit.) pp.223230 C. Smoryski, "The incompleteness theorems", in J. Barwise, ed., Handbook of Mathematical Logic, North-Holland 1982 ISBN 978-0-444-86388-1, pp.821866.
Gdel's incompleteness theorems Dan E. Willard (2001), " Self-Verifying Axiom Systems, the Incompleteness Theorem and Related Reflection Principles (http://projecteuclid.org/DPubS?service=UI&version=1.0&verb=Display&handle=euclid.jsl/ 1183746459)", Journal of Symbolic Logic, v. 66 n. 2, pp.536596. doi:10.2307/2695030 Zach, Richard (2003), "The Practice of Finitism: Epsilon Calculus and Consistency Proofs in Hilbert's Program" (http://www.ucalgary.ca/~rzach/static/conprf.pdf), Synthese (Berlin, New York: Springer-Verlag) 137 (1): 211259, doi:10.1023/A:1026247421383, ISSN0039-7857 Richard Zach, 2005, "Paper on the incompleteness theorems" in Grattan-Guinness, I., ed., Landmark Writings in Western Mathematics. Elsevier: 917-25.
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Books about the theorems

Francesco Berto. There's Something about Gdel: The Complete Guide to the Incompleteness Theorem John Wiley and Sons. 2010. Domeisen, Norbert, 1990. Logik der Antinomien. Bern: Peter Lang. 142 S. 1990. ISBN 3-261-04214-1. Zentralblatt MATH (http://www.zentralblatt-math.org/zbmath/search/?q=an:0724.03003) Torkel Franzn, 2005. Gdel's Theorem: An Incomplete Guide to its Use and Abuse. A.K. Peters. ISBN 1-56881-238-8 MR2007d:03001 Douglas Hofstadter, 1979. Gdel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. Vintage Books. ISBN 0-465-02685-0. 1999 reprint: ISBN 0-465-02656-7. MR80j:03009 Douglas Hofstadter, 2007. I Am a Strange Loop. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-03078-1. ISBN 0-465-03078-5. MR2008g:00004 Stanley Jaki, OSB, 2005. The drama of the quantities. Real View Books. (http://www.realviewbooks.com/) Per Lindstrm, 1997, Aspects of Incompleteness (http://projecteuclid.org/DPubS?service=UI&version=1.0& verb=Display&handle=euclid.lnl/1235416274), Lecture Notes in Logic v. 10. J.R. Lucas, FBA, 1970. The Freedom of the Will. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1970. Ernest Nagel, James Roy Newman, Douglas Hofstadter, 2002 (1958). Gdel's Proof, revised ed. ISBN 0-8147-5816-9. MR2002i:03001 Rudy Rucker, 1995 (1982). Infinity and the Mind: The Science and Philosophy of the Infinite. Princeton Univ. Press. MR84d:03012 Smith, Peter, 2007. An Introduction to Gdel's Theorems. (http://www.godelbook.net/) Cambridge University Press. MathSciNet (http://www.ams.org/mathscinet/search/publdoc.html?arg3=&co4=AND&co5=AND& co6=AND&co7=AND&dr=all&pg4=AUCN&pg5=AUCN&pg6=PC&pg7=ALLF&pg8=ET&s4=Smith, Peter&s5=&s6=&s7=&s8=All&yearRangeFirst=&yearRangeSecond=&yrop=eq&r=2&mx-pid=2384958) N. Shankar, 1994. Metamathematics, Machines and Gdel's Proof, Volume 38 of Cambridge tracts in theoretical computer science. ISBN 0-521-58533-3 Raymond Smullyan, 1991. Godel's Incompleteness Theorems. Oxford Univ. Press. , 1994. Diagonalization and Self-Reference. Oxford Univ. Press. MR96c:03001 Hao Wang, 1997. A Logical Journey: From Gdel to Philosophy. MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-23189-1 MR97m:01090
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Miscellaneous references
Francesco Berto. "The Gdel Paradox and Wittgenstein's Reasons" Philosophia Mathematica (III) 17. 2009. John W. Dawson, Jr., 1997. Logical Dilemmas: The Life and Work of Kurt Gdel, A.K. Peters, Wellesley Mass, ISBN 1-56881-256-6. Goldstein, Rebecca, 2005, Incompleteness: the Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gdel, W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-05169-2 Juliet Floyd and Hilary Putnam, 2000, "A Note on Wittgenstein's 'Notorious Paragraph' About the Gdel Theorem", Journal of Philosophy v. 97 n. 11, pp.624632. Carl Hewitt, 2008, "Large-scale Organizational Computing requires Unstratified Reflection and Strong Paraconsistency", Coordination, Organizations, Institutions, and Norms in Agent Systems III, Springer-Verlag. David Hilbert and Paul Bernays, Grundlagen der Mathematik, Springer-Verlag. John Hopcroft and Jeffrey Ullman 1979, Introduction to Automata theory, Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0-201-02988-X James P. Jones, Undecidable Diophantine Equations (http://www.ams.org/bull/1980-03-02/ S0273-0979-1980-14832-6/S0273-0979-1980-14832-6.pdf), Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society v. 3 n. 2, 1980, pp. 859862. Stephen Cole Kleene, 1967, Mathematical Logic. Reprinted by Dover, 2002. ISBN 0-486-42533-9 Russell O'Connor, 2005, " Essential Incompleteness of Arithmetic Verified by Coq (http://arxiv.org/abs/cs/ 0505034)", Lecture Notes in Computer Science v. 3603, pp.245260. Graham Priest, 2006, In Contradiction: A Study of the Transconsistent, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-926329-9 Graham Priest, 2004, Wittgenstein's Remarks on Gdel's Theorem in Max Klbel, ed., Wittgenstein's lasting significance, Psychology Press, pp. 207-227. Graham Priest, 1984, "Logic of Paradox Revisited", Journal of Philosophical Logic, v. 13,` n. 2, pp.153179 Hilary Putnam, 1960, Minds and Machines in Sidney Hook, ed., Dimensions of Mind: A Symposium. New York University Press. Reprinted in Anderson, A. R., ed., 1964. Minds and Machines. Prentice-Hall: 77. Rautenberg, Wolfgang (2010), A Concise Introduction to Mathematical Logic (http://www.springerlink.com/ content/978-1-4419-1220-6/) (3rd ed.), New York: Springer Science+Business Media, doi:10.1007/978-1-4419-1221-3, ISBN978-1-4419-1220-6. Victor Rodych, 2003, "Misunderstanding Gdel: New Arguments about Wittgenstein and New Remarks by Wittgenstein", Dialectica v. 57 n. 3, pp.279313. doi:10.1111/j.1746-8361.2003.tb00272.x Stewart Shapiro, 2002, "Incompleteness and Inconsistency", Mind, v. 111, pp 81732. doi:10.1093/mind/111.444.817 Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, 1999, Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science, Picador. ISBN 0-312-20407-8 Joseph R. Shoenfield (1967), Mathematical Logic. Reprinted by A.K. Peters for the Association of Symbolic Logic, 2001. ISBN 978-1-56881-135-2 Jeremy Stangroom and Ophelia Benson, Why Truth Matters, Continuum. ISBN 0-8264-9528-1 George Tourlakis, Lectures in Logic and Set Theory, Volume 1, Mathematical Logic, Cambridge University Press, 2003. ISBN 978-0-521-75373-9 Wigderson, Avi (2010), "The Gdel Phenomena in Mathematics: A Modern View" (http://www.math.ias.edu/ ~avi/BOOKS/Godel_Widgerson_Text.pdf), Kurt Gdel and the Foundations of Mathematics: Horizons of Truth, Cambridge University Press Hao Wang, 1996, A Logical Journey: From Gdel to Philosophy, The MIT Press, Cambridge MA, ISBN 0-262-23189-1. Richard Zach, 2006, "Hilbert's program then and now" (http://www.ucalgary.ca/~rzach/static/hptn.pdf), in Philosophy of Logic, Dale Jacquette (ed.), Handbook of the Philosophy of Science, v. 5., Elsevier, pp.411447.
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External links
Godel's Incompleteness Theorems (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00dshx3) on In Our Time at the BBC. ( listen now (http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00dshx3/ In_Our_Time_Godel's_Incompleteness_Theorems)) Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: " Kurt Gdel (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/goedel/)" -- by Juliette Kennedy. MacTutor biographies: Kurt Gdel. (http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Godel.html) Gerhard Gentzen. (http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Gentzen.html) What is Mathematics:Gdel's Theorem and Around (http://podnieks.id.lv/gt.html) by Karlis Podnieks. An online free book. World's shortest explanation of Gdel's theorem (http://blog.plover.com/math/Gdl-Smullyan.html) using a printing machine as an example. October 2011 RadioLab episode (http://www.radiolab.org/2011/oct/04/break-cycle/) about/including Gdel's Incompleteness theorem
Interesting number paradox

The interesting number paradox is a semi-humorous paradox that arises from attempting to classify natural numbers as "interesting" or "dull". The paradox states that all natural numbers are interesting. The "proof" is by contradiction: if there were uninteresting numbers, there would be a smallest uninteresting number but the smallest uninteresting number is itself interesting because it is the smallest uninteresting number, producing a contradiction.
Proof
Claim: There is no such thing as an uninteresting natural number. Proof by Contradiction: Assume that there is a non-empty set of natural numbers that are not interesting. Due to the well-ordered property of the natural numbers, there must be some smallest number in the set of uninteresting numbers. Being the smallest number of a set one might consider not interesting makes that number interesting after all: a contradiction.
Paradoxical nature
Attempting to classify all numbers this way leads to a paradox or an antinomy of definition. Any hypothetical partition of natural numbers into interesting and dull sets seems to fail. Since the definition of interesting is usually a subjective, intuitive notion of "interesting", it should be understood as a half-humorous application of self-reference in order to obtain a paradox. (The paradox is alleviated if "interesting" is instead defined objectively: for example, the smallest integer that does not, as of November 2011, appear in an entry of the On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences was 12407.[1]) Depending on the sources used for the list of interesting numbers, a variety of other numbers can be characterized as uninteresting in the same way.[2] However, as there are many significant results in mathematics that make use of self-reference (such as Gdel's Incompleteness Theorem), the paradox illustrates some of the power of self-reference, and thus touches on serious issues in many fields of study. This version of the paradox applies only to well-ordered sets with a natural order, such as the natural numbers; the argument would not apply to the real numbers.
Interesting number paradox One proposed resolution of the paradox asserts that only the first uninteresting number is made interesting by that fact. For example, if 39 and 41 were the first two uninteresting numbers, then 39 would become interesting as a result, but 41 would not since it is not the first uninteresting number.[3] However, this resolution is invalid, since the paradox is proved by contradiction: assuming that there is any uninteresting number, we arrive to the fact that that same number is interesting, hence no number can be uninteresting; its aim is not in particular to identify the interesting or uninteresting numbers, but to speculate whether any number can in fact exhibit such properties. An obvious weakness in the proof is that what qualifies as "interesting" is not defined. However, assuming this predicate is defined with a finite, definite list of "interesting properties of positive integers", and is defined self-referentially to include the smallest number not in such a list, a paradox arises. The Berry paradox is closely related, since it arises from a similar self-referential definition. As the paradox lies in the definition of "interesting", it applies only to persons with particular opinions on numbers: if one's view is that all numbers are boring, and one finds uninteresting the observation that 0 is the smallest boring number, there is no paradox.
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Notes
[1] Johnston, N. (June 12, 2009). "11630 is the First Uninteresting Number" (http:/ / www. nathanieljohnston. com/ index. php/ 2009/ 06/ 11630-is-the-first-uninteresting-number/ ). . Retrieved November 12, 2011. [2] Charles R Greathouse IV. "Uninteresting Numbers" (http:/ / math. crg4. com/ uninteresting. html). . Retrieved 2011-08-28. [3] Clark, M., 2007, Paradoxes from A to Z, Routledge, ISBN 0-521-46168-5.
Further reading
Gardner, Martin (1959). Mathematical Puzzles and Diversions. ISBN0226282538.
External links
Most Boring Day in History (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/uk/ April-11-1954-was-most-boring-day-in-history/articleshow/6994947.cms)
KleeneRosser paradox
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KleeneRosser paradox
In mathematics, the KleeneRosser paradox is a paradox that shows that certain systems of formal logic are inconsistent, in particular the version of Curry's combinatory logic introduced in 1930, and Church's original lambda calculus, introduced in 19321933, both originally intended as systems of formal logic. The paradox was exhibited by Stephen Kleene and J. B. Rosser in 1935.
The paradox
Kleene and Rosser were able to show that both systems are able to characterize and enumerate their provably total, definable number-theoretic functions, which enabled them to construct a term that essentially replicates the Richard paradox in formal language. Curry later managed to identify the crucial ingredients of the calculi that allowed the construction of this paradox, and used this to construct a much simpler paradox, now known as Curry's paradox.
References
Andrea Cantini, "The inconsistency of certain formal logics [1]", in the Paradoxes and Contemporary Logic entry of Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2007). Kleene, S. C. & Rosser, J. B. (1935). "The inconsistency of certain formal logics". Annals of Mathematics 36 (3): 630636. doi:10.2307/1968646.
References
[1] http:/ / plato. stanford. edu/ entries/ paradoxes-contemporary-logic/ #IncCerForLog
Lindley's paradox
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Lindley's paradox
Lindley's paradox is a counterintuitive situation in statistics in which the Bayesian and frequentist approaches to a hypothesis testing problem give opposite results for certain choices of the prior distribution. The problem of the disagreement between the two approaches was discussed in Harold Jeffreys' textbook[1]; it became known as Lindley's paradox after Dennis Lindley called the disagreement a paradox in a 1957 paper[2].

Consider a null hypothesis H0, the result of an experimentx, and a prior distribution that favors H0 weakly. Lindley's paradox occurs when 1. The result x is significant by a frequentist test, indicating sufficient evidence to reject H0, say, at the 5% level, and 2. The posterior probability of H0 given x is high, say, 95%, indicating strong evidence that H0 is in fact true. These results can happen at the same time when the prior distribution is the sum of a sharp peak at H0 with probability p and a broad distribution with the rest of the probability 1p. It is a result of the prior having a sharp feature at H0 and no sharp features anywhere else.
Numerical example
We can illustrate Lindley's paradox with a numerical example. Let's imagine a certain city where 49,581 boys and 48,870 girls have been born over a certain time period. The observed proportion ( ) of male births is thus 49,581/98,451 0.5036. We are interested in testing whether the true proportion ( ) is 0.5. That is, our null hypothesis is and the alternative is .
Bayesian approach
We have no reason to believe that the proportion of male births should be different from 0.5, so we assign prior probabilities and , the latter uniformly distributed between 0 and 1. The prior distribution is thus a mixture of point mass 0.5 and a uniform distribution births is a binomial variable with mean and variance , where . The number of male is the total number of births
(98,451 in this case). Because the sample size is very large, and the observed proportion is far from 0 and 1, we can use a normal approximation for the distribution of . Because of the large sample, we can approximate the variance as . The posterior probability is
So we find that there is not enough evidence to reject
Lindley's paradox
206
Frequentist approach
Using the normal approximation above, the upper tail probability is . Because we are performing a two-sided test (we would have been equally surprised if we had seen 48,870 boy births, i.e. ), the p-value is , which is lower than the significance level of 5%. Therefore, we reject . The two approachesthe Bayesian and the frequentistare in conflict, and this is the paradox.
Reconciling the Bayesian and Frequentist approaches

The apparent disagreement can be ascribed to the use of a prior with a very strong bias towards the case in the Bayesian analysis, and the lack of such an a priori bias in the Frequentist approach, rather than an actual paradox. If one uses a less informative prior and tests a hypothesis more similar to the Frequentist approach, the paradox disappears. If we calculate the distribution , using a uniform prior on (i.e., ), we get
If we use this distribution to check the probability that births produce more boys, i.e., In other words, it is very likely that the proportion of boys is larger than girls.
, we find
Neither analysis gives an estimate the the effect size, directly, but both could be used to determine, for instance, if the fraction of boy births is likely to be above some particular threshold.
Notes
[1] Jeffreys, Harold (1939). Theory of Probability. Oxford University Press. MR924. [2] Lindley, D.V. (1957). "A Statistical Paradox". Biometrika 44 (12): 187192. doi:10.1093/biomet/44.1-2.187.
References
Shafer, Glenn (1982). "Lindley's paradox". Journal of the American Statistical Association 77 (378): 325334. doi:10.2307/2287244. JSTOR2287244. MR664677.
Low birth weight paradox
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The low birth-weight paradox is an apparently paradoxical observation relating to the birth weights and mortality of children born to tobacco smoking mothers. Low birth-weight children born to smoking mothers have a lower infant mortality rate than the low birth weight children of non-smokers. The same is true of children born to poor parents, and of children born at high altitude; these are all examples of Simpson's paradox.
History
Traditionally, babies weighing less than a certain amount (which varies between countries) have been classified as having low birth weight. In a given population, low birth weight babies have a significantly higher mortality rate than others; thus, populations with a higher rate of low birth weights typically also have higher rates of child mortality than other populations. Based on prior research, the children of smoking mothers are more likely to be of low birth weight than children of non-smoking mothers. Thus, by extension the child mortality rate should be higher among children of smoking mothers. So it is a surprising real-world observation that low birth weight babies of smoking mothers have a lower child mortality than low birth weight babies of non-smokers.
Explanation
At first sight these findings seemed to suggest that, at least for some babies, having a smoking mother might be beneficial to one's health. However the paradox can be explained statistically by uncovering a lurking variable between smoking and the two key variables: birth weight and risk of mortality. Both are acted on independently when the mother of the child smokes birth weight is lowered and the risk of mortality increases. The birth weight distribution for children of smoking mothers is shifted to lower weights by their mothers' actions. Therefore, otherwise healthy babies (who would weigh more if it were not for the fact their mother smoked) are born underweight. They have a lower mortality rate than children who have other medical reasons why they are born underweight, regardless of the fact their mother does not smoke. In short, smoking may be harmful in that it contributes to low birth weight, but other causes of low birth weight are generally more harmful only with regards to their weight.
Evidence
If one corrects and adjusts for the confounding by smoking, via stratification or multivariable regression modelling to statistical control for smoking, then one finds that the association between birth weight and mortality may be attenuated towards the null. Nevertheless, most epidemiologic studies of birth weight and mortality have controlled for maternal smoking, and the adjusted results, although attenuated after adjusting for smoking, still indicated a significant association. Additional support for the hypothesis that birth weight and mortality can be acted on independently came from the analysis of birth data from Colorado: compared with the birth weight distribution in the US as a whole, the distribution curve in Colorado is also shifted to lower weights. The overall child mortality of Colorado children is the same as that for US children however, and if one corrects for the lower weights as above, one finds that babies of a given (corrected) weight are just as likely to die, whether they are from Colorado or not. The likely explanation here is that the higher altitude of Colorado affects birth weight, but not mortality.
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References
Wilcox, Allen (2001). "On the importance and the unimportance of birthweight [1]". International Journal of Epidemiology. 30:12331241. Wilcox, Allen (2006). "The Perils of Birth Weight A Lesson from Directed Acyclic Graphs [2]". American Journal of Epidemiology. 164(11):11211123.
External links
The Analysis of Birthweight [3], by Allen Wilcox
References
[1] http:/ / eb. niehs. nih. gov/ bwt/ V0M3QDQU. pdf [2] http:/ / aje. oxfordjournals. org/ cgi/ content/ abstract/ 164/ 11/ 1121 [3] http:/ / eb. niehs. nih. gov/ bwt/ index. htm
Missing square puzzle

The missing square puzzle is an optical illusion used in mathematics classes to help students reason about geometrical figures. It depicts two arrangements of shapes, each of which apparently forms a 135 right-angled triangle, but one of which has a 11 hole in it.
Solution
The key to the puzzle is the fact that neither of the 135 "triangles" is truly a triangle, because what would be the hypotenuse is bent. In other words, the hypotenuse does not maintain a consistent slope, even though it may appear that way to the human eye. A true 13 5 triangle cannot be created from the given component parts. The four figures (the yellow, red, blue and green shapes) total 32 units of area, but the triangles are 13 wide and 5 tall, so it seems, that the area should be units. But the blue triangle has a
ratio of 5:2 (=2.5:1), while the red triangle has the ratio 8:3 (2.667:1), and these are not the same ratio. So the apparent combined hypotenuse in each figure is actually bent. The amount of bending is around 1/28th of a unit (1.245364267), which is difficult to see on the diagram of this puzzle. Note the grid point where the red and blue hypotenuses mate, and compare it to the same point on the other figure; the edge is slightly over or under the mark. Overlaying the hypotenuses from both figures results in a very thin parallelogram with the area of exactly one grid square, the same area "missing" from the second figure. According to Martin Gardner,[1] the puzzle was invented by a New York City amateur magician Paul Curry in 1953. The principle of a dissection paradox has however been known since the 1860s.
Missing square puzzle The integer dimensions of the parts of the puzzle (2, 3, 5, 8, 13) are successive Fibonacci numbers. Many other geometric dissection puzzles are based on a few simple properties of the famous Fibonacci sequence.[2]
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Similar puzzles
A different puzzle of the same kind (depicted in the animation) uses four equal quadrilaterals and a small square, which form a larger square. When the quadrilaterals are rotated about their centers they fill the space of the small square, although the total area of the figure seems unchanged. The apparent paradox is explained by the fact that the side of the new large square is a little smaller than the original one. If is the side of the large square and is the angle between two opposing sides in each quadrilateral, then the quotient between the two areas is given by . For = 5, this is approximately 1.00765, which corresponds to a difference of about 0.8%.
References
[1] Martin, Gardner (1956). Mathematics Magic and Mystery. Dover. pp.139150. [2] Weisstein, Eric. "Cassini's Identity" (http:/ / mathworld. wolfram. com/ CassinisIdentity. html). .
External links
A printable Missing Square variant (http://www. archimedes-lab.org/workshop13skulls.html) with a video demonstration.
Sam Loyd's paradoxial dissection. In the "larger" rearrangement, the gaps between the figures have a combined unit square more area than their square gaps counterparts, creating an illusion that the figures there take up more space than those in the square figure. In the "smaller" rearrangement, the gaps take up one fewer unit squares than in the square.
Curry's Paradox: How Is It Possible? (http://www. cut-the-knot.org/Curriculum/Fallacies/CurryParadox. shtml) at cut-the-knot Triangles and Paradoxes (http://www.archimedes-lab. org/page3b.html) at archimedes-lab.org The Triangle Problem or What's Wrong with the Obvious Truth (http://www.marktaw.com/blog/
TheTriangleProblem.html) Jigsaw Paradox (http://www.mathematik.uni-bielefeld.de/~sillke/PUZZLES/jigsaw-paradox.html) The Eleven Holes Puzzle (http://www.slideshare.net/sualeh/the-eleven-holes-puzzle) Very nice animated Excel workbook of the Missing Square Puzzle (http://www.excelhero.com/blog/2010/09/ excel-optical-illusions-week-30.html) A video explaining Curry's Paradox and Area (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFw0878Ig-A& feature=related) by James Stanton
Paradoxes of set theory
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This article contains a discussion of paradoxes of set theory. As with most mathematical paradoxes, they generally reveal surprising and counter-intuitive mathematical results, rather than actual logical contradictions within modern axiomatic set theory.
Basics
Cardinal numbers
Set theory as conceived by Georg Cantor assumes the existence of infinite sets. As this assumption cannot be proved from first principles it has been introduced into axiomatic set theory by the axiom of infinity, which asserts the existence of the set N of natural numbers. Every infinite set which can be enumerated by natural numbers is the same size (cardinality) as N, and is said to be countable. Examples of countably infinite sets are the natural numbers, the even numbers, the prime numbers, and also all the rational numbers, i.e., the fractions. These sets have in common the cardinal number |N| = (aleph-nought), a number greater than every natural number. Cardinal numbers can be defined as follows. Define two sets to have the same size by: there exists a bijection between the two sets (a one-to-one correspondence between the elements). Then a cardinal number is, by definition, a class consisting of all sets of the same size. To have the same size is an equivalence relation, and the cardinal numbers are the equivalence classes.
Ordinal numbers
Besides the cardinality, which describes the size of a set, ordered sets also form a subject of set theory. The axiom of choice guarantees that every set can be well-ordered, which means that a total order can be imposed on its elements such that every nonempty subset has a first element with respect to that order. The order of a well-ordered set is described by an ordinal number. For instance, 3 is the ordinal number of the set {0, 1, 2} with the usual order 0 < 1 < 2; and is the ordinal number of the set of all natural numbers ordered the usual way. Neglecting the order, we are left with the cardinal number |N|=||= . Ordinal numbers can be defined with the same method used for cardinal numbers. Define two well-ordered sets to have the same order type by: there exists a bijection between the two sets respecting the order: smaller elements are mapped to smaller elements. Then an ordinal number is, by definition, a class consisting of all well-ordered sets of the same order type. To have the same order type is an equivalence relation on the class of well-ordered sets, and the ordinal numbers are the equivalence classes. Two sets of the same order type have the same cardinality. The converse is not true in general for infinite sets: it is possible to impose different well-orderings on the set of natural numbers that give rise to different ordinal numbers. There is a natural ordering on the ordinals, which is itself a well-ordering. Given any ordinal , one can consider the set of all ordinals less than . This set turns out to have ordinal number . This observation is used for a different way of introducing the ordinals, in which an ordinal is equated with the set of all smaller ordinals. This form of ordinal number is thus a canonical representative of the earlier form of equivalence class.
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Power sets
By forming all subsets of a set S (all possible choices of its elements), we obtain the power set P(S). Georg Cantor proved that the power set is always larger than the set, i.e., |P(S)| > |S|. A special case of Cantor's theorem proves that the set of all real numbers R cannot be enumerated by natural numbers. R is uncountable: |R| > |N|.
Paradoxes of the infinite set

Instead of relying on ambiguous descriptions such as "that which cannot be enlarged" or "increasing without bound", set theory provides definitions for the term infinite set to give an unambiguous meaning to phrases such as "the set of all natural numbers is infinite". Just as for finite sets, the theory makes further definitions which allow us to consistently compare two infinite sets as regards whether one set is "larger than", "smaller than", or "the same size as" the other. But not every intuition regarding the size of finite sets applies to the size of infinite sets, leading to various apparently paradoxical results regarding enumeration, size, measure and order.
Paradoxes of enumeration
Before set theory was introduced, the notion of the size of a set had been problematic. It had been discussed by Galileo Galilei and Bernard Bolzano, among others. Are there as many natural numbers as squares of natural numbers when measured by the method of enumeration? The answer is yes, because for every natural number n there is a square number n2, and likewise the other way around. The answer is no, because the squares are a proper subset of the naturals: every square is a natural number but there are natural numbers, like 2, which are not squares of natural numbers. By defining the notion of the size of a set in terms of its cardinality, the issue can be settled. Since there is a bijection between the two sets involved, this follows in fact directly from the definition of the cardinality of a set. See Hilbert's paradox of the Grand Hotel for more on paradoxes of enumeration.
Je le vois, mais je ne crois pas

"I see it but I can't believe it", Cantor wrote to Richard Dedekind, after proving that the set of points of a square has the same cardinality as that of the points on just a side of the square: the cardinality of the continuum. This demonstrates that the "size" of sets as defined by cardinality alone is not the only useful way of comparing sets. Measure theory provides a more nuanced theory of size that conforms to our intuition that length and area are incompatible measures of size.
Paradoxes of well-ordering
In 1904 Ernst Zermelo proved by means of the axiom of choice (which was introduced for this reason) that every set can be well-ordered. In 1963 Paul J. Cohen showed that using the axiom of choice is essential to well-ordering the real numbers; no weaker assumption suffices. However, the ability to well order any set allows certain constructions to be performed that have been called paradoxical. One example is the BanachTarski paradox, a theorem widely considered to be nonintuitive. It states that it is possible to decompose a ball of a fixed radius into a finite number of pieces and then move and reassemble those pieces by ordinary translations and rotations (with no scaling) to obtain two copies from the one original copy. The construction of these pieces requires the axiom of choice; the pieces are not simple regions of the ball, but complicated subsets.
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Paradoxes of the Supertask

In set theory, an infinite set is not considered to be created by some mathematical process such as "adding one element" that is then carried out "an infinite number of times". Instead, a particular infinite set (such as the set of all natural numbers) is said to already exist, "by fiat", as an assumption or an axiom. Given this infinite set, other infinite sets are then proven to exist as well, as a logical consequence. But it is still a natural philosophical question to contemplate some physical action that actually completes after an infinite number of discrete steps; and the interpretation of this question using set theory gives rise to the paradoxes of the supertask.
The diary of Tristram Shandy

Tristram Shandy, the hero of a novel by Laurence Sterne, writes his autobiography so conscientiously that it takes him one year to lay down the events of one day. If he is mortal he can never terminate; but if he lived forever then no part of his diary would remain unwritten, for to each day of his life a year devoted to that day's description would correspond.
The Ross-Littlewood paradox

An increased version of this type of paradox shifts the infinitely remote finish to a finite time. Fill a huge reservoir with balls enumerated by numbers 1 to 10 and take off ball number 1. Then add the balls enumerated by numbers 11 to 20 and take off number 2. Continue to add balls enumerated by numbers 10n - 9 to 10n and to remove ball number n for all natural numbers n = 3, 4, 5, .... Let the first transaction last half an hour, let the second transaction last quarter an hour, and so on, so that all transactions are finished after one hour. Obviously the set of balls in the reservoir increases without bound. Nevertheless, after one hour the reservoir is empty because for every ball the time of removal is known. The paradox is further increased by the significance of the removal sequence. If the balls are not removed in the sequence 1, 2, 3, ... but in the sequence 1, 11, 21, ... after one hour infinitely many balls populate the reservoir, although the same amount of material as before has been moved.
Paradoxes of proof and definability

For all its usefulness in resolving questions regarding infinite sets, naive set theory has some fatal flaws. In particular, it is prey to logical paradoxes such as those exposed by Russell's paradox. The discovery of these paradoxes revealed that not all sets which can be described in the language of naive set theory can actually be said to exist without creating a contradiction. The 20th century saw a resolution to these paradoxes in the development of the various axiomatizations of set theories such as ZFC and NBG in common use today. However, the gap between the very formalized and symbolic language of these theories and our typical informal use of mathematical language results in various paradoxical situations, as well as the philosophical question of exactly what it is that such formal systems actually propose to be talking about.
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Early paradoxes: the set of all sets

In 1897 the Italian mathematician Cesare Burali-Forti discovered that there is no set containing all ordinal numbers. As every ordinal number is defined by a set of smaller ordinal numbers, the well-ordered set of all ordinal numbers should define an ordinal number which does not belong to the set. On the other hand, must belong to the set of all ordinal numbers. Therefore, the set of all ordinal numbers cannot exist. By the end of the 19th century Cantor was aware of the non-existence of the set of all cardinal numbers and the set of all ordinal numbers. In letters to David Hilbert and Richard Dedekind he wrote about inconsistent sets, the elements of which cannot be thought of as being all together, and he used this result to prove that every consistent set has a cardinal number. After all this, the version of the "set of all sets" paradox conceived by Bertrand Russell in 1903 led to a serious crisis in set theory. Russell recognized that the statement x = x is true for every set, and thus the set of all sets is defined by {x | x = x}. In 1906 he constructed several paradox sets, the most famous of which is the set of all sets which do not contain themselves. Russell himself explained this abstract idea by means of some very concrete pictures. One example, known as the Barber paradox, states: The male barber who shaves all and only men who don't shave themselves has to shave himself only if he does not shave himself. There are close similarities between Russell's paradox in set theory and the GrellingNelson paradox, which demonstrates a paradox in natural language.
Paradoxes by change of language

Knig's paradox In 1905, the Hungarian mathematician Julius Knig published a paradox based on the fact that there are only countably many finite definitions. If we imagine the real numbers as a well-ordered set, those real numbers which can be finitely defined form a subset. Hence in this well-order there should be a first real number that is not finitely definable. This is paradoxical, because this real number has just been finitely defined by the last sentence. This leads to a contradiction in naive set theory. This paradox is avoided in axiomatic set theory. Although it is possible to represent a proposition about a set as a set, by a system of codes known as Gdel numbers, there is no formula in the language of set theory which holds exactly when a is a code for a finite description of a set and this description is a true description of the set x. This result is known as Tarski's indefinability theorem; it applies to a wide class of formal systems including all commonly studied axiomatizations of set theory. Richard's paradox In the same year the French mathematician Jules Richard used a variant of Cantor's diagonal method to obtain another contradiction in naive set theory. Consider the set A of all finite agglomerations of words. The set E of all finite definitions of real numbers is a subset of A. As A is countable, so is E. Let p be the nth decimal of the nth real number defined by the set E; we form a number N having zero for the integral part and p + 1 for the nth decimal if p is not equal either to 8 or 9, and unity if p is equal to 8 or 9. This number N is not defined by the set E because it differs from any finitely defined real number, namely from the nth number by the nth digit. But N has been defined by a finite number of words in this paragraph. It should therefore be in the set E. That is a contradiction. As with Knig's paradox, this paradox cannot be formalized in axiomatic set theory because it requires the ability to tell whether a description applies to a particular set (or, equivalently, to tell whether a formula is actually the definition of a single set).
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Paradox of Lwenheim and Skolem

Based upon work of the German mathematician Leopold Lwenheim (1915) the Norwegian logician Thoralf Skolem showed in 1922 that every consistent theory of first-order predicate calculus, such as set theory, has an at most countable model. However, Cantor's theorem proves that there are uncountable sets. The root of this seeming paradox is that the countability or noncountability of a set is not always absolute, but can depend on the model in which the cardinality is measured. It is possible for a set to be uncountable in one model of set theory but countable in a larger model (because the bijections that establish countability are in the larger model but not the smaller one).
References
G. Cantor: Gesammelte Abhandlungen mathematischen und philosophischen Inhalts, E. Zermelo (Ed.), Olms, Hildesheim 1966. H. Meschkowski, W. Nilson: Georg Cantor - Briefe, Springer, Berlin 1991. A. Fraenkel: Einleitung in die Mengenlehre, Springer, Berlin 1923. A. A. Fraenkel, A. Levy: Abstract Set Theory, North Holland, Amsterdam 1976. F. Hausdorff: Grundzge der Mengenlehre, Chelsea, New York 1965. B. Russell: The principles of mathematics I, Cambridge 1903. B. Russell: On some difficulties in the theory of transfinite numbers and order types, Proc. London Math. Soc. (2) 4 (1907) 29-53. P. J. Cohen: Set Theory and the Continuum Hypothesis, Benjamin, New York 1966. S. Wagon: The Banach-Tarski-Paradox, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1985. A. N. Whitehead, B. Russell: Principia Mathematica I, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge 1910, p.64. E. Zermelo: Neuer Beweis fr die Mglichkeit einer Wohlordnung, Math. Ann. 65 (1908) p.107-128.
External links
[1] [2] Definability paradoxes [3] by Timothy Gowers
References
[1] http:/ / www. hti. umich. edu/ cgi/ t/ text/ pageviewer-idx?c=umhistmath;cc=umhistmath;rgn=full%20text;idno=AAT3201. 0001. 001;didno=AAT3201. 0001. 001;view=pdf;seq=00000086 [2] http:/ / dz-srv1. sub. uni-goettingen. de/ sub/ digbib/ loader?ht=VIEW& did=D38183& p=125 [3] http:/ / www. dpmms. cam. ac. uk/ ~wtg10/ richardsparadox. html
Parrondo's paradox
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Parrondo's paradox
Parrondo's paradox, a paradox in game theory, has been described as: A losing strategy that wins. It is named after its creator, Spanish physicist Juan Parrondo, who discovered the paradox in 1996. A more explanatory description is: There exist pairs of games, each with a higher probability of losing than winning, for which it is possible to construct a winning strategy by playing the games alternately. Parrondo devised the paradox in connection with his analysis of the Brownian ratchet, a thought experiment about a machine that can purportedly extract energy from random heat motions popularized by physicist Richard Feynman.
Illustrative examples
The saw-tooth example
Consider an example in which there are two points A and B having the same altitude, as shown in Figure 1. In the first case, we have a flat profile connecting them. Here, if we leave some round marbles in the middle that move back and forth in a random fashion, they will roll around randomly but towards both ends with an equal probability. Now Figure 1 consider the second case where we have a saw-tooth-like region between them. Here also, the marbles will roll towards either ends with equal probability. Now if we tilt the whole profile towards the right, as shown in Figure 2, it is quite clear that both these cases will become biased towards B. Now consider the game in which we alternate the two profiles while judiciously choosing the time between alternating from one profile to the other. When we leave a few marbles on the first profile at point E, they distribute themselves on the plane showing preferential movements towards point B. However, if we apply the second profile when some of the marbles have crossed the point C, but none have crossed point D, we will end up having most marbles back at point E (where we Figure 2 started from initially) but some also in the valley towards point A given sufficient time for the marbles to roll to the valley. Then we again apply the first profile and repeat the steps (points C, D and E now shifted one step to refer to the final valley closest to A). If no marbles cross point C before the first marble crosses point D, we must apply the second profile shortly before the first marble crosses point D, to start over. It easily follows that eventually we will have marbles at point A, but none at point B. Hence for a problem defined with having marbles at point A being a win and having marbles at point B a loss, we clearly win by playing two losing games.
Parrondo's paradox
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The coin-tossing example

A second example of Parrondo's paradox is drawn from the field of gambling. Consider playing two games, Game A and Game B with the following rules. For convenience, define to be our capital at time t, immediately before we play a game. 1. Winning a game earns us $1 and losing requires us to surrender $1. It follows that step t and if we lose at step t. 2. In Game A, we toss a biased coin, Coin 1, with probability of winning clearly a losing game in the long run. 3. In Game B, we first determine if our capital is a multiple of some integer 2, with probability of winning probability of winning . The role of modulo . If if we win at , this is
. If it is, we toss a biased coin, Coin
. If it is not, we toss another biased coin, Coin 3, with provides the periodicity as in the ratchet
teeth. It is clear that by playing Game A, we will almost surely lose in the long run. Harmer and Abbott[1] show via simulation that if and Game B is an almost surely losing game as well. In fact, Game B is a Markov chain, and an analysis of its state transition matrix (again with M=3) shows that the steady state probability of using coin 2 is 0.3836, and that of using coin 3 is 0.6164.[2] As coin 2 is selected nearly 40% of the time, it has a disproportionate influence on the payoff from Game B, and results in it being a losing game. However, when these two losing games are played in some alternating sequence - e.g. two games of A followed by two games of B (AABBAABB...), the combination of the two games is, paradoxically, a winning game. Not all alternating sequences of A and B result in winning games. For example, one game of A followed by one game of B (ABABAB...) is a losing game, while one game of A followed by two games of B (ABBABB...) is a winning game. This coin-tossing example has become the canonical illustration of Parrondo's paradox two games, both losing when played individually, become a winning game when played in a particular alternating sequence. The apparent paradox has been explained using a number of sophisticated approaches, including Markov chains,[3] flashing ratchets,[4] Simulated Annealing[5] and information theory.[6] One way to explain the apparent paradox is as follows: While Game B is a losing game under the probability distribution that results for played individually ( modulo is the remainder when is divided by modulo when it is ), it can be a winning game
under other distributions, as there is at least one state in which its expectation is positive. As the distribution of outcomes of Game B depend on the player's capital, the two games cannot be independent. If they were, playing them in any sequence would lose as well. The role of now comes into sharp focus. It serves solely to induce a dependence between Games A and B, so that a player is more likely to enter states in which Game B has a positive expectation, allowing it to overcome the losses from Game A. With this understanding, the paradox resolves itself: The individual games are losing only under a distribution that differs from that which is actually encountered when playing the compound game. In summary, Parrondo's paradox is an example of how dependence can wreak havoc with probabilistic computations made under a naive assumption of independence. A more detailed exposition of this point, along with several related examples, can be found in Philips and Feldman.[7]
Application of Parrondo's paradox

Parrondo's paradox is used extensively in game theory, and its application in engineering, population dynamics, financial risk, etc., are also being looked into as demonstrated by the reading lists below. Parrondo's games are of little practical use such as for investing in stock markets[8] as the original games require the payoff from at least one of the interacting games to depend on the player's capital. However, the games need not be restricted to their original form and work continues in generalizing the phenomenon. Similarities to volatility pumping and the two-envelope problem[9] have been pointed out. Simple finance textbook models of security returns have been used to prove that
Parrondo's paradox individual investments with negative median long-term returns may be easily combined into diversified portfolios with positive median long-term returns.[10] Similarly, a model that is often used to illustrate optimal betting rules has been used to prove that splitting bets between multiple games can turn a negative median long-term return into a positive one. [11]
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Name
In the early literature on Parrondo's paradox, it was debated whether the word 'paradox' is an appropriate description given that the Parrondo effect can be understood in mathematical terms. The 'paradoxical' effect can be mathematically explained in terms of a convex linear combination. However, Derek Abbott, a leading Parrondo's paradox researcher provides the following answer regarding the use of the word 'paradox' in this context: Is Parrondo's paradox really a "paradox"? This question is sometimes asked by mathematicians, whereas physicists usually don't worry about such things. The first thing to point out is that "Parrondo's paradox" is just a name, just like the "Braess paradox" or "Simpson's paradox." Secondly, as is the case with most of these named paradoxes they are all really apparent paradoxes. People drop the word "apparent" in these cases as it is a mouthful, and it is obvious anyway. So no one claims these are paradoxes in the strict sense. In the wide sense, a paradox is simply something that is counterintuitive. Parrondo's games certainly are counterintuitiveat least until you have intensively studied them for a few months. The truth is we still keep finding new surprising things to delight us, as we research these games. I have had one mathematician complain that the games always were obvious to him and hence we should not use the word "paradox." He is either a genius or never really understood it in the first place. In either case, it is not worth arguing with people like that. Parrondo's paradox does not seem that paradoxical if one notes that it is actually a combination of three simple games: two of which have losing probabilities and one of which has a high probability of winning. To suggest that one can create a winning strategy with three such games does not seem counterintuitive.
Further reading
John Allen Paulos, A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market [12], Basic Books, 2004, ISBN 0-465-05481-1. Neil F. Johnson, Paul Jefferies, Pak Ming Hui, Financial Market Complexity [13], Oxford University Press, 2003, ISBN 0-19-852665-2. Ning Zhong and Jiming Liu, Intelligent Agent Technology: Research and Development, [14] World Scientific, 2001, ISBN 981-02-4706-0. Elka Korutcheva and Rodolfo Cuerno, Advances in Condensed Matter and Statistical Physics [15], Nova Publishers, 2004, ISBN 1-59033-899-5. Maria Carla Galavotti, Roberto Scazzieri, and Patrick Suppes, Reasoning, Rationality, and Probability [16], Center for the Study of Language and Information, 2008, ISBN 1-57586-557-2. Derek Abbott and Laszlo B. Kish, Unsolved Problems of Noise and Fluctuations [17], American Institute of Physics, 2000, ISBN 1-56396-826-6. Visarath In, Patrick Longhini, and Antonio Palacios, Applications of Nonlinear Dynamics: Model and Design of Complex Systems [18], Springer, 2009, ISBN 3-540-85631-5. Marc Moore, Constance van Eeden, Sorana Froda, and Christian Lger, Mathematical Statistics and Applications: Festschrift for Constance van Eeden [19], IMS, 2003, ISBN 0-940600-57-9. Ehrhard Behrends, Fnf Minuten Mathematik: 100 Beitrge der Mathematik-Kolumne der Zeitung Die Welt [20], Vieweg+Teubner Verlag, 2006, ISBN 3-8348-0082-1. Lutz Schimansky-Geier, Noise in Complex Systems and Stochastic Dynamics [21], SPIE, 2003, ISBN 0-8194-4974-1.
Parrondo's paradox Susan Shannon, Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science [22], Nova Science Publishers, 2005, ISBN 1-59454-411-5. Eric W. Weisstein, CRC Concise Encyclopedia of Mathematics [23], CRC Press, 2003, ISBN 1-58488-347-2. David Reguera, Jos M. G. Vilar, and Jos-Miguel Rub, Statistical Mechanics of Biocomplexity [24], Springer, 1999, ISBN 3-540-66245-6. Sergey M. Bezrukov, Unsolved Problems of Noise and Fluctuations [25], Springer, 2003, ISBN 0-7354-0127-6. Julin Chela Flores, Tobias C. Owen, and F. Raulin, First Steps in the Origin of Life in the Universe [26], Springer, 2001, ISBN 1-4020-0077-4. Tnu Puu and Irina Sushko, Business Cycle Dynamics: Models and Tools [27], Springer, 2006, ISBN 3-540-32167-5. Andrzej S. Nowak and Krzysztof Szajowski, Advances in Dynamic Games: Applications to Economics, Finance, Optimization, and Stochastic Control [28], Birkhuser, 2005, ISBN 0-8176-4362-1. Cristel Chandre, Xavier Leoncini, and George M. Zaslavsky, Chaos, Complexity and Transport: Theory and Applications [29], World Scientific, 2008, ISBN 981-281-879-0. Richard A. Epstein, The Theory of Gambling and Statistical Logic (Second edition), Academic Press, 2009, ISBN 0-12-374940-9. Clifford A. Pickover, The Math Book, [30] Sterling, 2009, ISBN 1-4027-5796-4.
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References
[1] [2] [3] [4] G. P. Harmer and D. Abbott, "Losing strategies can win by Parrondo's paradox", Nature 402 (1999), 864 D. Minor, "Parrondo's Paradox - Hope for Losers!", The College Mathematics Journal 34(1) (2003) 15-20 G. P. Harmer and D. Abbott, "Parrondo's paradox", Statistical Science 14 (1999) 206-213 G. P. Harmer, D. Abbott, P. G. Taylor, and J. M. R. Parrondo, in Proc. 2nd Int. Conf. Unsolved Problems of Noise and Fluctuations, D. Abbott, and L. B. Kish, eds., American Institute of Physics, 2000 [5] G. P. Harmer, D. Abbott, and P. G. Taylor, The Paradox of Parrondo's games, Proc. Royal Society of London A 456 (2000), 1-13 [6] G. P. Harmer, D. Abbott, P. G. Taylor, C. E. M. Pearce and J. M. R. Parrondo, Information entropy and Parrondo's discrete-time ratchet, in Proc. Stochastic and Chaotic Dynamics in the Lakes, Ambleside, U.K., P. V. E. McClintock, ed., American Institute of Physics, 2000 [7] Thomas K. Philips and Andrew B. Feldman, Parrondo's Paradox is not Paradoxical (http:/ / papers. ssrn. com/ sol3/ papers. cfm?abstract_id=581521), Social Science Research Network (SSRN) Working Papers, August 2004 [8] R. Iyengar and R. Kohli, "Why Parrondo's paradox is irrelevant for utility theory, stock buying, and the emergence of life," Complexity, 9(1), pp. 23-27, 2004 [9] Winning While Losing: New Strategy Solves'Two-Envelope' Paradox (http:/ / www. physorg. com/ pdf169811689. pdf) at Physorg.com [10] M. Stutzer, The Paradox of Diversification, The Journal of Investing, Vol. 19, No.1, 2010. [11] M. Stutzer, "A Simple Parrondo Paradox", Mathematical Scientist, V.35, 2010. [12] http:/ / books. google. com. au/ books?id=FUGI7KDTkTUC [13] http:/ / books. google. com. au/ books?id=8jfV6nntNPkC& pg=PA74& dq=parrondo* [14] http:/ / books. google. com. au/ books?id=eZ6YCz5NamsC& pg=PA150 [15] http:/ / books. google. com. au/ books?id=lIoZeb_domwC& pg=PA103 [16] http:/ / books. google. com. au/ books?id=ZuMQAQAAIAAJ& q=parrondo* [17] http:/ / books. google. com. au/ books?id=ePoaAQAAIAAJ [18] http:/ / books. google. com. au/ books?id=FidKZcUqdIQC& pg=PA307 [19] http:/ / books. google. com. au/ books?id=SJsDHpgsVgsC& pg=PA185 [20] http:/ / books. google. com. au/ books?id=liNP2CpsU8EC& pg=PA10 [21] http:/ / books. google. com. au/ books?id=WgJTAAAAMAAJ& q=parrondo* [22] http:/ / books. google. com. au/ books?id=PGtGAAAAYAAJ& q=parrondo* [23] http:/ / books. google. com. au/ books?id=UDk8QARabpwC& pg=PA2152& dq=parrondo* [24] http:/ / books. google. com. au/ books?id=0oMp60wubKIC& pg=PA95 [25] http:/ / books. google. com. au/ books?id=soGS-YcwvxsC& pg=PA82 [26] http:/ / books. google. com. au/ books?id=q8JwN_1p78UC& pg=PA17& dq=parrondo* [27] http:/ / books. google. com. au/ books?id=cTfwjzihuiIC& pg=PA148& dq=parrondo* [28] http:/ / books. google. com. au/ books?id=l5W20mVBeT4C& pg=PA650& dq=parrondo* [29] http:/ / books. google. com. au/ books?id=md092lhGSOQC& pg=PA107& dq=parrondo* [30] http:/ / sprott. physics. wisc. edu/ pickover/ math-book. html
Parrondo's paradox
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External links
J. M. R. Parrondo, Parrondo's paradoxical games (http://seneca.fis.ucm.es/parr/GAMES/index.htm) Google Scholar profiling of Parrondo's paradox (http://scholar.google.com.au/citations?hl=en& user=aeNdbrUAAAAJ) Nature news article on Parrondo's paradox (http://www.nature.com/news/1999/991223/full/news991223-13. html) Alternate game play ratchets up winnings: It's the law (http://www.eleceng.adelaide.edu.au/Groups/ parrondo/articles/sandiego.html) Official Parrondo's paradox page (http://www.eleceng.adelaide.edu.au/Groups/parrondo) Parrondo's Paradox - A Simulation (http://www.cut-the-knot.org/ctk/Parrondo.shtml) The Wizard of Odds on Parrondo's Paradox (http://wizardofodds.com/askthewizard/149) Parrondo's Paradox at Wolfram (http://mathworld.wolfram.com/ParrondosParadox.html) Online Parrondo simulator (http://hampshire.edu/lspector/parrondo/parrondo.html) Parrondo's paradox at Maplesoft (http://www.maplesoft.com/applications/view.aspx?SID=1761) Donald Catlin on Parrondo's paradox (http://catlin.casinocitytimes.com/article/parrondos-paradox-46851) Parrondo's paradox and poker (http://emergentfool.com/2008/02/16/parrondos-paradox-and-poker/) Parrondo's paradox and epistemology (http://www.fil.lu.se/HommageaWlodek/site/papper/ StjernbergFredrik.pdf) A Parrondo's paradox resource (http://pagesperso-orange.fr/jean-paul.davalan/proba/parr/index-en.html) Optimal adaptive strategies and Parrondo (http://www.molgen.mpg.de/~rahmann/parrondo/parrondo.shtml) Behrends on Parrondo (http://www.math.uni-potsdam.de/~roelly/WorkshopCDFAPotsdam09/Behrends.pdf) God doesn't shoot craps (http://www.goddoesntshootcraps.com/paradox.html) Parrondo's paradox in chemistry (http://www.fasebj.org/cgi/content/meeting_abstract/23/ 1_MeetingAbstracts/514.1) Parrondo's paradox in genetics (http://www.genetics.org/cgi/content/full/176/3/1923) Parrondo effect in quantum mechanics (http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/els/03784371/2003/ 00000324/00000001/art01909) Financial diversification and Parrondo (http://leeds.colorado.edu/uploadedFiles/Centers_of_Excellence/ Burridge_Center/Working_Papers/ParadoxOfDiversification.pdf)
Russell's paradox
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Russell's paradox
In the foundations of mathematics, Russell's paradox (also known as Russell's antinomy), discovered by Bertrand Russell in 1901, showed that the naive set theory created by Georg Cantor leads to a contradiction. The same paradox had been discovered a year before by Ernst Zermelo but he did not publish the idea, which remained known only to Hilbert, Husserl and other members of the University of Gttingen. According to naive set theory, any definable collection is a set. Let R be the set of all sets that are not members of themselves. If R qualifies as a member of itself, it would contradict its own definition as a set containing all sets that are not members of themselves. On the other hand, if such a set is not a member of itself, it would qualify as a member of itself by the same definition. This contradiction is Russell's paradox. Symbolically:
In 1908, two ways of avoiding the paradox were proposed, Russell's type theory and the Zermelo set theory, the first constructed axiomatic set theory. Zermelo's axioms went well beyond Frege's axioms of extensionality and unlimited set abstraction, and evolved into the now-canonical ZermeloFraenkel set theory (ZF).[1]
Informal presentation
Let us call a set "abnormal" if it is a member of itself, and "normal" otherwise. For example, take the set of all squares. That set is not itself a square, and therefore is not a member of the set of all squares. So it is "normal". On the other hand, if we take the complementary set that contains all non-squares, that set is itself not a square and so should be one of its own members. It is "abnormal". Now we consider the set of all normal sets, R. Attempting to determine whether R is normal or abnormal is impossible: If R were a normal set, it would be contained in the set of normal sets (itself), and therefore be abnormal; and if it were abnormal, it would not be contained in the set of all normal sets (itself), and therefore be normal. This leads to the conclusion that R is neither normal nor abnormal: Russell's paradox.
Formal presentation
Define Naive Set Theory (NST) as the theory of predicate logic with a binary predicate schema of unrestricted comprehension: and the following axiom
for all formula P with only the variable x free. Substitute (reusing the symbol y) and universal instantiation we have a contradiction. Therefore NST is inconsistent.
for
. Then by existential instantiation
Set-theoretic responses
In 1908, Ernst Zermelo proposed an axiomatization of set theory that avoided the paradoxes of naive set theory by replacing arbitrary set comprehension with weaker existence axioms, such as his axiom of separation (Aussonderung). Modifications to this axiomatic theory proposed in the 1920s by Abraham Fraenkel, Thoralf Skolem, and by Zermelo himself resulted in the axiomatic set theory called ZFC. This theory became widely accepted once Zermelo's axiom of choice ceased to be controversial, and ZFC has remained the canonical axiomatic set theory down to the present day. ZFC does not assume that, for every property, there is a set of all things satisfying that property. Rather, it asserts that given any set X, any subset of X definable using first-order logic exists. The object R discussed above cannot be
Russell's paradox constructed in this fashion, and is therefore not a ZFC set. In some extensions of ZFC, objects like R are called proper classes. ZFC is silent about types, although some argue that Zermelo's axioms tacitly presuppose a background type theory. In ZFC, given a set A, it is possible to define a set B that consists of exactly the sets in A that are not members of themselves. B cannot be in A by the same reasoning in Russell's Paradox. This variation of Russell's paradox shows that no set contains everything. Through the work of Zermelo and others, especially John von Neumann, the structure of what some see as the "natural" objects described by ZFC eventually became clear; they are the elements of the von Neumann universe, V, built up from the empty set by transfinitely iterating the power set operation. It is thus now possible again to reason about sets in a non-axiomatic fashion without running afoul of Russell's paradox, namely by reasoning about the elements of V. Whether it is appropriate to think of sets in this way is a point of contention among the rival points of view on the philosophy of mathematics. Other resolutions to Russell's paradox, more in the spirit of type theory, include the axiomatic set theories New Foundations and Scott-Potter set theory.
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History
Russell discovered the paradox in May or June 1901.[2] By his own admission in his 1919 Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, he "attempted to discover some flaw in Cantor's proof that there is no greatest cardinal".[3] In a 1902 letter,[4] he announced the discovery to Gottlob Frege of the paradox in Frege's 1879 Begriffsschrift and framed the problem in terms of both logic and set theory, and in particular in terms of Frege's definition of function; in the following, p. 17 refers to a page in the original Begriffsschrift, and page 23 refers to the same page in van Heijenoort 1967: There is just one point where I have encountered a difficulty. You state (p. 17 [p. 23 above]) that a function too, can act as the indeterminate element. This I formerly believed, but now this view seems doubtful to me because of the following contradiction. Let w be the predicate: to be a predicate that cannot be predicated of itself. Can w be predicated of itself? From each answer its opposite follows. Therefore we must conclude that w is not a predicate. Likewise there is no class (as a totality) of those classes which, each taken as a totality, do not belong to themselves. From this I conclude that under certain circumstances a definable collection [Menge] does not form a totality.[5] Russell would go to cover it at length in his 1903 The Principles of Mathematics where he repeats his first encounter with the paradox:[6] Before taking leave of fundamental questions, it is necessary to examine more in detail the singular contradiction, already mentioned, with regard to predicates not predicable of themselves. ... I may mention that I was led to it in the endeavour to reconcile Cantor's proof...." Russell wrote to Frege about the paradox just as Frege was preparing the second volume of his Grundgesetze der Arithmetik.[7] Frege did not waste time responding to Russell, his letter dated 22 June 1902 appears, with van Heijenoort's commentary in Heijenoort 1967:126127. Frege then wrote an appendix admitting to the paradox,[8] and proposed a solution that Russell would endorse in his Principles of Mathematics,[9] but was later considered by some unsatisfactory.[10] For his part, Russell had his work at the printers and he added an appendix on the doctrine of types.[11] For his part, Ernst Zermelo in his (1908) A new proof of the possibility of a well-ordering (published at the same time he published "the first axiomatic set theory")[12] laid claim to prior discovery of the antinomy in Cantor's naive set theory. He states: "And yet, even the elementary form that Russell9 gave to the set-theoretic antinomies could have persuaded them [J. Knig, Jourdain, F. Bernstein] that the solution of these difficulties is not to be sought in the surrender of well-ordering but only in a suitable restriction of the notion of set".[13] Footnote 9 is where he stakes his
Russell's paradox claim:

9
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1903, pp. 366368. I had, however, discovered this antinomy myself, independently of Russell, and had communicated it prior to 1903 to Professor Hilbert among others.[14] A written account of Zermelo's actual argument was discovered in the Nachlass of Edmund Husserl.[15] It is also known that unpublished discussions of set theoretical paradoxes took place in the mathematical community at the turn of the century. van Heijenoort in his commentary before Russell's 1902 Letter to Frege states that Zermelo "had discovered the paradox independently of Russell and communicated it to Hilbert, among others, prior to its publication by Russell".[16] In 1923, Ludwig Wittgenstein proposed to "dispose" of Russell's paradox as follows: The reason why a function cannot be its own argument is that the sign for a function already contains the prototype of its argument, and it cannot contain itself. For let us suppose that the function F(fx) could be its own argument: in that case there would be a proposition 'F(F(fx))', in which the outer function F and the inner function F must have different meanings, since the inner one has the form O(f(x)) and the outer one has the form Y(O(fx)). Only the letter 'F' is common to the two functions, but the letter by itself signifies nothing. This immediately becomes clear if instead of 'F(Fu)' we write '(do) : F(Ou) . Ou = Fu'. That disposes of Russell's paradox. (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 3.333) Russell and Alfred North Whitehead wrote their three-volume Principia Mathematica (PM) hoping to achieve what Frege had been unable to do. They sought to banish the paradoxes of naive set theory by employing a theory of types they devised for this purpose. While they succeeded in grounding arithmetic in a fashion, it is not at all evident that they did so by purely logical means. While PM avoided the known paradoxes and allows the derivation of a great deal of mathematics, its system gave rise to new problems. In any event, Kurt Gdel in 193031 proved that while the logic of much of PM, now known as first-order logic, is complete, Peano arithmetic is necessarily incomplete if it is consistent. This is very widely though not universally regarded as having shown the logicist program of Frege to be impossible to complete.
Applied versions
There are some versions of this paradox that are closer to real-life situations and may be easier to understand for non-logicians. For example, the Barber paradox supposes a barber who shaves all men who do not shave themselves and only men who do not shave themselves. When one thinks about whether the barber should shave himself or not, the paradox begins to emerge. As another example, consider five lists of encyclopedia entries within the same encyclopedia:
List of articles about people: Ptolemy VII of Egypt Hermann Hesse Don Nix Don Knotts Nikola Tesla Sherlock Holmes Emperor Knin List of articles starting with the letter L: ... ... List of articles starting with the letter K List of articles starting with the letter L List of articles starting with the letter M L L!VE TV L&H List of articles about places: Leivonmki Katase River Enoshima List of articles about Japan: Emperor Showa Katase River Enoshima List of all lists that do not contain themselves: ... ... List of all lists that do not contain themselves? List of articles starting with the letter K List of articles starting with the letter M List of articles about Japan List of articles about places List of articles about people
Russell's paradox If the "List of all lists that do not contain themselves" contains itself, then it does not belong to itself and should be removed. However, if it does not list itself, then it should be added to itself. While appealing, these layman's versions of the paradox share a drawback: an easy refutation of the Barber paradox seems to be that such a barber does not exist, or at least does not shave (a variant of which is that the barber is a woman). The whole point of Russell's paradox is that the answer "such a set does not exist" means the definition of the notion of set within a given theory is unsatisfactory. Note the difference between the statements "such a set does not exist" and "it is an empty set". It is like saying, "There is no bucket", or "The bucket is empty". A notable exception to the above may be the GrellingNelson paradox, in which words and meaning are the elements of the scenario rather than people and hair-cutting. Though it is easy to refute the Barber's paradox by saying that such a barber does not (and cannot) exist, it is impossible to say something similar about a meaningfully defined word. One way that the paradox has been dramatised is as follows: Suppose that every public library has to compile a catalog of all its books. The catalog is itself one of the library's books, but while some librarians include it in the catalog for completeness, others leave it out, as being self-evident. Now imagine that all these catalogs are sent to the national library. Some of them include themselves in their listings, others do not. The national librarian compiles two master catalogs one of all the catalogs that list themselves, and one of all those that don't. The question is now, should these catalogs list themselves? The 'Catalog of all catalogs that list themselves' is no problem. If the librarian doesn't include it in its own listing, it is still a true catalog of those catalogs that do include themselves. If he does include it, it remains a true catalog of those that list themselves. However, just as the librarian cannot go wrong with the first master catalog, he is doomed to fail with the second. When it comes to the 'Catalog of all catalogs that don't list themselves', the librarian cannot include it in its own listing, because then it would belong in the other catalog, that of catalogs that do include themselves. However, if the librarian leaves it out, the catalog is incomplete. Either way, it can never be a true catalog of catalogs that do not list themselves.
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Applications and related topics

Russell-like paradoxes
As illustrated above for the Barber paradox, Russell's paradox is not hard to extend. Take: A transitive verb <V>, that can be applied to its substantive form. Form the sentence: The <V>er that <V>s all (and only those) who don't <V> themselves, Sometimes the "all" is replaced by "all <V>ers". An example would be "paint": The painter that paints all (and only those) that don't paint themselves. or "elect" The elector (representative), that elects all that don't elect themselves. Paradoxes that fall in this scheme include: The barber with "shave". The original Russell's paradox with "contain": The container (Set) that contains all (containers) that don't contain themselves.
Russell's paradox The GrellingNelson paradox with "describer": The describer (word) that describes all words, that don't describe themselves. Richard's paradox with "denote": The denoter (number) that denotes all denoters (numbers) that don't denote themselves. (In this paradox, all descriptions of numbers get an assigned number. The term "that denotes all denoters (numbers) that don't denote themselves" is here called Richardian.)
224
Related paradoxes
The liar paradox and Epimenides paradox, whose origins are ancient The KleeneRosser paradox, showing that the original lambda calculus is inconsistent, by means of a self-negating statement Curry's paradox (named after Haskell Curry), which does not require negation The smallest uninteresting integer paradox
Notes
[1] Set theory paradoxes (http:/ / www. suitcaseofdreams. net/ Set_theory_Paradox. htm) [2] Godehard Link (2004), One hundred years of Russell's paradox (http:/ / books. google. com/ ?id=Xg6QpedPpcsC& pg=PA350), p.350, ISBN978-3-11-017438-0, [3] Russell 1920:136 [4] Gottlob Frege, Michael Beaney (1997), The Frege reader (http:/ / books. google. com/ ?id=4ktC0UrG4V8C& pg=PA253), p.253, ISBN978-0-631-19445-3, . Also van Heijenoort 1967:124125 [5] Remarkably, this letter was unpublished until van Heijenoort 1967 it appears with van Heijenoort's commentary at van Heijenoort 1967:124125. [6] Russell 1903:101 [7] cf van Heijenoort's commentary before Frege's Letter to Russell in van Heijenoort 1967:126. [8] van Heijenoort's commentary, cf van Heijenoort 1967:126 ; Frege starts his analysis by this exceptionally honest comment : "Hardly anything more unfortunate can befall a scientific writer than to have one of the foundations of his edifice shaken after the work is finished. This was the position I was placed in by a letter of Mr Bertrand Russell, just when the printing of this volume was nearing its completion" (Appendix of Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, vol. II, in The Frege Reader, p.279, translation by Michael Beaney [9] cf van Heijenoort's commentary, cf van Heijenoort 1967:126. The added text reads as follows: " Note. The second volume of Gg., which appeared too late to be noticed in the Appendix, contains an interesting discussion of the contradiction (pp. 253265), suggesting that the solution is to be found by denying that two propositional functions that determine equal classes must be equivalent. As it seems very likely that this is the true solution, the reader is strongly recommended to examine Frege's argument on the point" (Russell 1903:522); The abbreviation Gg. stands for Frege's Grundgezetze der Arithmetik. Begriffsschriftlich abgeleitet. Vol. I. Jena, 1893. Vol. II. 1903. [10] Livio states that "While Frege did make some desperate attempts to remedy his axiom system, he was unsuccessful. The conclusion appeared to be disastrous...." Livio 2009:188. But van Heijenoort in his commentary before Frege's (1902) Letter to Russell describes Frege's proposed "way out" in some detail the matter has to do with the " 'transformation of the generalization of an equality into an equality of courses-of-values. For Frege a function is something incomplete, 'unsaturated' "; this seems to contradict the contemporary notion of a "function in extension"; see Frege's wording at page 128: "Incidentally, it seems to me that the expession 'a predicate is predicated of itself' is not exact. ...Therefore I would prefer to say that 'a concept is predicated of its own extension' [etc]". But he waffles at the end of his suggestion that a function-as-concept-in-extension can be written as predicated of its function. van Heijenoort cites Quine: "For a late and thorough study of Frege's "way out", see Quine 1955": "On Frege's way out", Mind 64, 145159; reprinted in Quine 1955b: Appendix. Completeness of quantification theory. Loewenheim's theorem, enclosed as a pamphlet with part of the third printing (1955) of Quine 1950 and incorporated in the revised edition (1959), 253260" (cf REFERENCES in van Heijenoort 1967:649) [11] Russell mentions this fact to Frege, cf van Heijenoort's commentary before Frege's (1902) Letter to Russell in van Heijenoort 1967:126 [12] van Heijenoort's commentary before Zermelo (1908a) Investigations in the foundations of set theory I in van Heijenoort 1967:199 [13] van Heijenoort 1967:190191. In the section before this he objects strenuously to the notion of impredicativity as defined by Poincar (and soon to be taken by Russell, too, in his 1908 Mathematical logic as based on the theory of types cf van Heijenoort 1967:150182). [14] Ernst Zermelo (1908) A new proof of the possibility of a well-ordering in van Heijenoort 1967:183198. Livio 2009:191 reports that Zermelo "discovered Russell's paradox independently as early as 1900"; Livio in turn cites Ewald 1996 and van Heijenoort 1967 (cf Livio 2009:268). [15] B. Rang and W. Thomas, "Zermelo's discovery of the 'Russell Paradox'", Historia Mathematica, v. 8 n. 1, 1981, pp. 1522. doi:10.1016/0315-0860(81)90002-1 [16] van Heijenoort 1967:124
Russell's paradox
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References
Potter, Michael (15 January 2004), Set Theory and its Philosophy, Clarendon Press (Oxford University Press), ISBN978-0-19-926973-0 van Heijenoort, Jean (1967, third printing 1976), From Frege to Gdel: A Source Book in Mathematical Logic, 1979-1931, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, ISBN0-674-32449-8 Livio, Mario (6 January 2009), Is God a Mathematician?, Simon & Schuster, ISBN978-0-7432-9405-8
External links
Russell's Paradox (http://www.cut-the-knot.org/selfreference/russell.shtml) at Cut-the-Knot Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: " Russell's Paradox (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/russell-paradox/)" by A. D. Irvine.
Simpson's paradox
In probability and statistics, Simpson's paradox (or the YuleSimpson effect) is a paradox in which a correlation present in different groups is reversed when the groups are combined. This result is often encountered in social-science and medical-science statistics,[1] and is particularly confounding when frequency data are unduly given causal interpretations.[2] Simpson's Paradox disappears when causal relations are brought into consideration (see Implications to decision making). Though it is mostly unknown to laypeople, Simpson's Paradox is well known to statisticians, and it is described in a few introductory statistics books.[3][4] Many statisticians believe that the mainstream public should be informed of the counter-intuitive results in statistics such as Simpson's paradox.[5][6]
Simpson's paradox for continuous data: a positive trend appears for two separate groups (blue and red), a negative trend (black, dashed) appears when the data are combined.
Edward H. Simpson first described this phenomenon in a technical paper in 1951,[7] but the statisticians Karl Pearson, et al., in 1899,[8] and Udny Yule, in 1903, had mentioned similar effects earlier.[9] The name Simpson's paradox was introduced by Colin R. Blyth in 1972.[10] Since Edward Simpson did not actually discover this statistical paradox,[11] some writers, instead, have used the impersonal names reversal paradox and amalgamation paradox in referring to what is now called Simpson's Paradox and the Yule-Simpson effect.[12]
Examples
Civil Rights Act of 1964
A real-life example is the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in the United States. Overall, a larger fraction of Republican legislators voted in favor of the Act than Democrats. However, when the congressional delegations from the northern and southern States are considered separately, a larger fraction of Democrats voted in favor of the act in both regions. This arose because regional affiliation is a very strong indicator of how a congressman or senator voted, but party affiliation is a weak indicator.
Simpson's paradox
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House
Democrat
Republican
Northern 94% (145/154) 85% (138/162) Southern Both 7% (7/94) 0% (0/10)
61% (152/248) 80% (138/172)
Senate
Democrat
Republican
Northern 98% (45/46) 84% (27/32) Southern Both 5% (1/21) 0% (0/1)
69% (46/67) 82% (27/33)
Kidney stone treatment

This is another real-life example from a medical study[13] comparing the success rates of two treatments for kidney stones.[14] The table shows the success rates and numbers of treatments for treatments involving both small and large kidney stones, where Treatment A includes all open procedures and Treatment B is percutaneous nephrolithotomy:
Treatment A Small Stones Group 1 93% (81/87) Group 3 73% (192/263) Treatment B Group 2 87% (234/270) Group 4 69% (55/80)
Large Stones
Both
78% (273/350) 83% (289/350)
The paradoxical conclusion is that treatment A is more effective when used on small stones, and also when used on large stones, yet treatment B is more effective when considering both sizes at the same time. In this example the "lurking" variable (or confounding variable) of the stone size was not previously known to be important until its effects were included. Which treatment is considered better is determined by an inequality between two ratios (successes/total). The reversal of the inequality between the ratios, which creates Simpson's paradox, happens because two effects occur together: 1. The sizes of the groups, which are combined when the lurking variable is ignored, are very different. Doctors tend to give the severe cases (large stones) the better treatment (A), and the milder cases (small stones) the inferior treatment (B). Therefore, the totals are dominated by groups three and two, and not by the two much smaller groups one and four. 2. The lurking variable has a large effect on the ratios, i.e. the success rate is more strongly influenced by the severity of the case than by the choice of treatment. Therefore, the group of patients with large stones using treatment A (group three) does worse than the group with small stones, even if the latter used the inferior treatment B (group two).
Simpson's paradox
227
Berkeley gender bias case

One of the best known real life examples of Simpson's paradox occurred when the University of California, Berkeley was sued for bias against women who had applied for admission to graduate schools there. The admission figures for the fall of 1973 showed that men applying were more likely than women to be admitted, and the difference was so large that it was unlikely to be due to chance.[3][15]
Applicants Admitted Men 8442 44% 35%
Women 4321
But when examining the individual departments, it appeared that no department was significantly biased against women. In fact, most departments had a "small but statistically significant bias in favor of women."[15] The data from the six largest departments are listed below.
Department Men Women
Applicants Admitted Applicants Admitted A B C D E F 825 560 325 417 191 272 62% 63% 37% 33% 28% 6% 108 25 593 375 393 341 82% 68% 34% 35% 24% 7%
The research paper by Bickel, et al.[15] concluded that women tended to apply to competitive departments with low rates of admission even among qualified applicants (such as in the English Department), whereas men tended to apply to less-competitive departments with high rates of admission among the qualified applicants (such as in engineering and chemistry). The conditions under which the admissions' frequency data from specific departments constitute a proper defense against charges of discrimination are formulated in the book Causality by Pearl.[2]

The low birth weight paradox is an apparently paradoxical observation relating to the birth weights and mortality of children born to tobacco smoking mothers. As a usual practice, babies weighing less than a certain amount (which varies between different countries) have been classified as having low birth weight. In a given population, babies with low birth weights have had a significantly higher infant mortality rate than others. However, it has been observed that babies of low birth weights born to smoking mothers have a lower mortality rate than the babies of low birth weights of non-smokers.[16]
Batting averages
A common example of Simpson's Paradox involves the batting averages of players in professional baseball. It is possible for one player to hit for a higher batting average than another player during a given year, and to do so again during the next year, but to have a lower batting average when the two years are combined. This phenomenon can occur when there are large differences in the number of at-bats between the years. (The same situation applies to calculating batting averages for the first half of the baseball season, and during the second half, and then combining all of the data for the season's batting average.) A real-life example is provided by Ken Ross[17] and involves the batting average of two baseball players, Derek Jeter and David Justice, during the baseball years 1995 and 1996:[18]
Simpson's paradox
228
1995 Derek Jeter 12/48
1996
Combined
.250 183/582 .314 195/630 .310 .321 149/551 .270
David Justice 104/411 .253 45/140
In both 1995 and 1996, Justice had a higher batting average (in bold type) than Jeter did. However, when the two baseball seasons are combined, Jeter shows a higher batting average than Justice. According to Ross, this phenomenon would be observed about once per year among the possible pairs of interesting baseball players. In this particular case, the Simpson's Paradox can still be observed if the year 1997 is also taken into account:
1995 Derek Jeter 12/48 1996 1997 Combined
.250 183/582 .314 190/654 .291 385/1284 .300 .321 163/495 .329 312/1046 .298
David Justice 104/411 .253 45/140
The Jeter and Justice example of Simpson's paradox was referred to in the "Conspiracy Theory" episode of the television series Numb3rs, though a chart shown omitted some of the data, and listed the 1996 averages as 1995.
Description
Suppose two people, Lisa and Bart, each edit document articles for two weeks. In the first week, Lisa improves 60% of the 100 articles she edited, and Bart improves 90% of 10 articles he edited. In the second week, Lisa improves just 10% of 10 articles she edited, while Bart improves 30% of 100 articles he edited.
Illustration of Simpson's Paradox; The first graph represents Lisa's contribution, the second one Bart's. The red bars represent the first week, the blue bars the second week; the triangles indicate the combined percentage of good contributions (weighted average). While Bart's bars both show a higher rate of success than Lisa's, Lisa's combined rate is higher because basically she improved a greater ratio relative to the quantity edited.
Simpson's paradox
229
Week 1 Week 2 Lisa Bart 60/100 9/10 1/10
Total 61/110
30/100 39/110
Both times Bart improved a higher percentage of articles than Lisa, but the actual number of articles each edited (the bottom number of their ratios, also known as the sample size) were not the same for both of them either week. When the totals for the two weeks are added together, Bart and Lisa's work can be judged from an equal sample size, i.e. the same number of articles edited by each. Looked at in this more accurate manner, Lisa's ratio is higher and, therefore, so is her percentage. Also when the two tests are combined using a weighted average, overall, Lisa has improved a much higher percentage than Bart because the quality modifier had a significantly higher percentage. Therefore, like other paradoxes, it only appears to be a paradox because of incorrect assumptions, incomplete or misguided information, or a lack of understanding a particular concept.
Week 1 quantity Week 2 quantity Total quantity and weighted quality Lisa Bart 60% 90% 10% 30% 55.5% 35.5%
This imagined paradox is caused when the percentage is provided but not the ratio. In this example, if only the 90% in the first week for Bart was provided but not the ratio (9:10), it would distort the information causing the imagined paradox. Even though Bart's percentage is higher for the first and second week, when two weeks of articles is combined, overall Lisa had improved a greater proportion, 55% of the 110 total articles. Lisa's proportional total of articles improved exceeds Bart's total. Here are some notations: In the first week In the second week Lisa managed 10% in her busy life. Bart achieved a 30% success rate. Success is associated with Bart. On both occasions Bart's edits were more successful than Lisa's. But if we combine the two sets, we see that Lisa and Bart both edited 110 articles, and: Lisa improved 61 articles. Bart improved only 39. Success is now associated with Lisa. Lisa improved 60% of the many articles she edited. Bart had a 90% success rate during that time. Success is associated with Bart.
Bart is better for each set but worse overall. The paradox stems from the intuition that Bart could not possibly be a better editor on each set but worse overall. Pearl proved how this is possible, when "better editor" is taken in the counterfactual sense: "Were Bart to edit all items in a set he would do better than Lisa would, on those same items".[2] Clearly, frequency data cannot support this sense of "better editor," because it does not tell us how Bart would perform on items edited by Lisa, and vice versa. In the back of our mind, though, we assume that the articles were assigned at random to Bart and Lisa, an assumption which (for a large sample) would support the counterfactual interpretation of "better editor." However, under random assignment conditions, the data given in this example are unlikely, which accounts for our surprise
Simpson's paradox when confronting the rate reversal. The arithmetical basis of the paradox is uncontroversial. If must be greater than reversed on the second test. By more extreme reweighting Lisa's overall score can be pushed up towards 60% and Bart's down towards 30%. Lisa is a better editor on average, as her overall success rate is higher. But it is possible to have told the story in a way which would make it appear obvious that Bart is more diligent. Simpson's paradox shows us an extreme example of the importance of including data about possible confounding variables when attempting to calculate causal relations. Precise criteria for selecting a set of "confounding variables," (i.e., variables that yield correct causal relationships if included in the analysis), is given in Pearl[2] using causal graphs. While Simpson's paradox often refers to the analysis of count tables, as shown in this example, it also occurs with continuous data:[19] for example, if one fits separated regression lines through two sets of data, the two regression lines may show a positive trend, while a regression line fitted through all data together will show a negative trend, as shown on the picture above. this feeling may be disappointed. Here the first test is weighted and for Lisa and we feel that for Bart while the weights are
230
. However if different weights are used to form the overall score for each person then
Vector interpretation
Simpson's paradox can also be illustrated using the 2-dimensional vector space.[20] A success rate of can be represented by a vector , with a slope of . If two rates and
are combined, as in the examples given above, the result can be represented by the sum of the vectors and , which according to the parallelogram rule is the vector with slope . (in blue in the figure) (in red), and has a
Vector interpretation of Simpson's paradox (note that the x and y axes have different scales).
Simpson's paradox says that even if a vector has a smaller slope than another vector smaller slope than
, the sum of the two vectors
(indicated by "+" in the figure) can still have a larger slope than the sum of the two vectors , as shown in the example.
Implications to decision making

The practical significance of Simpson's paradox surfaces in decision making situations where it poses the following dilemma: Which data should we consult in choosing an action, the aggregated or the partitioned? In the Kidney Stone example above, it is clear that if one is diagnosed with "Small Stones" or "Large Stones" the data for the respective subpopulation should be consulted and Treatment A would be preferred to Treatment B. But what if a patient is not diagnosed, and the size of the stone is not known; would it be appropriate to consult the aggregated data and administer Treatment B? This would stand contrary to common sense; a treatment that is preferred both under one condition and under its negation should also be preferred when the condition is unknown.
Simpson's paradox On the other hand, if the partitioned data is to be preferred a priori, what prevents one from partitioning the data into arbitrary sub-categories (say based on eye color or post-treatment pain) artificially constructed to yield wrong choices of treatments? Pearl[2] shows that, indeed, in many cases it is the aggregated, not the partitioned data that gives the correct choice of action. Worse yet, given the same table, one should sometimes follow the partitioned and sometimes the aggregated data, depending on the story behind the data; with each story dictating its own choice. Pearl[2] considers this to be the real paradox behind Simpson's reversal. As to why and how a story, not data, should dictate choices, the answer is that it is the story which encodes the causal relationships among the variables. Once we extract these relationships and represent them in a graph called a causal Bayesian network we can test algorithmically whether a given partition, representing confounding variables, gives the correct answer. The test, called "back-door," requires that we check whether the nodes corresponding to the confounding variables intercept certain paths in the graph. This reduces Simpson's Paradox to an exercise in graph theory.
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The psychology of Simpson's paradox

Psychological interest in Simpson's paradox seeks to explain why people deem sign reversal to be impossible at first, offended by the idea that a treatment could benefit both males and females and harm the population as a whole. The question is where people get this strong intuition from, and how it is encoded in the mind. Simpson's paradox demonstrates that this intuition cannot be supported by probability calculus alone, and thus led philosophers to speculate that it is supported by an innate causal logic that guides people in reasoning about actions and their consequences. Savage's "sure thing principle"[10] is an example of what such logic may entail. A qualified version of Savage's sure thing principle can indeed be derived from Pearl's do-calculus[2] and reads: "An action A that increases the probability of an event B in each subpopulation Ci of C must also increase the probability of B in the population as a whole, provided that the action does not change the distribution of the subpopulations." This suggests that knowledge about actions and consequences is stored in a form resembling Causal Bayesian Networks.
How likely is Simpsons paradox?

If a 2 2 2 table, such as in the kidney stone example, is selected at random, the probability is approximately 1/60 that Simpson's paradox will occur purely by chance.[21]
References
Notes
[1] Clifford H. Wagner (February 1982). "Simpson's Paradox in Real Life". The American Statistician 36 (1): 4648. doi:10.2307/2684093. JSTOR2684093. [2] Judea Pearl. Causality: Models, Reasoning, and Inference, Cambridge University Press (2000, 2nd edition 2009). ISBN 0-521-77362-8. [3] David Freedman, Robert Pisani and Roger Purves. Statistics (4th edition). W.W. Norton, 2007, p. 19. ISBN 139780393929720. [4] David S. Moore and D.S. George P. McCabe (February 2005). "Introduction to the Practice of Statistics" (5th edition). W.H. Freeman & Company. ISBN 0-7167-6282-X. [5] Robert L. Wardrop (February 1995). "Simpson's Paradox and the Hot Hand in Basketball". The American Statistician, 49 (1): pp. 2428. [6] Alan Agresti (2002). "Categorical Data Analysis" (Second edition). John Wiley and Sons ISBN 0-471-36093-7 [7] Simpson, Edward H. (1951). "The Interpretation of Interaction in Contingency Tables". Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Ser. B 13: 238241. [8] Pearson, Karl; Lee, A.; Bramley-Moore, L. (1899). "Genetic (reproductive) selection: Inheritance of fertility in man". Philosophical Translations of the Royal Statistical Society, Ser. A 173: 534539. [9] G. U. Yule (1903). "Notes on the Theory of Association of Attributes in Statistics". Biometrika 2 (2): 121134. doi:10.1093/biomet/2.2.121. [10] Colin R. Blyth (June 1972). "On Simpson's Paradox and the Sure-Thing Principle". Journal of the American Statistical Association 67 (338): 364366. doi:10.2307/2284382. JSTOR2284382. [11] See Stigler's law of eponymy [12] I. J. Good, Y. Mittal (June 1987). "The Amalgamation and Geometry of Two-by-Two Contingency Tables". The Annals of Statistics 15 (2): 694711. doi:10.1214/aos/1176350369. ISSN0090-5364. JSTOR2241334.
Simpson's paradox
[13] C. R. Charig, D. R. Webb, S. R. Payne, O. E. Wickham (29 March 1986). "Comparison of treatment of renal calculi by open surgery, percutaneous nephrolithotomy, and extracorporeal shockwave lithotripsy". Br Med J (Clin Res Ed) 292 (6524): 879882. doi:10.1136/bmj.292.6524.879. PMC1339981. PMID3083922. [14] Steven A. Julious and Mark A. Mullee (12/03/1994). "Confounding and Simpson's paradox" (http:/ / bmj. bmjjournals. com/ cgi/ content/ full/ 309/ 6967/ 1480). BMJ 309 (6967): 14801481. PMC2541623. PMID7804052. . [15] P.J. Bickel, E.A. Hammel and J.W. O'Connell (1975). "Sex Bias in Graduate Admissions: Data From Berkeley" (http:/ / www. sciencemag. org/ cgi/ content/ abstract/ 187/ 4175/ 398). Science 187 (4175): 398404. doi:10.1126/science.187.4175.398. PMID17835295. .. [16] Wilcox Allen (2006). "The Perils of Birth Weight A Lesson from Directed Acyclic Graphs" (http:/ / aje. oxfordjournals. org/ cgi/ content/ abstract/ 164/ 11/ 1121). American Journal of Epidemiology 164 (11): 11211123. doi:10.1093/aje/kwj276. PMID16931545. . [17] Ken Ross. "A Mathematician at the Ballpark: Odds and Probabilities for Baseball Fans (Paperback)" Pi Press, 2004. ISBN 0-13-147990-3. 1213 [18] Statistics available from http:/ / www. baseball-reference. com/ : Data for Derek Jeter (http:/ / www. baseball-reference. com/ j/ jeterde01. shtml), Data for David Justice (http:/ / www. baseball-reference. com/ j/ justida01. shtml). [19] John Fox (1997). "Applied Regression Analysis, Linear Models, and Related Methods". Sage Publications. ISBN 0-8039-4540-X. 136137 [20] Kocik Jerzy (2001). "Proofs without Words: Simpson's Paradox" (http:/ / www. math. siu. edu/ kocik/ papers/ simpson2. pdf) (PDF). Mathematics Magazine 74 (5): 399. . [21] Marios G. Pavlides and Michael D. Perlman (August 2009). "How Likely is Simpson's Paradox?". The American Statistician 63 (3): 226233. doi:10.1198/tast.2009.09007.
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References
External links
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: " Simpson's Paradox (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ paradox-simpson/)" by Gary Malinas. Earliest known uses of some of the words of mathematics: S (http://jeff560.tripod.com/s.html) For a brief history of the origins of the paradox see the entries "Simpson's Paradox" and "Spurious Correlation" Pearl, Judea, " "The Art and Science of Cause and Effect. (http://bayes.cs.ucla.edu/LECTURE/lecture_sec1. htm)" A slide show and tutorial lecture. Pearl, Judea, "Simpson's Paradox: An Anatomy" (http://bayes.cs.ucla.edu/R264.pdf) (PDF) Short articles by Alexander Bogomolny at cut-the-knot: " Mediant Fractions. (http://www.cut-the-knot.org/blue/Mediant.shtml)" " Simpson's Paradox. (http://www.cut-the-knot.org/Curriculum/Algebra/SimpsonParadox.shtml)" The Wall Street Journal column "The Numbers Guy" (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125970744553071829. html) for December 2, 2009 dealt with recent instances of Simpson's paradox in the news. Notably a Simpson's paradox in the comparison of unemployment rates of the 2009 recession with the 1983 recession. by Cari Tuna (substituting for regular columnist Carl Bialik)
Skolem's paradox
233
Skolem's paradox
In mathematical logic and philosophy, Skolem's paradox is a seeming contradiction that arises from the downward LwenheimSkolem theorem. Thoralf Skolem (1922) was the first to discuss the seemingly contradictory aspects of the theorem, and to discover the relativity of set-theoretic notions now known as non-absoluteness. Although it is not an actual antinomy like Russell's paradox, the result is typically called a paradox, and was described as a "paradoxical state of affairs" by Skolem (1922: p.295). Skolem's paradox is that every countable axiomatisation of set theory in first-order logic, if it is consistent, has a model that is countable. This appears contradictory because it is possible to prove, from those same axioms, a sentence which intuitively says (or which precisely says in the standard model of the theory) that there exist sets that are not countable. Thus the seeming contradiction is that a model which is itself countable, and which contains only countable sets, satisfies the first order sentence that intuitively states "there are uncountable sets". A mathematical explanation of the paradox, showing that it is not a contradiction in mathematics, was given by Skolem (1922). Skolem's work was harshly received by Ernst Zermelo, who argued against the limitations of first-order logic, but the result quickly came to be accepted by the mathematical community. The philosophical implications of Skolem's paradox have received much study. One line of inquiry questions whether it is accurate to claim that any first-order sentence actually states "there are uncountable sets". This line of thought can be extended to question whether any set is uncountable in an absolute sense. More recently, the paper "Models and Reality" by Hilary Putnam, and responses to it, led to renewed interest in the philosophical aspects of Skolem's result.
Background
One of the earliest results in set theory, published by Georg Cantor in 1874, was the existence of uncountable sets, such as the powerset of the natural numbers, the set of real numbers, and the Cantor set. An infinite set X is countable if there is a function that gives a one-to-one correspondence between X and the natural numbers, and is uncountable if there is no such correspondence function. When Zermelo proposed his axioms for set theory in 1908, he proved Cantor's theorem from them to demonstrate their strength. Lwenheim (1915) and Skolem (1920, 1923) proved the LwenheimSkolem theorem. The downward form of this theorem shows that if a countable first-order axiomatisation is satisfied by any infinite structure, then the same axioms are satisfied by some countable structure. In particular, this implies that if the first order versions of Zermelo's axioms of set theory are satisfiable, they are satisfiable in some countable model. The same is true of any consistent first order axiomatisation of set theory.
The paradoxical result and its mathematical implications

Skolem (1922) pointed out the seeming contradiction between the LwenheimSkolem theorem on the one hand, which implies that there is a countable model of Zermelo's axioms, and Cantor's theorem on the other hand, which states that uncountable sets exist, and which is provable from Zermelo's axioms. "So far as I know," Skolem writes, "no one has called attention to this paradoxical state of affairs. By virtue of the axioms we can prove the existence of higher cardinalities... How can it be, then, that the entire domain B [a countable model of Zermelo's axioms] can already be enumerated by means of finite positive integers?" (Skolem 1922, p.295, translation by Bauer-Mengelberg) More specifically, let B be a countable model of Zermelo's axioms. Then there is some set u in B such that B satisfies the first-order formula saying that u is uncountable. For example, u could be taken as the set of real numbers in B. Now, because B is countable, there are only countably many elements c such that c u according to B, because there are only countably many elements c in B to begin with. Thus it appears that u should be countable. This is Skolem's
Skolem's paradox paradox. Skolem went on to explain why there was no contradiction. In the context of a specific model of set theory, the term "set" does not refer to an arbitrary set, but only to a set that is actually included in the model. The definition of countability requires that a certain one-to-one correspondence, which is itself a set, must exist. Thus it is possible to recognize that a particular set u is countable, but not countable in a particular model of set theory, because there is no set in the model that gives a one-to-one correspondence between u and the natural numbers in that model. Skolem used the term "relative" to describe this state of affairs, where the same set is included in two models of set theory, is countable in one model, and is not countable in the other model. He described this as the "most important" result in his paper. Contemporary set theorists describe concepts that do not depend on the choice of a transitive model as absolute. From their point of view, Skolem's paradox simply shows that countability is not an absolute property in first order logic. (Kunen 1980 p.141; Enderton 2001 p.152; Burgess 1977 p.406). Skolem described his work as a critique of (first-order) set theory, intended to illustrate its weakness as a foundational system: "I believed that it was so clear that axiomatization in terms of sets was not a satisfactory ultimate foundation of mathematics that mathematicians would, for the most part, not be very much concerned with it. But in recent times I have seen to my surprise that so many mathematicians think that these axioms of set theory provide the ideal foundation for mathematics; therefore it seemed to me that the time had come for a critique." (Ebbinghaus and van Dalen, 2000, p. 147)
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Reception by the mathematical community

A central goal of early research into set theory was to find a first order axiomatisation for set theory which was categorical, meaning that the axioms would have exactly one model, consisting of all sets. Skolem's result showed this is not possible, creating doubts about the use of set theory as a foundation of mathematics. It took some time for the theory of first-order logic to be developed enough for mathematicians to understand the cause of Skolem's result; no resolution of the paradox was widely accepted during the 1920s. Fraenkel (1928) still described the result as an antinomy: "Neither have the books yet been closed on the antinomy, nor has agreement on its significance and possible solution yet been reached." (van Dalen and Ebbinghaus, 2000, p. 147). In 1925, von Neumann presented a novel axiomatization of set theory, which developed into NBG set theory. Very much aware of Skolem's 1922 paper, von Neumann investigated countable models of his axioms in detail. In his concluding remarks, Von Neumann comments that there is no categorical axiomatization of set theory, or any other theory with an infinite model. Speaking of the impact of Skolem's paradox, he wrote, "At present we can do no more than note that we have one more reason here to entertain reservations about set theory and that for the time being no way of rehabilitating this theory is known."(Ebbinghaus and van Dalen, 2000, p. 148) Zermelo at first considered the Skolem paradox a hoax (van Dalen and Ebbinghaus, 2000, p.148 ff.), and spoke against it starting in 1929. Skolem's result applies only to what is now called first-order logic, but Zermelo argued against the finitary metamathematics that underlie first-order logic (Kanamori 2004, p.519 ff.). Zermelo argued that his axioms should instead be studied in second-order logic, a setting in which Skolem's result does not apply. Zermelo published a second-order axiomatization in 1930 and proved several categoricity results in that context. Zermelo's further work on the foundations of set theory after Skolem's paper led to his discovery of the cumulative hierarchy and formalization of infinitary logic (van Dalen and Ebbinghaus, 2000, note 11). Fraenkel et al. (1973, pp.303304) explain why Skolem's result was so surprising to set theorists in the 1920s. At the time, Gdel's completeness theorem and the compactness theorem had not yet been proved. These theorems illuminated the way that first-order logic behaves and established its finitary nature. The method of Henkin models,
Skolem's paradox now a standard technique for constructing countable models of a consistent first-order theory, was not developed until 1950. Thus, in 1922, the particular properties of first-order logic that permit Skolem's paradox to go through were not yet understood. It is now known that Skolem's paradox is unique to first-order logic; if set theory is formalized using higher-order logic then it does not have any countable models.
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Contemporary mathematical opinion

Contemporary mathematical logicians do not view Skolem's paradox as any sort of fatal flaw in set theory. Kleene (1967, p.324) describes the result as "not a paradox in the sense of outright contradiction, but rather a kind of anomaly". After surveying Skolem's argument that the result is not contradictory, Kleene concludes "there is no absolute notion of countability." Hunter (1971, p.208) describes the contradiction as "hardly even a paradox". Fraenkel et al. (1973, p.304) explain that contemporary mathematicians are no more bothered by the lack of categoricity of first-order theories than they are bothered by the conclusion of Gdel's incompleteness theorem that no consistent, effective, and sufficiently strong set of first-order axioms is complete. Countable models of ZF have become common tools in the study of set theory. Forcing, for example, is often explained in terms of countable models. The fact that these countable models of ZF still satisfy the theorem that there are uncountable sets is not considered a pathology; van Heijenoort (1967) describes it as "a novel and unexpected feature of formal systems." (van Heijenoort 1967, p.290) Although mathematicians no longer consider Skolem's result paradoxical, the result is often discussed by philosophers. In the setting of philosophy, a merely mathematical resolution of the paradox may be less than satisfactory.
References
Barwise, Jon (1977), "An introduction to first-order logic", in Barwise, Jon, ed. (1982), Handbook of Mathematical Logic, Studies in Logic and the Foundations of Mathematics, Amsterdam: North-Holland, ISBN978-0-444-86388-1 Van Dalen, Dirk and Heinz-Dieter Ebbinghaus, "Zermelo and the Skolem Paradox", The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic Volume 6, Number 2, June 2000. Dragalin, A.G. (2001), "S/s085750" [1], in Hazewinkel, Michiel, Encyclopedia of Mathematics, Springer, ISBN978-1556080104 Abraham Fraenkel, Yehoshua Bar-Hillel, Azriel Levy, Dirk van Dalen (1973), Foundations of Set Theory, North-Holland. Henkin, L. (1950), "Completeness in the theory of types", Journal of Symbolic Logic (The Journal of Symbolic Logic, Vol. 15, No. 2) 15 (2): 8191, doi:10.2307/2266967, JSTOR2266967. Kanamori, Akihiro (2004), "Zermelo and set theory" [2], The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 10 (4): 487553, doi:10.2178/bsl/1102083759, ISSN1079-8986, MR2136635 Stephen Cole Kleene, (1952, 1971 with emendations, 1991 10th printing), Introduction to Metamathematics, North-Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam NY. ISBN 0 444 10088 1. cf pages 420-432: 75. Axiom systems, Skolem's paradox, the natural number sequence. Stephen Cole Kleene, (1967). Mathematical Logic. Kunen, Kenneth (1980), Set Theory: An Introduction to Independence Proofs, Amsterdam: North-Holland, ISBN978-0-444-85401-8 (1915), "ber Mglichkeiten im Relativkalkl", Mathematische Annalen 76 (4): 447470, doi:10.1007/BF01458217, ISSN0025-5831 Moore, A.W., "Set Theory, Skolem's Paradox and the Tractatus", Analysis 1985: 45. Hilary Putnam, "Models and Reality", The Journal of Symbolic Logic, Vol. 45, No. 3 (Sep., 1980), pp.464482
Skolem's paradox Rautenberg, Wolfgang (2010), A Concise Introduction to Mathematical Logic [3] (3rd ed.), New York: Springer Science+Business Media, doi:10.1007/978-1-4419-1221-3, ISBN978-1-4419-1220-6 Skolem, Thoralf (1922). "Axiomatized set theory". Reprinted in From Frege to Gdel, van Heijenoort, 1967, in English translation by Stefan Bauer-Mengelberg, pp.291301.
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External links
Bays's Ph.D. thesis on the paradox [4] Vaughan Pratt's celebration of his academic ancestor Skolem's 120th birthday [5] Extract from Moore's discussion of the paradox(broken link) [6]
References
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] http:/ / www. encyclopediaofmath. org/ index. php?title=S/ s085750 http:/ / www. math. ucla. edu/ ~asl/ bsl/ 1004-toc. htm http:/ / www. springerlink. com/ content/ 978-1-4419-1220-6/ http:/ / www. nd. edu/ ~tbays/ papers/ pthesis. pdf http:/ / boole. stanford. edu/ skolem http:/ / www. webcitation. org/ query?url=http:/ / uk. geocities. com/ frege%40btinternet. com/ cantor/ skolem_moore. htm& date=2009-10-25+ 04:16:47
Smale's paradox
In differential topology, Smale's paradox states that it is possible to turn a sphere inside out in a three-dimensional space with possible self-intersections but without creating any crease, a process often called sphere eversion (eversion means "to turn inside out"). This is surprising, and is hence deemed a veridical paradox. More precisely, let
be the standard embedding; then there is a regular homotopy of immersions
such that 0= and 1=.
A Morin surface seen from "above".
History
This 'paradox' was discovered by Stephen Smale(1958). It is difficult to visualize a particular example of such a turning, although some digital animations have been produced that make it somewhat easier. The first example was exhibited through the efforts of several mathematicians, including Arnold Shapiro and Bernard Morin who was blind. On the other hand, it is much easier to prove that such a "turning" exists and that is what Smale did. Smale's graduate adviser Raoul Bott at first told Smale that the result was obviously wrong (Levy 1995). His reasoning was that the degree of the Gauss map must be preserved in such "turning"in particular it follows that there is no such turning of S1in R2. But the degree of the Gauss map for the embeddings f, f in R3 are both equal to 1, and do not have opposite sign as one might incorrectly guess. The degree of the Gauss map of all immersions of a 2-sphere in R3 is 1; so there is no obstacle. See h-principle for further generalizations.
Smale's paradox
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Proof
Smale's original proof was indirect: he identified (regular homotopy) classes of immersions of spheres with a homotopy group of the Stiefel manifold. Since the homotopy group that corresponds to immersions of in vanishes, the standard embedding and the inside-out one must be regular homotopic. In principle the proof can be unwound to produce an explicit regular homotopy, but this is not easy to do. There are several ways of producing explicit examples and mathematical visualization: the method of half-way models: these consist of very special homotopies. This is the original method, first done by Shapiro and Phillips via Boy's surface, later refined by many others. A more recent and definitive refinement (1980s) is minimax eversions, which is a variational method, and consist of special homotopies (they are shortest paths with respect to Willmore energy). The original half-way model homotopies were constructed by hand, and worked topologically but weren't minimal. Thurston's corrugations: this is a topological method and generic; it takes a homotopy and perturbs it so that it becomes a regular homotopy.
References
Francis, George K. (2007), A topological picturebook, Berlin, New York: Springer-Verlag, ISBN978-0-387-34542-0; 978-0-387-34542-0, MR2265679 Levy, Silvio (1995), "A brief history of sphere eversions" [1], Making waves, Wellesley, MA: A K Peters Ltd., ISBN978-1-56881-049-2, MR1357900 Nelson Max, "Turning a Sphere Inside Out", International Film Bureau, Chicago, 1977 (video) Anthony Phillips, "Turning a surface inside out, Scientific American, May 1966, pp.112120. Smale, Stephen (1958), "A classification of immersions of the two-sphere", Transactions of the American Mathematical Society 90: 281290, ISSN0002-9947, JSTOR1993205, MR0104227
External links
Outside In [2], full video (short clip here [3]) Optiverse video [4], portions available online A History of Sphere Eversions [5] "Turning a Sphere Inside Out" [6] Software for visualizing sphere eversion [7]
References
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] http:/ / www. geom. uiuc. edu/ docs/ outreach/ oi/ history. html http:/ / video. google. com/ videoplay?docid=-6626464599825291409 http:/ / www. th. physik. uni-bonn. de/ th/ People/ netah/ cy/ movies/ sphere. mpg http:/ / new. math. uiuc. edu/ optiverse/ http:/ / torus. math. uiuc. edu/ jms/ Papers/ isama/ color/ opt2. htm http:/ / www. cs. berkeley. edu/ ~sequin/ SCULPTS/ SnowSculpt04/ eversion. html http:/ / www. dgp. utoronto. ca/ ~mjmcguff/ eversion/
Thomson's lamp
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Thomson's lamp
Thomson's lamp is a philosophical puzzle that is a variation on Zeno's paradoxes. It was devised in 1954 by British philosopher James F. Thomson, who also coined the term supertask.
Time State 0.000 1.000 1.500 1.750 1.875 ... 2.000 On Off On Off On ... ?
Consider a lamp with a toggle switch. Flicking the switch once turns the lamp on. Another flick will turn the lamp off. Now suppose that there is a being able to perform the following task: starting a timer, he turns the lamp on. At the end of one minute, he turns it off. At the end of another half minute, he turns it on again. At the end of another quarter of a minute, he turns it off. At the next eighth of a minute, he turns it on again, and he continues thus, flicking the switch each time after waiting exactly one-half the time he waited before flicking it previously. The sum of all these progressively smaller times is exactly two minutes. The following questions are then considered: Is the lamp switch on or off after exactly two minutes? Would the final state be different if the lamp had started out being on, instead of off? Thomson wasn't interested in actually answering these questions, because he believed these questions had no answers. This is because Thomson used this thought experiment to argue against the possibility of supertasks, which is the completion of an infinite number of tasks. To be specific, Thomson argued that if supertasks are possible, then the scenario of having flicked the lamp on and off infinitely many times should be possible too (at least logically, even if not necessarily physically). But, Thomson reasoned, the possibility of the completion of the supertask of flicking a lamp on and off infinitely many times creates a contradiction. The lamp is either on or off at the 2 minute mark. If the lamp is on, then there must have been some last time, right before the 2 minute mark, at which it was flicked on. But, such an action must have been followed by a flicking off action since, after all, every action of flicking the lamp on before the 2 minute mark is followed by one at which it is flicked off between that time and the 2 minute mark. So, the lamp cannot be on. Analogously, one can also reason that the lamp cannot be off at the 2 minute mark. So, the lamp cannot be either on or off. So, we have a contradiction. By reductio ad absurdum, the assumption that supertasks are possible must therefore be rejected: supertasks are logically impossible.
Discussion
The status of the lamp and the switch is known for all times strictly less than two minutes. However the question does not state how the sequence finishes, and so the status of the switch at exactly two minutes is indeterminate. Though acceptance of this indeterminacy is resolution enough for some, problems do continue to present themselves under the intuitive assumption that one should be able to determine the status of the lamp and the switch at any time, given full knowledge of all previous statuses and actions taken.
Thomson's lamp
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Mathematical series analogy

The question is similar to determining the value of Grandi's series, i.e. the limit as n tends to infinity of
For even values of n, the above finite series sums to 1; for odd values, it sums to 0. In other words, as n takes the values of each of the non-negative integers 0, 1, 2, 3, ... in turn, the series generates the sequence {1, -1, 1, -1, ...}, representing the changing state of the lamp. The sequence does not converge as n tends to infinity, so neither does the infinite series. Another way of illustrating this problem is to let the series look like this:
The series can be rearranged as:
The unending series in the brackets is exactly the same as the original series S. This means S = 1 - S which implies S = . In fact, this manipulation can be rigorously justified: there are generalized definitions for the sums of series that do assign Grandi's series the value . On the other hand, according to other definitions for the sum of a series this series has no defined sum (the limit does not exist). One of Thomson's objectives in his original 1954 paper is to differentiate supertasks from their series analogies. He writes of the lamp and Grandi's series, "Then the question whether the lamp is on or off is the question: What is the sum of the infinite divergent sequence +1, 1, +1, ? "Now mathematicians do say that this sequence has a sum; they say that its sum is 12. And this answer does not help us, since we attach no sense here to saying that the lamp is half-on. I take this to mean that there is no established method for deciding what is done when a super-task is done. We cannot be expected to pick up this idea, just because we have the idea of a task or tasks having been performed and because we are acquainted with transfinite numbers."[1] Later, he claims that even the divergence of a series does not provide information about its supertask: "The impossibility of a super-task does not depend at all on whether some vaguely-felt-to-be-associated arithmetical sequence is convergent or divergent."[2]
References
[1] Thomson p.6. For the mathematics and its history he cites Hardy and Waismann's books, for which see History of Grandi's series. [2] Thomson p.7
Thomson, James F. (October 1954). "Tasks and Super-Tasks". Analysis (Analysis, Vol. 15, No. 1) 15 (1): 113. doi:10.2307/3326643. JSTOR3326643.
Two envelopes problem
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The two envelopes problem, also known as the exchange paradox, is a brain teaser, puzzle or paradox in logic, philosophy, probability and recreational mathematics, of special interest in decision theory and for the Bayesian interpretation of probability theory. Historically, it arose as a variant of the necktie paradox. A statement of the problem starts with: Let us say you are given two indistinguishable envelopes, each of which contains a positive sum of money. One envelope contains twice as much as the other. You may pick one envelope and keep whatever amount it contains. You pick one envelope at random but before you open it you are offered the possibility to take the other envelope instead. It is possible to give arguments that show that it will be to your advantage to swap envelopes by showing that your expected return on swapping exceeds the sum in your envelope. This leads to the logical absurdity that it is beneficial to continue to swap envelopes indefinitely. A large number of different solutions have been proposed. The usual scenario is that one writer proposes a solution that solves the problem as stated, but then some other writer discovers that by altering the problem a little the paradox is brought back to life again. In this way a family of closely related formulations of the problem is created which are then discussed in the literature. It is common for authors to claim that the solution to the problem is easy, even elementary.[1] However, when investigating these elementary solutions they are not always the same conclusions from one author to the next. Recently, several new papers are published every year regarding the problem and introducing new conclusions. Occasionally, new variants of the problem are introduced.[2]
The problem
The basic setup: You are given two indistinguishable envelopes, each of which contains a positive sum of money. One envelope contains twice as much as the other. You may pick one envelope and keep whatever amount it contains. You pick one envelope at random but before you open it you are offered the possibility to take the other envelope instead.[3] The switching argument: Now suppose you reason as follows: 1. I denote by A the amount in my selected envelope. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. The probability that A is the smaller amount is 1/2, and that it is the larger amount is also 1/2. The other envelope may contain either 2A or A/2. If A is the smaller amount, then the other envelope contains 2A. If A is the larger amount, then the other envelope contains A/2. Thus the other envelope contains 2A with probability 1/2 and A/2 with probability 1/2. So the expected value of the money in the other envelope is
8. This is greater than A, so I gain on average by swapping. 9. After the switch, I can denote that content by B and reason in exactly the same manner as above. 10. I will conclude that the most rational thing to do is to swap back again. 11. To be rational, I will thus end up swapping envelopes indefinitely. 12. As it seems more rational to open just any envelope than to swap indefinitely, we have a contradiction.
Two envelopes problem The puzzle: The puzzle is to find the flaw in the very compelling line of reasoning above.
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A common resolution
A common way to resolve the paradox, both in popular literature and in the academic literature in philosophy, is to observe that A stands for different things at different places in the expected value calculation, step 7 above. In the first term A is the smaller amount while in the second term A is the larger amount. To mix different instances of a variable in the same formula like this is said to be illegitimate, so step 7 is incorrect, and this is the cause of the paradox. According to this analysis, a correct alternative argument would have run on the following lines. Assume that there are only two possible sums that might be in the envelope. Denoting the lower of the two amounts by X, we can rewrite the expected value calculation as
Here X stands for the same thing in every term of the equation. We learn that 1.5X is the average expected value in either of the envelopes. According to the correct calculation there is no need to swap envelopes, and certainly no need to swap indefinitely. Many writers have noted that it is important to be careful to distinguish between random variables, possible values which they might take on in any particular instance, and expected values of random variables. Notice also that there are two sources of uncertainty in the problem: what sums of money go into the envelopes in the first place, and which of the two thereafter gets labelled Envelope A. All writers use probability theory to model the second source of uncertainty, but whether or not the pair of amounts of money (the smaller X and the larger Y) are thought of as random variables varies from writer to writer. This is one reason why quite different resolutions of the paradox seem to come naturally to different writers.
Mathematical details
Let us rewrite the preceding calculations in a more detailed notation which explicitly distinguishes random from not-random quantities (that is a different distinction from the usual distinction in ordinary, deterministic, mathematics between variables and constants). This is useful in order to compare with the next, alternative, resolution. So far we were thinking of the two amounts of money in the two envelopes as being fixed; the only randomness lies in which one goes into which envelope. We called the smaller amount X, let us denote the larger amount by Y. Given the values x and y of X and Y, where y = 2x and x > 0, the problem description tells us (whether or not x and y are known)
for all possible values x of the smaller amount X; there is a corresponding definition of the probability distribution of B given X and Y. In our resolution of the paradox, we guessed that in Step 7 the writer was trying to compute the expected value of B given X=x. Splitting the calculation over the two possibilities for which envelope contains the smaller amount, it is certainly correct to write
At this point the writer correctly substitutes the value 1/2 for both of the conditional probabilities on the right hand side of this equation (Step 2). At the same time he correctly substitutes the random variable B inside the first conditional expectation for 2A, when taking its expectation value given B > A and X = x, and he similarly correctly substitutes the random variable B for A/2 when taking its expectation value given B < A and X = x (Steps 4 and 5). He would then arrive at the completely correct equation
Two envelopes problem However he now proceeds, in the first of the two terms on the right hand side, to replace the expectation value of A given that Envelope A contains the smaller amount and given that the amounts are x and 2x, by the random quantity A itself. Similarly, in the second term on the right hand side he replaces the expectation value of A given now that Envelope A contains the larger amount and given that the amounts are x and 2x, also by the random quantity A itself. The correct substitutions would have been, of course, x and 2x respectively, leading to a correct conclusion . Naturally this coincides with the expectation value of A given X=x. Indeed, in the two contexts in which the random variable A appears on the right hand side, it is standing for two different things, since its distribution has been conditioned on different events. Obviously, A tends to be larger, when we know that it is greater than B and when the two amounts are fixed, and it tends to be smaller, when we know that it is smaller than B and the two amounts are fixed, cf. Schwitzgebel and Dever (2007, 2008). In fact, it is exactly twice as large in the first situation as in the second situation. The preceding resolution was first noted by Bruss in 1996.[4] A concise exposition is given by Falk in 2009.[5] This resolution depends on a particular interpretation of what the writer of the argument is trying to calculate: namely, it assumes he is after the (unconditional) expectation value of what's in Envelope B. In the mathematical literature on Two Envelopes Problem (and in particular, in the literature where it was first introduced to the world), another interpretation is more common, involving the conditional expectation value (conditional on what might be in Envelope A), to which we turn in the next section.
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Introduction to resolutions based on Bayesian probability theory

Here the ways in which the paradox can be resolved depend to a large degree on the assumptions that are made about the things that are not made clear in the setup and the proposed argument for switching.[6] The most usual assumption about the way the envelopes are set up is that a sum of money is put in one envelope and twice that sum is put in another envelope and then one of the two envelopes is selected randomly, called "Envelope A", and given to the player. It is not made clear exactly how the first mentioned sum of money (the smaller of the two sums) is determined and what values it could possibly take and, in particular, whether there is a maximum sum which it might contain.[7][8] It is also not specified whether the player can look in Envelope A before deciding whether or not to switch. A further ambiguity in the paradox is that it is not made clear in the proposed argument whether the amount A in Envelope A is intended to be a constant, a random variable, or some other quantity. If it assumed that there is a maximum sum that can be put in the first envelope then a very simple and mathematically sound resolution is possible within the second interpretation. Step 6 in the proposed line of reasoning is not always true, since if the player holds more than the maximum sum that can be put into the first envelope they must hold the envelope containing the larger sum and are thus certain to lose by switching. Although this may not occur often, when it does the heavy loss incurred by the player means that, on average, there is no advantage in switching. This resolves all practical cases of the problem, whether or not the player looks in their envelope.[9] It can be envisaged, however, that the sums in the two envelopes are not limited. This requires a more careful mathematical analysis, and also uncovers other possible interpretations of the problem. If, for example, the smaller of the two sums of money is considered to be equally likely to be one of infinitely many positive integers, thus without upper limit, it means that the probability that it will be any given number is always zero. This absurd situation is an example of what is known as an improper prior and this is generally considered to resolve the paradox in this case. It is possible to devise a distribution for the sums possible in the first envelope such that the maximum value is unlimited, computation of the expectation of what's in B given what's in A seems to dictate you should switch, and the distribution constitutes a proper prior.[10] In these cases it can be shown that the expected sum in both envelopes is infinite. There is no gain, on average, in swapping.
Two envelopes problem The first two resolutions we present correspond, technically speaking, first to A being a random variable, and secondly to it being a possible value of a random variable (and the expectation being computed is a conditional expectation). At the same time, in the first resolution the two original amounts of money seem to be thought of as being fixed, while in the second they are also thought of as varying. Thus there are two main interpretations of the problem, and two main resolutions.
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Alternative interpretation
The first solution above doesn't explain what's wrong if the player is allowed to open the first envelope before being offered the option to switch. In this case, A stands for the value which is seen then, throughout all subsequent calculations. It also doesn't explain what's wrong, if the player just imagines looking in the first envelope. The mathematical variable A stands for any particular amount he might see there (it is a mathematical variable, a generic possible value of a random variable). The reasoning appears to show that whatever amount he would see there, he would decide to switch. Hence, he does not need to look in the envelope at all: he knows that if he would look, and go through the calculations, they would tell him to switch, whatever he saw in the envelope. In this case, at Steps 6, 7 and 8 of the reasoning, A is any fixed possible value of the amount of money in the first envelope. According to either reading, the previously proposed solution breaks down and another explanation is needed. This interpretation of the two envelopes problem appears in the first publications in which the paradox was introduced, Gardner (1989) and Nalebuff (1989). It is common in the more mathematical literature on the problem.
Nalebuff (1989), Christensen and Utts (1992), Falk and Konold (1992), Blachman, Christensen and Utts (1996),[11] Nickerson and Falk (2006), pointed out that if the amounts of money in the two envelopes have any proper probability distribution representing the player's prior beliefs about the amounts of money in the two envelopes, then it is impossible that whatever the amount A=a in the first envelope might be, it would be equally likely, according to these prior beliefs, that the second contains a/2 or 2a. Thus step 6 of the argument which leads to always switching is a non-sequitur. Mathematical details According to this interpretation, the writer is carrying out the following computation, where he is conditioning now on the value of A, the amount in Envelope A, not on the pair amounts in the two envelopes X and Y:
Completely correctly, and according to Step 5, the two conditional expectation values are evaluated as
However in Step 6 the writer is invoking Steps 2 and 3 to get the two conditional probabilities, and effectively replacing the two conditional probabilities of Envelope A containing the smaller and larger amount, respectively, given the amount actually in that envelope, both by the unconditional probability 1/2: he makes the substitutions
But intuitively we would expect that the larger the amount in A, the more likely it is to be the larger of the two, and vice-versa. And it is a mathematical fact, as we will see in a moment, that it is impossible that both of these conditional probabilities are equal to 1/2 for all possible values of a. In fact, in order for step 6 to be true, whatever a might be, the smaller amount of money in the two envelopes must be equally likely to be between 1 and 2, as between 2 and 4, as between 4 and 8, ... ad infinitum. But there is no way to divide total probability 1 into an infinite
Two envelopes problem number of pieces which are not only all equal to one another, but also all larger than zero. Yet the smaller amount of money in the two envelopes must have probability larger than zero to be in at least one of the just mentioned ranges. To see this, suppose that the chance that the smaller of the two envelopes contains an amount between is and , where n is any whole number, positive or negative, and for definiteness we include the lower limit but
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exclude the upper in each interval. It follows that the conditional probability that the envelope in our hands contains the smaller amount of money of the two, given that its contents are between and , is . If this is equal to 1/2, it follows by simple algebra that , or . This has to be true for all n, an impossibility.
A new variant
Though probability theory can resolve this variant of the paradox, it turns out that examples can be found of proper probability distributions, such that the expected value of the amount in the second envelope given that in the first does exceed the amount in the first, whatever it might be. The first such example was already given by Nalebuff (1989). See also Christensen and Utts (1992)[12] Denote again the amount of money in the first envelope by A and that in the second by B. We think of these as random. Let X be the smaller of the two amounts and Y=2X be the larger. Notice that once we have fixed a probability distribution for X then the joint probability distribution of A,B is fixed, since A,B = X,Y or Y,X each with probability 1/2, independently of X,Y. The bad step 6 in the "always switching" argument led us to the finding for all a, and hence to
the recommendation to switch, whether or not we know a. Now, it turns out that one can quite easily invent proper probability distributions for X, the smaller of the two amounts of money, such that this bad conclusion is still true! One example is analysed in more detail, in a moment. It cannot be true that whatever a, given A=a, B is equally likely to be a/2 or 2a, but it can be true that whatever a, given A=a, B is larger in expected value than a. Suppose for example (Broome, 1995)[13] that the envelope with the smaller amount actually contains 2n dollars with probability 2n/3n+1 where n = 0, 1, 2, These probabilities sum to 1, hence the distribution is a proper prior (for subjectivists) and a completely decent probability law also for frequentists. Imagine what might be in the first envelope. A sensible strategy would certainly be to swap when the first envelope contains 1, as the other must then contain 2. Suppose on the other hand the first envelope contains 2. In that case there are two possibilities: the envelope pair in front of us is either {1, 2} or {2, 4}. All other pairs are impossible. The conditional probability that we are dealing with the {1, 2} pair, given that the first envelope contains 2, is
and consequently the probability it's the {2, 4} pair is 2/5, since these are the only two possibilities. In this derivation, is the probability that the envelope pair is the pair 1 and 2, and Envelope A happens to contain 2; is the probability that the envelope pair is the pair 2 and 4, and (again) Envelope A happens to contain 2. Those are the only two ways in which Envelope A can end up containing the amount 2. It turns out that these proportions hold in general unless the first envelope contains 1. Denote by a the amount we imagine finding in Envelope A, if we were to open that envelope, and suppose that a = 2n for some n 1. In that case the other envelope contains a/2 with probability 3/5 and 2a with probability 2/5. So either the first envelope contains 1, in which case the conditional expected amount in the other envelope is 2, or the first envelope contains a > 1, and though the second envelope is more likely to be smaller than larger, its conditionally expected amount is larger: the conditionally expected amount in Envelope B is
Two envelopes problem which is more than a. This means that the player who looks in Envelope A would decide to switch whatever he saw there. Hence there is no need to look in Envelope A in order to make that decision. This conclusion is just as clearly wrong as it was in the preceding interpretations of the Two Envelopes Problem. But now the flaws noted above don't apply; the a in the expected value calculation is a constant and the conditional probabilities in the formula are obtained from a specified and proper prior distribution.
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Some writers think that the new paradox can be defused.[14] Suppose for all a. As remarked before, this is possible for some probability distributions of X (the smaller amount of money in the two envelopes). Averaging over a, it follows either that , or alternatively that . But A and B have the same probability distribution, and hence the same expectation value, by symmetry (each envelope is equally likely to be the smaller of the two). Thus both have infinite expectation values, and hence so must X too. Thus if we switch for the second envelope because its conditional expected value is larger than what actually is in the first, whatever that might be, we are exchanging an unknown amount of money whose expectation value is infinite for another unknown amount of money with the same distribution and the same infinite expected value. The average amount of money in both envelopes is infinite. Exchanging one for the other simply exchanges an average of infinity with an average of infinity. Probability theory therefore tells us why and when the paradox can occur and explains to us where the sequence of apparently logical steps breaks down. In this situation, Steps 6 and Steps 7 of the standard Two Envelopes argument can be replaced by correct calculations of the conditional probabilities that the other envelope contains half or twice what's in A, and a correct calculation of the conditional expectation of what's in B given what's in A. Indeed, that conditional expected value is larger than what's in A. But because the unconditional expected amount in A is infinite, this does not provide a reason to switch, because it does not guarantee that on average you'll be better off after switching. One only has this mathematical guarantee in the situation that the unconditional expectation value of what's in A is finite. But then the reason for switching without looking in the envelope, for all a, simply cannot arise. Many economists prefer to argue that in a real-life situation, the expectation of the amount of money in an envelope cannot be infinity, for instance, because the total amount of money in the world is bounded; therefore any probability distribution describing the real world would have to assign probability 0 to the amount being larger than the total amount of money on the world. Therefore the expectation of the amount of money under this distribution cannot be infinity. The resolution of the second paradox, for such writers, is that the postulated probability distributions cannot arise in a real-life situation. These are similar arguments as used to explain the St. Petersburg Paradox. We certainly have a counter-intuitive situation. If the two envelopes are set up exactly as the Broome recipe requires (not with real money, but just with numbers), then it is a fact that in many, many repetitions, the average of the number written on the piece of paper in Envelope B, taken over all those occasions where the number in envelope A is, say, 4, is definitely larger than 4. And the same thing holds with B and A exchanged! And the same thing holds with the number 4 replaced by any other possible number! This might be hard to imagine, but we have now shown how it can be arranged. There is no logical contradiction because we have seen why, logically, there is not implication that we should switch envelopes. There does remain a conflict with our intuition. The Broome paradox can be resolved at a purely formal level by showing where the error in the sequence of apparently logical deductions occurs. But one still is left with a strange situation which simply does not feel right. One can try to soften the blow by giving real-world reasons why this counter-intuitive situation could not occur in reality (with real money). As far as practical economics is concerned, we need not worry about the insult to our intuition.
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Foundations of mathematical economics

In mathematical economics and the theory of utility, which explains economic behaviour in terms of expected utility, there remains a problem to be resolved.[15] In the real world we presumably wouldn't indefinitely exchange one envelope for the other (and probability theory, as just discussed, explains quite well why calculations of conditional expectations might mislead us). Yet the expected utility based theory of economic behaviour says (or assumes) that people do (or should) make economic decisions by maximizing expected utility, conditional on present knowledge, and hence predicts that people would (or should) switch indefinitely. Fortunately for mathematical economics and the theory of utility, it is generally agreed that as an amount of money increases, its utility to the owner increases less and less, and ultimately there is a finite upper bound to the utility of all possible amounts of money. We can pretend that the amount of money in the whole world is as large as we like, yet the owner of all that money will not have more and more use of it, the more is in his possession. For decision theory and utility theory, the two envelope paradox illustrates that unbounded utility does not exist in the real world, so fortunately there is no need to build a decision theory which allows unbounded utility, let alone utility of infinite expectation.
Controversy among theoretical economists

As mentioned above, any distribution producing this variant of the paradox must have an infinite mean. So before the player opens an envelope the expected gain from switching is " ", which is not defined. In the words of Chalmers this is "just another example of a familiar phenomenon, the strange behaviour of infinity".[16] Chalmers suggests that decision theory generally breaks down when confronted with games having a diverging expectation, and compares it with the situation generated by the classical St. Petersburg paradox. However, Clark and Shackel argue that this blaming it all on "the strange behaviour of infinity" doesn't resolve the paradox at all; neither in the single case nor the averaged case. They provide a simple example of a pair of random variables both having infinite mean but where it is clearly sensible to prefer one to the other, both conditionally and on average.[17] They argue that decision theory should be extended so as to allow infinite expectation values in some situations. Most mathematical economists are happy to exclude infinite expected utility by assumption, hence excluding the paradox altogether. Some try to generalise some of the existing theory to allow infinite expectations. They have to come up with clever ways to get around the paradoxical example just given.
Non-probabilistic variant
The logician Raymond Smullyan questioned if the paradox has anything to do with probabilities at all. He did this by expressing the problem in a way which doesn't involve probabilities. The following plainly logical arguments lead to conflicting conclusions: 1. Let the amount in the envelope chosen by the player be A. By swapping, the player may gain A or lose A/2. So the potential gain is strictly greater than the potential loss. 2. Let the amounts in the envelopes be X and 2X. Now by swapping, the player may gain X or lose X. So the potential gain is equal to the potential loss.
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A number of solutions have been put forward. Albers, Kooi, and Schaafsma (2005) consider that without adding probability (or other) ingredients to the problem, Smullyan's arguments do not give any reason to swap or not to swap, in any case. Thus there is no paradox. This dismissive attitude is common among writers from probability and economics: Smullyan's paradox arises precisely because he takes no account whatever of probability or utility. Rather careful and often highly technical analyses have been made by many authors from the field of logic. Though solutions differ, they all pinpoint semantic issues concerned with counterfactual reasoning. We want to compare the amount that we would gain by switching if we would gain by switching, with the amount we would lose by switching if we would indeed lose by switching. However, we cannot both gain and lose by switching at the same time. We are asked to compare two incompatible situations. Only one of them can factually occur, the other will be a counterfactual situation, somehow imaginary. In order to compare them at all, we must somehow "align" the two situations, we must give them some definite points in common. James Chase (2002), for instance, argues that the second argument is correct because it does correspond to the way to align two situations (one in which we gain, the other in which we lose) which is preferably indicated by the problem description.[18] Also Bernard Katz and Doris Olin (2007) argue this point of view.[19] In the second argument, we consider the amounts of money in the two envelopes as being fixed; what varies is which one is first given to the player. Because that was an arbitrary and physical choice, the counterfactual world in which the player, counterfactually, got the other envelope to the one he was actually (factually) given is a highly meaningful counterfactual world and hence the comparison between gains and losses in the two worlds is meaningful. This comparison is uniquely indicated by the problem description, in which two amounts of money are put in the two envelopes first, and only after that is one chosen arbitrarily and given to the player. In the first argument, however, we consider the amount of money in the envelope first given to the player as fixed and consider the situations where the second envelope contains either half or twice that amount. This would only be a reasonable counterfactual world if in reality the envelopes had been filled as follows: first, some amount of money is placed in the specific envelope which will be given to the player; and secondly, by some arbitrary process, the other envelope is filled (arbitrarily or randomly) either with double or with half of that amount of money. By the way, by interchanging the points of view of the owners of the two envelopes, it is easy to write down a third argument which gives the opposite advice as that of the first argument: definitely, do not switch! Byeong-Uk Yi (2009), on the other hand, argues that comparing the amount you would gain if you would gain by switching with the amount you would lose if you would lose by switching is a meaningless exercise from the outset.[20] According to his analysis, all three implications (switch, indifferent, don't switch) are incorrect. He analyses Smullyan's arguments in detail, showing that intermediate steps are being taken, and pinpointing exactly where an incorrect inference is made according to his formalization of counterfactual inference. An important difference with Chase's analysis is that he does not take account of the part of the story where we are told that which envelope is called Envelope A is decided completely at random. Thus Chase puts probability back into the problem description in order to conclude that arguments 1 and 3 are incorrect, argument 2 is correct, while Yi keeps "two envelope problem without probability" completely free of probability, and comes to the conclusion that there are no reasons to prefer any action. This corresponds to the view of Albers et al., that without probability ingredient, there is no way to argue that one action is better than another, anyway. In perhaps the most recent paper on the subject, Bliss argues that the source of the paradox is that when one mistakenly believes in the possibility of a larger payoff that does not, in actuality, exist, one is mistaken by a larger margin than when one believes in the possibility of a smaller payoff that does not actually exist.[21] If, for example, the envelopes contained $5.00 and $10.00 respectively, a player who opened the $10.00 envelope would expect the possibility of a $20.00 payout that simply does not exist. Were that player to open the $5.00 envelope instead, he would believe in the possibility of a $2.50 payout, which constitutes a smaller deviation from the true value.
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Extensions to the Problem

Since the two envelopes problem became popular, many authors have studied the problem in depth in the situation in which the player has a prior probability distribution of the values in the two envelopes, and does look in Envelope A. One of the most recent such publications is by McDonnell and Douglas (2009), who also consider some further generalizations.[22] If a priori we know that the amount in the smaller envelope is a whole number of some currency units, then the problem is determined, as far as probability theory is concerned, by the probability mass function describing our prior beliefs that the smaller amount is any number x = 1,2, ... ; the summation over all values of x being equal to 1. It follows that given the amount a in Envelope A, the amount in Envelope B is certainly 2a if a is an odd number. However, if a is even, then the amount in Envelope B is 2a with probability , and a/2 with probability . If one would like to switch envelopes if the expectation value of what is in the other is larger than what we have in ours, then a simple calculation shows that one should switch if , keep to Envelope A if . If on the other hand the smaller amount of money can vary continuously, and we represent our prior beliefs about it with a probability density , thus a function which integrates to one when we integrate over x running from zero to infinity, then given the amount a in Envelope A, the other envelope contains 2a with probability , and a/2 with probability . If again we decide to switch or not according to the expectation value of what's in the other envelope, the criterion for switching now becomes . The difference between the results for discrete and continuous variables may surprise many readers. Speaking intuitively, this is explained as follows. Let h be a small quantity and imagine that the amount of money we see when we look in Envelope A is rounded off in such a way that differences smaller than h are not noticeable, even though actually it varies continuously. The probability that the smaller amount of money is in an interval around a of length h, and Envelope A contains the smaller amount is approximately . The probability that the larger amount of money is in an interval around a of length h corresponds to the smaller amount being in an interval of length h/2 around a/2. Hence the probability that the larger amount of money is in a small interval around a of length h and Envelope A contains the larger amount is approximately . Thus, given Envelope A contains an amount about equal to a, the probability it is the smaller of the two is roughly . If the player only wants to end up with the larger amount of money, and does not care about expected amounts, then in the discrete case he should switch if a is an odd number, or if a is even and . In the continuous case he should switch if . Some authors prefer to think of probability in a frequentist sense. If the player knows the probability distribution used by the organizer to determine the smaller of the two values, then the analysis would proceed just as in the case when p or f represents subjective prior beliefs. However, what if we take a frequentist point of view, but the player does not know what probability distribution is used by the organiser to fix the amounts of money in any one instance? Thinking of the arranger of the game and the player as two parties in a two person game, puts the problem into the range of game theory. The arranger's strategy consists of a choice of a probability distribution of x, the smaller of the two amounts. Allowing the player also to use randomness in making his decision, his strategy is determined by his choosing a probability of switching for each possible amount of money a he might see in Envelope A. In this section we so far only discussed fixed strategies, that is strategies for which q only takes the values 0 and 1, and we saw that the player is fine with a fixed strategy, if he knows the strategy of the organizer. In the next section we will see that randomized strategies can be useful when the organizer's strategy is not known.
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Randomized solutions
Suppose as in the previous section that the player is allowed to look in the first envelope before deciding whether to switch or to stay. We'll think of the contents of the two envelopes as being two positive numbers, not necessarily two amounts of money. The player is allowed either to keep the number in Envelope A, or to switch and take the number in Envelope B. We'll drop the assumption that one number is exactly twice the other, we'll just suppose that they are different and positive. On the other hand, instead of trying to maximize expectation values, we'll just try to maximize the chance that we end up with the larger number. In this section we ask the question, is it possible for the player to make his choice in such a way that he goes home with the larger number with probability strictly greater than half, however the organizer has filled the two envelopes? We are given no information at all about the two numbers in the two envelopes, except that they are different, and strictly greater than zero. The numbers were written down on slips of paper by the organiser, put into the two envelopes. The envelopes were then shuffled, the player picks one, calls it Envelope A, and opens it. We are not told any joint probability distribution of the two numbers. We are not asking for a subjectivist solution. We must think of the two numbers in the envelopes as chosen by the arranger of the game according to some possibly random procedure, completely unknown to us, and fixed. Think of each envelope as simply containing a positive number and such that the two numbers are not the same. The job of the player is to end up with the envelope with the larger number. This variant of the problem, as well as its solution, is attributed by McDonnell and Abbott, and by earlier authors, to information theorist Thomas M. Cover. Counter-intuitive though it might seem, there is a way that the player can decide whether to switch or to stay so that he has a larger chance than 1/2 of finishing with the bigger number, however the two numbers are chosen by the arranger of the game. However, it is only possible with a so-called randomized algorithm, that means to say, the player needs himself to be able to generate random numbers. Suppose he is able to think up a random number, let's call it Z, such that the probability that Z is larger than any particular quantity z is exp(-z). Note that exp(-z) starts off equal to 1 at z=0 and decreases strictly and continuously as z increases, tending to zero as z tends to infinity. So the chance is 0 that Z is exactly equal to any particular number, and there is a positive probability that Z lies between any two particular different numbers. The player compares his Z with the number in Envelope A. If Z is smaller he keeps the envelope. If Z is larger he switches to the other envelope. Think of the two numbers in the envelopes as fixed (though of course unknown to the player). Think of the player's random Z as a probe with which he decides whether the number in Envelope A is small or large. If it is small compared to Z he will switch, if it is large compared to Z he will stay. If both numbers are smaller than the player's Z then his strategy does not help him, he ends up with the Envelope B, which is equally likely to be the larger or the smaller of the two. If both numbers are larger than Z his strategy does not help him either, he ends up with the first Envelope A, which again is equally likely to be the larger or the smaller of the two. However if Z happens to be in between the two numbers, then his strategy leads him correctly to keep Envelope A if its contents are larger than those of B, but to switch to Envelope B if A has smaller contents than B. Altogether, this means that he ends up with the envelope with the larger number with probability strictly larger than 1/2. To be precise, the probability that he ends with the "winning envelope" is 1/2 + Prob(Z falls between the two numbers)/2. In practice, the number Z we have described could be determined to the necessary degree of accuracy as follows. Toss a fair coin many times, and convert the sequence of heads and tails into the binary representation of a number U between 0 and 1: for instance, HTHHTH... becomes the binary representation of u=0.101101.. . In this way, we generate a random number U, uniformly distributed between 0 and 1. Then define Z = - ln (U) where "ln" stands for natural logarithm, i.e., logarithm to base e. Note that we just need to toss the coin long enough to be able to see for sure whether Z is smaller or larger than the number a in the first envelope, we do not need to go on for ever. We will only need to toss the coin a finite (though random) number of times: at some point we can be sure that the outcomes
Two envelopes problem of further coin tosses is not going to change the outcome of the comparison. The particular probability law (the so-called standard exponential distribution) used to generate the random number Z in this problem is not crucial. Any probability distribution over the positive real numbers which assigns positive probability to any interval of positive length will do the job. This problem can be considered from the point of view of game theory, where we make the game a two-person zero-sum game with outcomes win or lose, depending on whether the player ends up with the higher or lower amount of money. The organiser chooses the joint distribution of the amounts of money in both envelopes, and the player chooses the distribution of Z. The game does not have a "solution" (or saddle point) in the sense of game theory. This is an infinite game and von Neumann's minimax theorem does not apply.[23]
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History of the paradox

The envelope paradox dates back at least to 1953, when Belgian mathematician Maurice Kraitchik proposed a puzzle in his book Recreational Mathematics concerning two equally rich men who meet and compare their beautiful neckties, presents from their wives, wondering which tie actually cost more money. It is also mentioned in a 1953 book on elementary mathematics and mathematical puzzles by the mathematician John Edensor Littlewood, who credited it to the physicist Erwin Schroedinger. Martin Gardner popularized Kraitchik's puzzle in his 1982 book Aha! Gotcha, in the form of a wallet game: Two people, equally rich, meet to compare the contents of their wallets. Each is ignorant of the contents of the two wallets. The game is as follows: whoever has the least money receives the contents of the wallet of the other (in the case where the amounts are equal, nothing happens). One of the two men can reason: "I have the amount A in my wallet. That's the maximum that I could lose. If I win (probability 0.5), the amount that I'll have in my possession at the end of the game will be more than 2A. Therefore the game is favourable to me." The other man can reason in exactly the same way. In fact, by symmetry, the game is fair. Where is the mistake in the reasoning of each man? In 1988 and 1989, Barry Nalebuff presented two different two-envelope problems, each with one envelope containing twice what's in the other, and each with computation of the expectation value 5A/4. The first paper just presents the two problems, the second paper discusses many solutions to both of them. The second of his two problems is the one which is nowadays the most common and which is presented in this article. According to this version, the two envelopes are filled first, then one is chosen at random and called Envelope A. Martin Gardner independently mentioned this same version in his 1989 book Penrose Tiles to Trapdoor Ciphers and the Return of Dr Matrix. Barry Nalebuff's asymmetric variant, often known as the Ali Baba problem, has one envelope filled first, called Envelope A, and given to Ali. Then a coin is tossed to decide whether Envelope B should contain half or twice that amount, and only then given to Baba. In the Ali-Baba problem, it is a priori clear that (even if they don't look in their envelopes) Ali should want to switch, while Baba should want to keep what he has been given. The Ali-Baba paradox comes about by imagining Baba working through the steps of the two-envelopes problem argument (second interpretation), and wrongly coming to the conclusion that he too wants to switch, just like Ali.
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[1] McDonnell, Mark D.; Grant, Alex J.; Land, Ingmar; Vellambi, Badri N.; Abbott, Derek; Lever, Ken (2011). "Gain from the two-envelope problem via information asymmetry: on the suboptimality of randomized switching". Proceedings of the Royal Society, A to appear. doi:10.1098/rspa.2010.0541. [2] A complete list of published and unpublished sources in chronological order can be found here [3] Falk, Ruma (2008). "The Unrelenting Exchange Paradox". Teaching Statistics 30 (3): 8688. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9639.2008.00318.x. [4] Bruss, F.T. (1996). "The Fallacy of the Two Envelopes Problem". The Mathematical Scientist 21 (2): 112119.. [5] Falk, Ruma (2009). "An inside look at the two envelope paradox". Teaching Statistics 31 (2): 3941.. [6] Casper Albers, Trying to resolve the two-envelope problem, Chapter 2 of his thesis Distributional Inference: The Limits of Reason, March 2003. (Has also appeared as Albers, Casper J.; Kooi, Barteld P. and Schaafsma, Willem (2005), Trying to resolve the two-envelope problem, Synthese, 145(1): 89109 p91) [7] Ruma Falk, Raymond Nickerson, An inside look at the two envelopes paradox, Teaching Statistics 31(2): 39-41. [8] Jeff Chen, The Puzzle of the Two-Envelope Puzzlea Logical Approach, published online p274 [9] Barry Nalebuff, Puzzles: The Other Persons Envelope is Always Greener, Journal of Economic Perspectives 3(1): 171181. [10] John Broome, The Two-envelope Paradox, Analysis 55(1): 611. [11] Blachman, N. M.; Christensen, R.; Utts, J. (1996). The American Statistician 50 (1): 9899. [12] Christensen, R.; Utts, J. (1992). The American Statistician 46 (4): 274276., the letters to editor and responses by Christensen and Utts by D.A. Binder (1993; vol. 47, nr. 2, p. 160) and Ross (1994; vol. 48, nr. 3, p. 267), and a letter with corrections to the original article by N.M. Blachman, R. Christensen and J.M. Utts (1996; vol. 50, nr. 1, pp. 98-99) [13] Here we present some details of a famous example due to John Broome of a proper probability distribution of the amounts of money in the two envelopes, for which for all a. Broome, John (1995). "The Two-envelope Paradox". Analysis 55 (1): 611. doi:10.1093/analys/55.1.6. [14] Binder, D. A. (1993). The American Statistician 47 (2): 160. (letters to the editor, comment on Christensen and Utts (1992) [15] Fallis, D. (2009). "Taking the Two Envelope Paradox to the Limit". Southwest Philosophy Review 25 (2). [16] Chalmers, David J. (2002). "The St. Petersburg Two-Envelope Paradox". Analysis 62 (2): 155157. doi:10.1093/analys/62.2.155. [17] Clark, M.; Shackel, N. (2000). "The Two-Envelope Paradox". Mind 109 (435): 415442. doi:10.1093/mind/109.435.415. [18] Chase, James (2002). "The Non-Probabilistic Two Envelope Paradox". Analysis 62 (2): 157160. doi:10.1093/analys/62.2.157. [19] Katz, Bernard; Olin, Doris (2007). "A tale of two envelopes". Mind 116 (464): 903926. doi:10.1093/mind/fzm903. [20] Byeong-Uk Yi (2009). The Two-envelope Paradox With No Probability (http:/ / philosophy. utoronto. ca/ people/ linked-documents-people/ c two envelope with no probability. pdf). . [21] Bliss (2012). A Concise Resolution to the Two Envelope Paradox (http:/ / arxiv. org/ abs/ 1202. 4669). . [22] McDonnell, M. D.; Abott, D. (2009). "Randomized switching in the two-envelope problem". Proceedings of the Royal Society A 465 (2111): 33093322. doi:10.1098/rspa.2009.0312. [23] http:/ / www. mit. edu/ ~emin/ writings/ envelopes. html
von Neumann paradox
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von Neumann paradox

In mathematics, the von Neumann paradox, named after John von Neumann, is the idea that one can break a planar figure such as the unit square into sets of points and subject each set to an area-preserving affine transformation such that the result is two planar figures of the same size as the original. This was proved in 1929 by John von Neumann, assuming the axiom of choice. It followed on the work of Stefan Banach and Alfred Tarski, who proved a similar paradox in three dimensional space (the BanachTarski paradox), but using only isometric transformations (Euclidean motions). Banach and Tarski had proved that, using isometric transformations, the result of taking apart and reassembling a two-dimensional figure would necessarily have the same area as the original. This would make creating two unit squares out of one impossible. But von Neumann realized that the trick of such so-called paradoxical decompositions was the use of a group of transformations which include as a subgroup a free group with two generators. The group of area preserving transformations (whether the special linear group or the special affine group) contains such subgroups, and this opens the possibility of performing paradoxical decompositions using them.
Sketch of the method

The following is an informal description of the method found by von Neumann. Assume that we have a free group H of area-preserving linear transformations generated by two transformations, and , which are not far from the identity element. Being a free group means that all the its elements can be expressed uniquely in the form for some n, where the 's and 's are all non-zero integers, except possiblly the first u and the last v. We can divide this group into two parts: those that start on the left with to some non-zero power (let's call this set A) and those that start with to some power (that is, is zerolet's call this set B, and it includes the identity). If we operate on any point in Euclidean 2-space by the various elements of H we get what is called the orbit of that point. All the points in the plane can thus be classed into orbits, of which there are an infinite number with the cardinality of the continuum. According to the axiom of choice, we can choose one point from each orbit and call the set of these points M. We exclude the origin, which is a fixed point in H. If we then operate on M by all the elements of H, we generate each point of the plane (except the origin) exactly once. If we operate on M by all the elements of A or of B, we get two disjoint sets whose union is all points but the origin. Now let us take some figure such as the unit square or the unit disk. We then choose another figure totally inside it, such as a smaller square, centred at the origin. We can cover the big figure with several copies of the small figure, albeit with some points covered by two or more copies. We can then assign each point of the big figure to one of the copies of the small figure. Let us call the sets corresponding to each copy . We shall now make a one-to-one mapping of each point in the big figure to a point in its interior, using only area-preserving transformations! We take the points belonging to and translate them so that the centre of the square is at the origin. We then take those points in it which are in the set A defined above and operate on them by the area-preserving operation . Note that this puts them into set B. We then take the points belonging to B and operate on them with 2. They will now still be in B, but the set of these points will be disjoint from the previous set. We proceed in this manner, using 3 on the A points from C2 (after centring it) and 4 on its B points, and so on. In this way, we have mapped all points from the big figure (except some fixed points) in a one-to-one manner to B type points not too far from the centre, and within the big figure. We can then make a second mapping to A type points. At this point we can apply the method of the Cantor-Bernstein-Schroeder theorem. This theorem tells us that if we have an injection from set D to set E (such as from the big figure to the A type points in it), and an injection from E to D (such as the identity mapping from the A type points in the figure to themselves), then there is a one-to-one correspondence between D and E. In other words, having a mapping from the big figure to a subset of the A points in
von Neumann paradox it, we can make a mapping (a bijection) from the big figure to all the A points in it. (In some regions points are mapped to themselves, in others they are mapped using the mapping described in the previous paragraph.) Likewise we can make a mapping from the big figure to all the B points in it. So looking at this the other way round, we can separate the figure into its A and B points, and then map each of these back into the whole figure (that is, containing both kinds of points)! We have glossed over some things, like how to handle fixed points. It turns out that we have to use more mappings and more sets to work around this.
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Consequences
The paradox for the square can be strengthened as follows: Any two bounded subsets of the Euclidean plane with non-empty interiors are equidecomposable with respect to the area-preserving affine maps. This has consequences concerning the problem of measure. As von Neumann notes, "Infolgedessen gibt es bereits in der Ebene kein nichtnegatives additives Ma (wo das Einheitsquadrat das Ma 1 hat), dass [sic] gegenber allen Abbildungen von A2 invariant wre."[1] "In accordance with this, already in the plane there is no nonnegative additive measure (for which the unit square has a measure of 1), which is invariant with respect to all transformations belonging to A2 [the group of area-preserving affine transformations]." To explain this a bit more, the question of whether a finitely additive measure exists, that is preserved under certain transformations, depends on what transformations are allowed. The Banach measure of sets in the plane, which is preserved by translations and rotations, is not preserved by non-isometric transformations even when they do preserve the area of polygons. As explained above, the points of the plane (other than the origin) can be divided into two dense sets which we may call A and B. If the A points of a given polygon are transformed by a certain area-preserving transformation and the B points by another, both sets can become subsets of the B points in two new polygons. The new polygons have the same area as the old polygon, but the two transformed sets cannot have the same measure as before (since they contain only part of the B points), and therefore there is no measure that "works". The class of groups isolated by von Neumann in the course of study of BanachTarski phenomenon turned out to be very important for many areas of mathematics: these are amenable groups, or groups with an invariant mean, and include all finite and all solvable groups. Generally speaking, paradoxical decompositions arise when the group used for equivalences in the definition of equidecomposability is not amenable.
Recent progress
Von Neumann's paper left open the possibility of a paradoxical decomposition of the interior of the unit square with respect to the linear group SL(2,R) (Wagon, Question 7.4). In 2000, Mikls Laczkovich proved that such a decomposition exists.[2] More precisely, let A be the family of all bounded subsets of the plane with non-empty interior and at a positive distance from the origin, and B the family of all planar sets with the property that a union of finitely many translates under some elements of SL(2,R) contains a punctured neighbourhood of the origin. Then all sets in the family A are SL(2,R)-equidecomposable, and likewise for the sets in B. It follows that both families consist of paradoxical sets.
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References
[1] On p. 85 of: von Neumann, J. (1929), "Zur allgemeinen Theorie des Masses" (http:/ / matwbn. icm. edu. pl/ ksiazki/ fm/ fm13/ fm1316. pdf), Fundamenta Mathematica 13: 73116, [2] Laczkovich, Mikls (1999), "Paradoxical sets under SL2[R]", Ann. Univ. Sci. Budapest. Etvs Sect. Math. 42: 141145
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Miscellaneous
Bracketing paradox
In linguistic morphology, the term bracketing paradox refers to morphologically complex words which apparently have more than one incompatible analysis, or bracketing, simultaneously. One type of a bracketing paradox found in English is exemplified by words like unhappier or uneasier.[1] The synthetic comparative suffix -er generally occurs with monosyllabic adjectives and a small class of disyllabic adjectives with the primary (and only) stress on the first syllable. Other adjectives take the analytic comparative more. Thus, we have older and grumpier, but more correct and more restrictive. This suggests that a word like uneasier must be formed by combining the suffix er with the adjective easy, since uneasy is a three syllable word:
However, uneasier means "more uneasy", not "more difficult". Thus, from a semantic perspective, uneasier must be a combination of er with the adjective uneasy:
however violates the morphophonological rules for the suffix -er. Phenomena such as this have been argued to represent a mismatch between different levels of grammatical structure.[2] Another type of English bracketing paradox is found in compound words that are a name for a professional of a particular discipline, preceded by a modifier that narrows that discipline: nuclear physicist, historical linguist, political scientist, etc.[3][4] Taking nuclear physicist as an example, we see that there are at least two reasonable ways that the compound word can be bracketed (ignoring the fact that nuclear itself is morphologically complex): 1. 2. - one who studies physics, and who happens also to be nuclear - one who studies nuclear physics, a subfield of physics that deals with nuclear
phenomena What is interesting to many morphologists about this type of bracketing paradox in English is that the correct bracketing 2 (correct in the sense that this is the way that a native speaker would understand it) does not follow the usual bracketing pattern 1 typical for most compound words in English.
References
[1] Pesetsky, D. 1985. "Morphology and logical form." Linguistic Inquiry 16:193-246. [2] Sproat, R. 1988. "Bracketing paradoxes, cliticization, and other topics: The mapping between syntactic and phonological structure." In Everaert et al. (eds), Morphology and Modularity. Amsterdam: North-Holland. [3] Williams, E. 1981. "On the notions 'lexically related' and 'head of a word.'" Linguistic Inquiry 12:245-274. [4] Spencer, A. 1988. "Bracketing paradoxes and the English lexicon." Language 64:663-682.
Buridan's ass
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Buridan's ass
Buridan's ass is an illustration of a paradox in philosophy in the conception of free will. It refers to a hypothetical situation wherein an ass is placed precisely midway between a stack of hay and a pail of water. Since the paradox assumes the ass will always go to whichever is closer, it will die of both hunger and thirst since it cannot make any rational decision to choose one over the other.[1] The paradox is named after the 14th century French philosopher Jean Buridan, whose philosophy of moral determinism it satirizes. A common variant of the paradox substitutes two identical piles of hay for the hay and water; the ass, unable to choose between the two, dies of hunger.
History
Political cartoon ca. 1900, showing the United States Congress as Buridan's ass, hesitating between a Panama route or a Nicaragua route for an Atlantic-Pacific canal.
The paradox predates Buridan; it dates to antiquity, being found in Aristotle's De Caelo, where Aristotle mentions an example of a man who makes no move because he is as hungry as he is thirsty and is positioned exactly between food and drink. One commentator notes that a similar paradox is attributed to medieval Persian philosopher Al-Ghazali, who referred to a camel starving between two groves of date trees.[2] Although Buridan nowhere discusses this specific problem, its relevance is that he did advocate a moral determinism whereby, save for ignorance or impediment, a human faced by alternative courses of action must always choose the greater good. Buridan allowed that the will could delay the choice to more fully assess the possible outcomes of the choice. Later writers satirised this view in terms of an ass which, confronted by both food and water must necessarily die of both hunger and thirst while pondering a decision.
Discussion
Some proponents of hard determinism have granted the unpleasantness of the scenario, but have denied that it illustrates a true paradox, since one does not contradict oneself in suggesting that a man might die between two equally plausible routes of action. For example, Baruch Spinoza in his Ethics, suggests that a person who sees two options as truly equally compelling cannot be fully rational: [I]t may be objected, if man does not act from free will, what will happen if the incentives to action are equally balanced, as in the case of Buridan's ass? [In reply,] I am quite ready to admit, that a man placed in the equilibrium described (namely, as perceiving nothing but hunger and thirst, a certain food and a certain drink, each equally distant from him) would die of hunger and thirst. If I am asked, whether such a one should not rather be considered an ass than a man; I answer, that I do not know, neither do I know how a man should be considered, who hangs himself, or how we should consider children, fools, madmen, &c. Baruch Spinoza, Ethics, Book 2, Scholium Other writers have opted to deny the validity of the illustration. A typical counter-argument is that rationality as described in the paradox is so limited as to be a straw man version of the real thing, which does allow the consideration of meta-arguments. In other words, it is entirely rational to recognize that both choices are equally good and arbitrarily (randomly) pick one instead of starving. This counter-argument is sometimes used as an attempted justification for faith or intuitivity (called by Aristotle noetic or noesis). The argument is that, like the starving ass, we must make a choice in order to avoid being frozen in endless doubt. Other counter-arguments exist.
Buridan's ass
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Buridan's principle
The situation of Buridan's ass was given a mathematical basis in a paper by Leslie Lamport, in which Lamport presents an argument that, given certain assumptions about continuity in a simple mathematical model of the Buridan's ass problem, there will always be some starting conditions under which the ass will starve to death, no matter what strategy it takes. Lamport calls this result Buridans principle, and states it as: A discrete decision based upon an input having a continuous range of values cannot be made within a bounded length of time.[3]
Application to digital logic: metastability

A version of Buridan's principle actually occurs in electrical engineering. Specifically, the input to a digital logic gate must convert a continuous voltage value into either a 0 or a 1 which is typically sampled and then processed. If the input is changing and at an intermediate value when sampled, the input stage acts like a comparator. The voltage value can then be likened to the position of the ass, and the values 0 and 1 represent the bales of hay. Like the situation of the starving ass, there exists an input on which the converter cannot make a proper decision, resulting in a metastable state. Having the converter make an arbitrary choice in ambiguous situations does not solve the problem, as the boundary between ambiguous values and unambiguous values introduces another binary decision with its own metastable state.
References
[1] "Buridan's ass: Oxford Companion to Phrase and Fable" (http:/ / www. encyclopedia. com/ doc/ 1O214-Buridansass. html). Encyclopedia.com. . Retrieved 2009-12-15. [2] Kane, Robert (2005). A Contemporary Introduction to Free Will. New York: Oxford. pp.37. [3] Leslie Lamport (December 1984). "Buridan's Principle" (http:/ / research. microsoft. com/ users/ lamport/ pubs/ buridan. pdf). . Retrieved 2010-07-09.
Bibliography
The Columbia Encyclopedia (6th ed.). 2006. Knowles, Elizabeth (2006). The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. Mawson, T.J. (2005). Belief in God. New York, NY: Oxford University (Clarendon) Press. p.201. Rescher, Nicholas (1959/60). "Choice Without Preference: A Study of the History and of the Logic of the Problem of Buridans Ass". Kant-Studien 51: 14275. Zupko, Jack (2003). John Buridan: Portrait of a Fourteenth-Century Arts Master. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press. pp.258, 400n71. E. Ullmann-Margalit and S. Morgenbesser, "Picking and Choos- ing," Social Research, XLIV (1977), 757-785.
External links
Vassiliy Lubchenko (August 2008). "Competing interactions create functionality through frustration" (http:// www.pnas.org/content/105/31/10635.full). Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 105 (31): 106356. doi:10.1073/pnas.0805716105. PMC2504771. PMID18669666. Definition of term at wordsmith.org (http://wordsmith.org/words/buridans_ass.html)
Buttered cat paradox
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The buttered cat paradox is a paradox based on the tongue-in-cheek combination of two adages: Cats always land on their feet. Buttered toast always lands buttered side down. The paradox arises when one considers what would happen if one attached a piece of buttered toast (butter side up) to the back of a cat, then dropped the cat from a large height. The buttered cat paradox, submitted by artist John Frazee of Kingston, New York, won a 1993 OMNI magazine competition about paradoxes.[1]
Thought experiments
Some people jokingly maintain that the experiment will produce an anti-gravity effect. They propose that as the cat falls towards the ground, it will slow down and start to rotate, eventually reaching a steady state of hovering a short distance from the ground while rotating at high speed as both the buttered side of the toast and the cats feet attempt to land on the ground.[2] In June 2003, Kimberly Miner won a Student Academy Award for her film Perpetual Motion.[3] Miner based her film on a paper written by a high-school friend that explored the potential implications of the cat and buttered toast idea.[4][5]
In humor
A cartoon illustration of the thought
experiment. The faux paradox has captured the imagination of science-oriented humorists. Testing the theory is the main theme in an episode of the comic book strip Jack B. Quick, the title character seeks to test this theory, leading to the cat hovering above the ground, with the cat's wagging tail providing propulsion. The March 31, 2005, strip of the webcomic Bunny also explored the idea in the guise of a plan for a "Perpetual Motion MoggieToast 5k Power Generator", based on Sod's Law.[6] In Science Askew, Donald E. Simanek comments on this phenomenon.[7]
The idea appeared on the British panel game QI, where the idea was discussed. As well as talking about the idea, they also brought up other questions regarding the paradox. These included "Would it still work if you used margarine?", "Would it still work if you used I Can't Believe It's Not Butter?", and "What if the toast was covered in something that was not butter, but the cat thought it was butter?", the idea being that it would act like a placebo.[8]
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Cat righting reflex

In reality, cats do possess the ability to turn themselves right side up in mid-air if they should fall upside-down, known as the cat righting reflex, which enables them to land on their feet if dropped from sufficient height (about 30cm). In light of this reflex, there is no buttered cat paradox in reality as the cat would have agency over the outcome, where as the piece of toast, as an inanimate object, would not.
References
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] Morris, Scot (July, 1993). "I have a theory..." (http:/ / www. aps. org/ publications/ apsnews/ 200111/ letters. cfm). Omni 15 (9): 96. . UoWaikato newsletter (http:/ / www. waikato. ac. nz/ fmd/ newsletter/ Newsletter_No14. pdf) Available at http:/ / www. kminer. net/ 2011/ 07/ perpetual-motion/ PG Klein. University of Leeds. Perpetual Motion (http:/ / www. physics. leeds. ac. uk/ pages/ PerpetualMotion). Oscar Nominated Animated Shorts 2003 (http:/ / www. scifidimensions. com/ Apr04/ oscaranimation. htm) Feline cunning and sods law (http:/ / www. bunny. frozenreality. co. uk/ 211. html) Simanek, Donald E.; Holden, John C. (2002). Science askew: a light-hearted look at the scientific world (http:/ / books. google. com/ ?id=ldX0FkgurzoC& pg=PA201). CRC Press. p.201. ISBN9780750307147. . Retrieved 30 June 2010. [8] "Hypothetical" (http:/ / www. comedy. co. uk/ guide/ tv/ qi/ episodes/ 8/ 8/ ). QI. episode 8. series H. London. 5 November 2010. BBC. BBC One. .
External links
Frazee Fine Arts (http://www.frazeefinearts.com) Website of Teresa and John Frazee. "Feedback" (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg15220568.300). New Scientist (2056). 16 November 1996. Loopholes for the paradox (http://www.xs4all.nl/~jcdverha/scijokes/2_21.html#subindex)
Lombard's Paradox
Lombard's Paradox describes a paradoxical muscular contraction in humans. When rising to stand from a sitting or squatting position, both the hamstrings and quadriceps contract at the same time, despite their being antagonists to each other. The rectus femoris biarticular muscle acting over the hip has a smaller hip moment arm than the hamstrings. However, the rectus femoris moment arm is greater over the knee than the hamstring knee moment. This means that contraction from both rectus femoris and hamstrings will result in hip and knee extension. Hip extension also adds a passive stretch component to rectus femoris, which results in a knee extension force. This paradox allows for efficient movement, especially during gait.
References
Lombard, W.P., & Abbott, F.M. (1907). The mechanical effects produced by the contraction of individual muscles of the thigh of the frog. American Journal of Physiology, 20, 1-60. http://moon.ouhsc.edu/dthompso/namics/lombard.htm
External links
Andrews JG (1987). "The functional roles of the hamstrings and quadriceps during cycling: Lombard's Paradox revisited". J Biomech 20 (6): 56575. doi:10.1016/0021-9290(87)90278-8. PMID3611133. Gregor RJ, Cavanagh PR, LaFortune M (1985). "Knee flexor moments during propulsion in cycling--a creative solution to Lombard's Paradox". J Biomech 18 (5): 30716. doi:10.1016/0021-9290(85)90286-6. PMID4008501.
Mere addition paradox
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The mere addition paradox is a problem in ethics, identified by Derek Parfit, and appearing in his book, Reasons and Persons (1984). The paradox identifies apparent inconsistency between three seemingly true beliefs about population ethics by arguing that utilitarianism leads to an apparent overpopulated world.
The Paradox
The paradox arises from consideration of four different possibilities. The following diagrams show different situations, with each bar representing a population. The group's size is represented by column width, and the group's happiness represented by column height. For simplicity, in each group of people represented, everyone in the group has exactly the same level of happiness, though Parfit did not consider this essential to the argument.
In situation A, everyone is happy. In situation A+, there are the extra people. There is the same population as in A, and another population of the same size, which is less happy, but whose lives are nevertheless worth living. The two populations are entirely separate, that is, they cannot communicate and are not even aware of each other. Parfit gives the example of A+ being a possible state of the world before the Atlantic was crossed, and says that A, in that case, represents an alternative history in which the Americas had never been inhabited by any humans. In situation B-, there are again two separate populations, of the same size as before, but now of equal happiness. The increase in happiness of the right-hand population is greater than the decrease in happiness of the left-hand population. Therefore, average happiness in B- is higher. Finally in situation B, there is a single population whose size is the sum of the two populations in situation B-, and at the same level of happiness.
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Going from A to B
The difference between the situations A and A+ is only in the existence of extra people at a lower level of happiness. If the two populations were known to each other, and were aware of the inequality, this would arguably constitute social injustice. However, as they do not, Parfit says this represents a Mere Addition, and it seems implausible to him that it would be worse for the extra people to exist. Thus, he argues, A+ is not worse than A. Furthermore, there are the same numbers of people on both sides of the divide in situation B- as there are in situation A+. The average happiness in B- is higher than A+ (though lower than A). Since A+ and B- have the same number of people, and because there is a greater level of equality and average happiness in B-, it seems that, all things considered, B- is better than A+. But the situations B- and B are the same, except the communication gap is removed. It seems that B is at least as good as B-.
The Repugnant Conclusion
We can then repeat the argument, and imagine another divide, and ask if it would be better for more extra people to exist, unknown to the people in B, and so on, as before. We then arrive at a situation C, in which the population is even larger, and less happy, though still with lives worth living. And if we agree that B is not worse than A, then we would conclude in the same fashion that C is not worse than B. But then we could repeat that argument again, finally arriving at a situation Z, in which there are an enormous number of people whose lives are worth living, but just barely. Parfit calls this the Repugnant Conclusion, and says that Z is in fact worse than A, and that it goes against what he believes about overpopulation to say otherwise. This is a contradiction, but it is not clear how to avoid it.
Criticisms and responses

Some scholars, such as Larry Temkin, argue that the paradox is resolved by the conclusion that the "better than" relation is not transitive, meaning that our assertion that B- is better than A by way of A+ is not justifiedit could very well be the case that B- is better than A+, and A+ is better than A, and yet A is better than B-. The paradox is defeated, it is argued, by asserting that A+ is actually worse than A, in other words, that adding people of less-than-average happiness into the world makes the overall situation worse. This is the conclusion of "average utilitarianism", which aims at maximizing average happiness. However, this solution may commit one to the position that it is actually bad for people of less than average happiness to be born, even if their lives are worth living. Another position argues for some threshold above the level at which lives become worth living, but below which additional lives would nonetheless make the situation worse. Parfit argues that for this position to be plausible, such a threshold would be so low as to apply only to lives that are "gravely deficient" and which, "though worth living ...
Mere addition paradox must be crimped and mean." Parfit calls this hypothetical threshold the "bad level," and argues that its existence would not resolve the paradox because population A would still be better than an enormous population with all members having lives at the "bad level." Torbjrn Tnnsj argues that we have a false intuition of the moral weight of billions upon billions of lives "barely worth living". He argues that we must consider that life in Z would not be terrible, and that in our actual world, most lives are actually not far above, and often fall below, the level of "not worth living". The Repugnant Conclusion therefore is not repugnant. Another criticism is that the paradox only considers utility at one point in time, instead of taking into account the population's sum utility over time. While mere addition may increase the present value of net utility, it may damage the sum-over-time of utility, such as by consuming extra resources that will be unavailable for future generations.
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Self-criticism
Parfit also considers an objection where the comparison between A+ and B- is attacked. The comparison between A and A+ was partly dependent on their separation. Thus A+ and B- might simply be incomparable. Parfit gives the Rich and Poor example, in which two people live in separate societies, and are unknown to each other, but are both known to you, and you have to make a choice between helping one or the other. Thus, despite their separation, it is meaningful to ask whether A+ is better than B- or not. One could deny that B- is better than A+, and therefore neither is B. But this rejection implies that what is most important is the happiness of the happiest people, and commits one to the view that a smaller decrease in the happiness of the happiest people outweighs a bigger increase in the happiness of less happy people, at least in some cases. Parfit calls this the Elitist view.
External links
The Repugnant Conclusion [1] (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Alex Tabarrok's The Philosophical Cow [2] (an application to the animal rights issue)
References
Parfit, Derek. Reasons and Persons, ch. 17 and 19. Oxford University Press 1986. Temkin, Larry. Intransitivity and the Mere Addition Paradox [3], Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 16 No. 2 (Spring 1987) pp.138187 Tnnsj, Torbjrn. Hedonistic Utilitarianism [4]. Edinburgh University Press 1988. Contestabile, Bruno. On the Buddhist Truths and the Paradoxes in Population Ethics [5], Contemporary Buddhism, Vol. 11 Issue 1, pp.103113, Routledge 2010
References
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] http:/ / plato. stanford. edu/ entries/ repugnant-conclusion/ http:/ / www. marginalrevolution. com/ marginalrevolution/ 2010/ 03/ the-philosophical-cow. html http:/ / www. jstor. org/ pss/ 2265425 http:/ / www. amazon. com/ dp/ 0748610421 http:/ / www. informaworld. com/ smpp/ content~db=all~content=a927094471~frm=titlelink
Navigation paradox
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Navigation paradox
The Navigation paradox states that increased navigational precision may result in increased collision risk. In the case of ships and aircraft, the advent of Global Positioning System (GPS) navigation has enabled craft to follow navigational paths with such greater precision (often on the order of plus or minus 2 meters), that, without better distribution of routes, coordination between neighboring craft and collision avoidance procedures, the likelihood of two craft occupying the same space on the shortest distance line between two navigational points has increased.
Research
Robert E. Machol[1] attributes the term "navigation paradox" to Peter G. Reich, writing in 1964,[2] and 1966,[3] who recognized that "in some cases (see below) increases in navigational precision increase collision risk." In the "below" explanation, Machol noted "that if vertical station-keeping is sloppy, then if longitudinal and lateral separation are lost, the planes will probably pass above and below each other. This is the navigation paradox mentioned earlier." Russ Paielli wrote a mid-air collision simulating computer model 500sqmi (unknown operator: u'strong'km2) centered on Denver, Colorado[4] In Table 3 Paielli[4] notes that aircraft cruising at random altitudes have five times fewer collisions than those obeying with only 25ft (unknown operator: u'strong'm) RMS of vertical error discrete cruising altitude rule, such as the internationally required hemispherical cruising altitude rules. At the same vertical error, the prototype linear cruising altitude rule tested produced 33.8 fewer mid-air collisions than the hemispherical cruising altitude rules. Paiellis 2000 model corroborated an earlier 1997 model by Patlovany[5] showing in Figure 1 that zero altitude error by pilots obeying the hemispherical cruising altitude rules resulted in six times more mid-air collisions than random cruising altitude non compliance. Similarly, Patlovanys computer model test of the Altimeter-Compass Cruising Altitude Rule (ACCAR) with zero piloting altitude error (a linear cruising altitude rule similar to the one recommended by Paielli), resulted in about 60% of the mid-air collisions counted from random altitude non compliance, or 10 times fewer collisions than the internationally accepted hemispherical cruising altitude rules. In other words, Patlovanys ACCAR alternative and Paiellis linear cruising altitude rule would reduce cruising midair collisions between 10 and 33 times, compared to the currently recognized, and internationally required, hemispherical cruising altitude rules, which institutionalize the navigation paradox on a world wide basis. The ACCAR alternative to the hemispherical cruising altitude rules, if adopted in 1997, could have eliminated the navigation paradox at all altitudes, and could have saved 342 lives in over 30 midair collisions (up to November 2006) since the Risk Analysis proof that the current regulations multiply midair collision risk in direct proportion to pilot accuracy in compliance.[6] The Namibian collision in 1997, the Japanese near-miss in 2001, the berlingen collision in Germany in 2002, and the Amazon collision in 2006,[7] are all examples where human or hardware errors doomed altitude-accurate pilots killed by the navigation paradox designed into the current cruising altitude rules. The current system as described by Paielli noted as examples that nuclear power plants and elevators are designed to be passively safe and fault tolerant. Reactivity control rods fall into the reactor to cause a shutdown on loss of electrical power, and elevator fall-arresting brakes are released by torque from support cable tension. The navigation paradox describes a midair collision safety system that by design cannot tolerate a single failure in human performance or electronic hardware. To mitigate the described problem, many recommend, as legally allowed in very limited authorized airspace, that planes fly one or two miles offset from the center of the airway (to the right side) thus eliminating the problem only in the head-on collision scenario. The International Civil Aviation Organization's (ICAO) "Procedures for Air Navigation--Air Traffic Management Manual," authorizes lateral offset only in oceanic and remote airspace worldwide.[8] However, this workaround for the particular case of a head-on collision threat on a common assigned airway fails to address the navigation paradox in general, and it fails to specifically address the inherent system
Navigation paradox safety fault intolerance inadvertently designed into international air traffic safety regulations.[4] To be specific, in the cases of intersecting flight paths where either aircraft is not on an airway (for example, flying under a "direct" clearance, or a temporary diversion clearance for weather threats), or where intersecting aircraft flights are on deliberately intersecting airways, these more general threats receive no protection from flying one or two miles to the right of the center of the airway. Intersecting flight paths must still intersect somewhere. As with the midair collision over Germany, an offset to the right of an airway would have simply changed the impact point by a mile or two away from where the intersection actually did occur. Of the 342 deaths since 1997 so far encouraged by the lack of a linear cruising altitude rule (like ACCAR) improvement to the fault intolerance of the hemispherical cruising altitude rules, only the head-on collision over the Amazon could have been prevented if either pilot had been flying an offset to the right of the airway centerline. In contrast, ACCAR systematically separates conflicting traffic in all airspace at all altitudes on any heading, whether over the middle of the ocean or over high density multinational-interface continental airspace. Nothing about Reduced Vertical Separation Minima (RVSM) system design addresses the inherent vulnerability of the air traffic system to expected faults in hardware and human performance, as experienced in the Namibian, German, Amazon and Japanese accidents.[5]
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References
[1] Machol, Robert E., Interfaces 25:5, SeptemberOctober 1995 (151-172), page 154. [2] Reich, Peter G., "A theory of safe separation standards for air traffic control," RAE Technical Reports Nos. 64041, 64042, 64043, Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough, United Kingdom. [3] Reich, Peter G., "Analysis of long-range air traffic systems: Separation standardsI, II, and III," Journal of Navigation, Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 88-96; No. 2, pp. 169-176; No. 3, pp. 331-338. [4] Paielli, Russ A., "A Linear Altitude Rule for Safer and More Efficient Enroute Air Traffic," Air Traffic Control Quarterly, Vol. 8, No. 3, Fall 2000. [5] Patlovany, Robert W., "U.S. Aviation Regulations Increase Probability of Midair Collisions," Risk Analysis: An International Journal, April 1997, Volume 17, No. 2, Pages 237-248. [6] Patlovany, Robert, W., "Preventable Midair Collisions Since 26 June 1997 Request Denied for Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) 28996 Altimeter-Compass Cruising Altitude Rule (ACCAR)," Preventable Midair Collisions Since 26 June 1997 Request Denied for Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) 28996 Altimeter-Compass Cruising Altitude Rule (ACCAR) (http:/ / web. archive. org/ web/ 20091027124508/ http:/ / www. geocities. com/ rpatlovany/ PreventableMidairs. html) [7] Langwiesche, William, "The Devil at 37,000 Feet", Vanity Fair, January 2009 (http:/ / www. vanityfair. com/ magazine/ 2009/ 01/ air_crash200901) [8] Werfelman, Linda, "Sidestepping the Airway," AeroSafety World March 2007, pages 40-45, Flight Safety Foundation (http:/ / flightsafety. org/ asw/ mar07/ asw_mar07_p40-45. pdf).
Paradox of the plankton
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Paradox of the plankton

In aquatic biology, the paradox of the plankton is the name given to the situation where a limited range of resources (light, nutrients) supports a much wider range of planktonic organisms. The paradox stems from a result of the competitive exclusion principle (sometimes referred to as Gause's Law), which suggests that when two species compete for the same resource, ultimately only one will persist and the other will be driven to extinction. The high diversity of phytoplankton at all phylogenetic levels stands in contrast to the limited range of resources for which they compete with one another (e.g. light, nitrate, phosphate, silicic acid, iron). The paradox was originally described by the limnologist G. Evelyn Hutchinson, who proposed that the paradox may be resolved by factors such as vertical gradients of light or turbulence, symbiosis or commensalism, differential predation, or constantly changing environmental conditions.[1] More recent work has proposed that the paradox can be resolved by factors such as: size-selective grazing;[2] spatio-temporal heterogeneity;[3] environmental fluctuations.[4] More generally, some researchers suggest that ecological and environmental factors continually interact such that the planktonic habitat never reaches an equilibrium for which a single species is favoured.[5]
References
[1] Hutchinson, G. E. (1961) The paradox of the plankton (http:/ / cmore. soest. hawaii. edu/ agouron/ 2007/ documents/ paradox_of_the_plankton. pdf). American Naturalist 95, 137-145. [2] Wiggert, J.D., Haskell, A.G.E., Paffenhofer, G.A., Hofmann, E.E. and Klinck, J.M. (2005) The role of feeding behavior in sustaining copepod populations in the tropical ocean (http:/ / plankt. oxfordjournals. org/ cgi/ content/ short/ fbi090v1). Journal of Plankton Research 27, 1013-1031. [3] Miyazaki, T., Tainaka, K., Togashi, T., Suzuki, T. and Yoshimura, J. (2006) Spatial coexistence of phytoplankton species in ecological timescale (http:/ / sciencelinks. jp/ j-east/ article/ 200611/ 000020061106A0324715. php). Population Ecology 48(2), 107-112. [4] Descamps-Julien, B. and Gonzalez, A. (2005) Stable coexistence in a fluctuating environment: An experimental demonstration (http:/ / www. biologie. ens. fr/ bioemco/ biodiversite/ descamps/ ecology05. pdf). Ecology 86, 2815-2824. [5] Scheffer, M., Rinaldi, S., Huisman, J. and Weissing, F.J. (2003) Why plankton communities have no equilibrium: solutions to the paradox (http:/ / www. springerlink. com/ content/ vn768133l633114x/ ). Hydrobiologia 491, 9-18.
External links
The Paradox of the Plankton (http://knol.google.com/k/klaus-rohde/the-paradox-of-the-plankton/ xk923bc3gp4/40#)
Temporal paradox
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Temporal paradox
The temporal paradox, or time problem is a controversial issue in the evolutionary relationships of birds. It was described by paleornithologist Alan Feduccia[1][2] in 1994.
Objection to consensus
The concept of a "temporal paradox" is based on the following facts. The consensus view is that birds evolved from dinosaurs, but the most bird-like dinosaurs, including almost all of the feathered dinosaurs and those believed to be most closely related to birds are known mostly from the Cretaceous, by which time birds had already evolved and diversified. If bird-like dinosaurs are the ancestors of birds they should, then, be older than birds, but Archaeopteryx is 155 million years old, while the very bird-like Deinonychus is 35 million years younger. This idea is sometimes summarized as "you can't be your own grandmother". As Dodson pointed out:
I hasten to add that none of the known small theropods, including Deinonychus, Dromaeosaurus, Velociraptor, Unenlagia, nor Sinosauropteryx, Protarchaeopteryx, nor Caudipteryx is itself relevant to the origin of birds; these are all Cretaceous fossils ... and as such can at best represent only structural stages through which an avian ancestor may be hypothezised to have passed.[3]
Diagram illustrating the determined age of four different prehistoric bird genera, compared to the age of some birdlike dinosaurs and feathered dinosaurs.
Problems
Numerous researchers have discredited the idea of the temporal paradox. Witmer (2002) summarized this critical literature by pointing out that there are at least three lines of evidence that contradict it. First, no one has proposed that maniraptoran dinosaurs of the Cretaceous are the ancestors of birds. They have merely found that dinosaurs like dromaeosaurs, troodontids and oviraptorosaurs are close relatives of birds. The true ancestors are thought to be older than Archaeopteryx, perhaps Early Jurassic or even older. The scarcity of maniraptoran fossils from then is not surprising since fossilization is a rare event requiring special circumstances, and we may never find fossils of animals in sediments from ages that they actually inhabited. Second, fragmentary remains of maniraptoran dinosaurs actually had been known from Jurassic deposits in China, North America, and Europe for many years. For example, the femur of a tiny maniraptoran from the Late Jurassic of Colorado was reported by Padian and Jensen in 1989 [4] while teeth of dromaeosaurids and troodontids are known from Jurassic England.[5] Complete skeletons of Middle-Late Jurassic maniraptorans were subsequently described from China. The known diversity of pre-Tithonian (and thus pre-Archaeopteryx) non-avian maniraptorans includes Ornitholestes, the possible therizinosaur Eshanosaurus, the troodontids Anchiornis[6] and the as yet unnamed Morrison WDC DML 001, the scansoriopterygids Epidexipteryx and Epidendrosaurus [7] and the basal alvarezsaur Haplocheirus. Third, if the temporal paradox would indicate that birds should not have evolved from dinosaurs, then what animals are more likely ancestors considering their age? Brochu and Norell (2001) [8] analyzed this question using six [9] of the other archosaurs that have been proposed as bird ancestors, and found that all of them create temporal paradoxes long stretches between the ancestor and Archaeopteryx where there are no intermediate fossils that are actually worse. The MSM value for the theropod option was 0.438 - 0.466 [9]. However, because of computational limitations, six taxa considered in SCI and SMIG calculations (Compsognathus, Eoraptor,
Temporal paradox Herrerasauridae, Marasuchus, Pseudolagosuchus, and Choristodera) were not included in calculation of MSM. Brochu and Norell (2001) [10] Thus, even if one used the logic of the temporal paradox, one should still prefer dinosaurs as the ancestors to birds.[11] Pol and Norell [12] (2006) calculated MSM* values for the same proposed bird ancestors and obtained the same relative results. The MSM* value for the theropod option was 0.31 - 0.40 [13] .
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References
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] Feduccia, Alan (1994) "The Great Dinosaur Debate" Living Bird. 13:29-33. Feduccia, Alan (1996) "The Origin and Evolution of Birds." Yale University Press. New Haven, Conn. USA. Dodson P., "Origin of birds: the final solution?", American zoologist 40: 505-506, 2000. Jensen, James A. & Padian, Kevin. (1989) "Small pterosaurs and dinosaurs from the Uncompahgre fauna (Brushy Basin member, Morrison Formation: ?Tithonian), Late Jurassic, western Colorado" Journal of Paleontology Vol. 63 no. 3 pg. 364 - 373 Witmer, L.M. (2002). The Debate on Avian Ancestry; Phylogeny, Function and Fossils, Mesozoic Birds: Above the Heads of Dinosaurs pp.3-30. ISBN 0-520-20094-2 Hu, D.; Hou, L.; Zhang, L.; Xu, X. (2009). "A pre-Archaeopteryx troodontid theropod from China with long feathers on the metatarsus". Nature 461 (7264): 6403. Bibcode2009Natur.461..640H. doi:10.1038/nature08322. PMID19794491. Zhang, F.; Zhou, Z.; Xu, X.; Wang, X.; Sullivan, C. (2008). "A bizarre Jurassic maniraptoran from China with elongate ribbon-like feathers". Nature 455 (7216): 11058. Bibcode2008Natur.455.1105Z. doi:10.1038/nature07447. PMID18948955. http:/ / www. jstor. org/ pss/ 4524078 http:/ / www. bioone. org/ action/ showFullPopup?doi=10. 1671%2F0272-4634%282000%29020%5B0197%3ATCATOO%5D2. 0. CO%3B2& id=i0272-4634-20-1-197-t02
[10] http:/ / www. bioone. org/ action/ showFullPopup?doi=10. 1671%2F0272-4634%282000%29020%5B0197%3ATCATOO%5D2. 0. CO%3B2& id=i0272-4634-20-1-197-f01 [11] Brochu, Christopher A. Norell, Mark A. (2001) "Time and trees: A quantitative assessment of temporal congruence in the bird origins debate" pp.511-535 in "New Perspectives on the Origin and Early Evolution of Birds" Gauthier&Gall, ed. Yale Peabody Museum. New Haven, Conn., USA. [12] http:/ / sysbio. oxfordjournals. org/ cgi/ content-nw/ full/ 55/ 3/ 512/ [13] http:/ / sysbio. oxfordjournals. org/ cgi/ content-nw/ full/ 55/ 3/ 512/ FIG6
Tritone paradox
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Tritone paradox
The tritone paradox is an auditory illusion in which a sequentially played pair of Shepard tones [1] separated by an interval of a tritone, or half octave, is heard as ascending by some people and as descending by others.[2] Different populations tend to favor one of a limited set of different spots around the chromatic circle as central to the set of "higher" tones. The tritone paradox was first reported by psychology of music researcher Diana Deutsch in 1986.[3] Each Shepard tone consists of a set of octave related sinusoids, the amplitudes of which are scaled by a fixed bell shaped spectral envelope based on a log frequency scale. For example, one tone might consist of a sinusoid at 440 Hz, accompanied by sinusoid at the higher octaves (880 Hz, 1760 Hz, etc.) and lower octaves (220 Hz, 110 Hz, etc.). The other tone might consist of a 311 Hz sinusoid, again accompanied by higher and lower octaves (622 Hz, 155.5 Hz, etc.). The amplitudes of the sinusoids of both complexes are determined by the same fixed amplitude envelope - for example the envelope might be centered at 370 Hz and span a 6 octave range. Shepard predicted that the two tones would constitute a bistable figure, the auditory equivalent of the Necker cube, that could be heard ascending or descending, but never both at the same time. Diana Deutsch later found that perception of which tone was higher depended on the absolute frequencies involved: an individual will usually find the same tone to be higher, and this is determined by the tones' absolute pitches. This is consistently done by a large portion of the population, despite the fact that responding differently to different tones must involve the ability to hear absolute pitch, which was thought to be extremely rare. This finding has been used to argue that latent absolute-pitch ability is present in a large proportion of the population. In addition, Deutsch found that subjects from the south of England and from California resolved the ambiguity the opposite way. Also, Deutsch, Henthorn and Dolson found that native speakers of Vietnamese, a tonal language, heard the tritone paradox differently from Californians who were native speakers of English.
Notes
[1] R.N. Shepard. Circularity in judgments of relative pitch. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 36(12):23462353, 1964. [2] Deutsch's Musical Illusions (http:/ / deutsch. ucsd. edu/ psychology/ deutsch_research6. php) [3] Deutsch (1986).
References
Deutsch, D. (1986). "A musical paradox". Music Perception 3: 275280.. Weblink (http://psycnet.apa.org/ ?fa=main.doiLanding&uid=1987-27127-001) PDF Document (http://philomel.com/pdf/MP-1986_3_275-280. pdf) Deutsch, D. (1986). "An auditory paradox". Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 80: s93. doi:10.1121/1.2024050. Weblink (http://scitation.aip.org/vsearch/servlet/VerityServlet?KEY=ASADL&
Tritone paradox smode=strresults&sort=chron&maxdisp=25&threshold=0&pjournals=journals&pjournals=JASMAN& pjournals=ARLOFJ&pjournals=NOCOAN&pjournals=SOUCAU&possible1=An auditory paradox. & possible1zone=title&OUTLOG=NO&viewabs=JASMAN&key=DISPLAY&docID=1&page=1&chapter=0) Deutsch, D. (1987). "The tritone paradox: Effects of spectral variables". Perception & Psychophysics 41 (6): 563575. doi:10.3758/BF03210490. PMID3615152. PDF Document (http://philomel.com/pdf/P& P-1987_41_563-575.pdf) Deutsch, D., North, T. and Ray, L. (1990). "The tritone paradox: Correlate with the listener's vocal range for speech". Music Perception 7: 371384. PDF Document (http://philomel.com/pdf/MP-1990_7_371-384.pdf) Deutsch, D. (1991). "The tritone paradox: An influence of language on music perception". Music Perception 8: 335347. PDF Document (http://philomel.com/pdf/MP-1991_8_335-347.pdf) Deutsch, D. (1992). "Paradoxes of musical pitch". Scientific American 267 (2): 8895. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0892-88. PMID1641627. PDF Document (http://philomel.com/pdf/ Sci_Am-1992-Aug_267_88_95.pdf) Deutsch, D. (1992). "Some new pitch paradoxes and their implications. In Auditory Processing of Complex Sounds". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Series B 336 (1278): 391397. doi:10.1098/rstb.1992.0073. PMID1354379. PDF Document (http://philomel.com/pdf/ Proc_Royal_Soc-1992_336_391-397.pdf)
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Deutsch, D. (1997). "The tritone paradox: A link between music and speech". Current Directions in Psychological Science 6 (6): 174180. doi:10.1111/1467-8721.ep10772951. PDF Document (http://philomel. com/pdf/Curr_Dir-1997_6_174-180.pdf) Deutsch, D., Henthorn T. and Dolson, M. (2004). "Speech patterns heard early in life influence later perception of the tritone paradox". Music Perception 21 (3): 357372. doi:10.1525/mp.2004.21.3.357. PDF Document (http:// philomel.com/pdf/MP-2004-21_357-372.pdf) Deutsch, D. (2007). "Mothers and their offspring perceive the tritone paradox in closely similar ways". Archives of Acoustics 32: 314. PDF Document (http://philomel.com/pdf/archives_of_acoustics-2007_32_3-14.pdf)
External links
Audio example (requires Java) (http://www.cs.ubc.ca/nest/imager/contributions/flinn/Illusions/TT/tt.html) Diana Deutsch's page on auditory illusions (http://deutsch.ucsd.edu/psychology/deutsch_research1.php) Sound example of the tritone paradox (http://philomel.com/musical_illusions/play. php?fname=Tritone_paradox)
Voting paradox
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Voting paradox
The voting paradox (also known as Condorcet's paradox or the paradox of voting) is a situation noted by the Marquis de Condorcet in the late 18th century, in which collective preferences can be cyclic (i.e. not transitive), even if the preferences of individual voters are not. This is paradoxical, because it means that majority wishes can be in conflict with each other. When this occurs, it is because the conflicting majorities are each made up of different groups of individuals. For example, suppose we have three candidates, A, B, and C, and that there are three voters with preferences as follows (candidates being listed in decreasing order of preference):
Voter Voter 1 Voter 2 Voter 3 First preference Second preference Third preference A B C B C A C A B
If C is chosen as the winner, it can be argued that B should win instead, since two voters (1 and 2) prefer B to C and only one voter (3) prefers C to B. However, by the same argument A is preferred to B, and C is preferred to A, by a margin of two to one on each occasion. The requirement of majority rule then provides no clear winner. Also, if an election were held with the above three voters as the only participants, nobody would win under majority rule, as it would result in a three way tie with each candidate getting one vote. However, Condorcet's paradox illustrates that the person who can reduce alternatives can essentially guide the election. For example, if Voter 1 and Voter 2 choose their preferred candidates (A and B respectively), and if Voter 3 was willing to drop his vote for C, then Voter 3 can choose between either A or B - and become the agenda-setter. When a Condorcet method is used to determine an election, a voting paradox among the ballots can mean that the election has no Condorcet winner. The several variants of the Condorcet method differ on how they resolve such ambiguities when they arise to determine a winner. Note that there is no fair and deterministic resolution to this trivial example because each candidate is in an exactly symmetrical situation.
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Philosophy
Fitch's paradox of knowability
Fitch's paradox of knowability is one of the fundamental puzzles of epistemic logic. It provides a challenge to the knowability thesis, which states that any truth is, in principle, knowable. The paradox is that this assumption implies the omniscience principle, which asserts that any truth is known. Essentially, Fitch's paradox asserts that the existence of an unknown truth is unknowable. So if all truths were knowable, it would follow that all truths are in fact known. The paradox is of concern for verificationist or anti-realist accounts of truth, for which the knowability thesis is very plausible, but the omniscience principle is very implausible. The paradox appeared as a minor theorem in a 1963 paper by Frederic Fitch, "A Logical Analysis of Some Value Concepts". Other than the knowability thesis, his proof makes only modest assumptions on the modal nature of knowledge and of possibility. He also generalised the proof to different modalities. It resurfaced in 1979 when W.D. Hart wrote that Fitch's proof was an "unjustly neglected logical gem".
Proof
Suppose p is a sentence which is an unknown truth; that is, the sentence p is true, but it is not known that p is true. In such a case, the sentence "the sentence p is an unknown truth" is true; and, if all truths are knowable, it should be possible to know that "p is an unknown truth". But this isn't possible, because as soon as we know "p is an unknown truth", we know that p is true, rendering p no longer an unknown truth, so the statement "p is an unknown truth" becomes a falsity. Hence, the statement "p is an unknown truth" cannot be both known and true at the same time. Therefore, if all truths are knowable, the set of "all truths" must not include any of the form "something is an unknown truth"; thus there must be no unknown truths, and thus all truths must be known. This can be formalised with modal logic. K and L will stand for known and possible, respectively. Thus LK means possibly known, in other words, knowable. The modality rules used are:
(A) Kp p (B) K(p & q) (Kp & Kq) (C) p LKp (D) from p, deduce Lp - knowledge implies truth. - knowing a conjunction implies knowing each conjunct.
- all truths are knowable. - if p can be proven false without assumptions, then p is impossible (which is similar to the rule of necessitation: if p can be proven true without assumptions, then p is necessarily true).
The proof proceeds:
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1. Suppose K(p & Kp) 2. Kp & KKp 3. Kp 4. KKp 5. Kp 6. K(p & Kp) 7. LK(p & Kp) 8. Suppose p & Kp 9. LK(p & Kp) 10. (p & Kp) 11. p Kp from line 8 by rule (C) from lines 7 and 9 by reductio ad absurdam, discharging assumption 8. from line 10 by a classical tautology from line 1 by rule (B) from line 2 by conjunction elimination from line 2 by conjunction elimination from line 4 by rule (A) from lines 3 and 5 by reductio ad absurdam, discharging assumption 1 from line 6 by rule (D)
The last line states that if p is true then it is known. Since nothing else about p was assumed, it means that every truth is known.
Generalisations
The proof uses minimal assumptions about the nature of K and L, so other modalities can be substituted for "known". Salerno gives the example of "caused by God": rule (C) becomes that every true fact could have been caused by God, and the conclusion is that every true fact was caused by God. Rule (A) can also be weakened to include modalities which don't imply truth. For instance instead of "known" we could have the doxastic modality "believed by a rational person" (represented by B). Rule (A) is replaced with:
(E) Bp BBp - rational belief is transparent; if p is rationally believed, then it is rationally believed that p is rationally believed.
(F) (Bp & Bp) - rational beliefs are consistent
This time the proof proceeds:

1. Suppose B(p & Bp) 2. Bp & BBp 3. Bp 4. BBp 5. BBp 6. BBp & BBp 7. (BBp & BBp) 8. B(p & Bp) from line 1 by rule (B) from line 2 by conjunction elimination from line 3 by rule (E) from line 2 by conjunction elimination from lines 4 and 5 by conjunction introduction by rule (F) from lines 6 and 7 by reductio ad absurdam, discharging assumption 1
The last line matches line 6 in the previous proof, and the remainder goes as before. So if any true sentence could possibly be believed by a rational person, then that person does believe all true sentences. Some anti-realists advocate the use of intuitionistic logic; however, except for the very last line which moves from there are no unknown truths to all truths are known, the proof is, in fact, intuitionistically valid.
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The knowability thesis

Rule (C) is generally held to be at fault rather than any of the other logical principles employed. It may be contended that this rule does not faithfully translate the idea that all truths are knowable, and that rule (C) should not apply unrestrictedly. Kvanvig contends that this represents an illicit substitution into a modal context. Berit Brogaard and Joseph Salerno offer a criticism of Kvanvig's proposal and then defend a new proposal according to which quantified expressions play a special role in modal contexts. On the account of this special role articulated by Stanley and Szabo, they propose a solution to the knowability paradoxes. Another way to resolve the paradox is to restrict the paradox only to atomic sentences. Brogaard and Salerno have argued against this strategy in several papers that have appeared in journals such as Analysis and American Philosophical Quarterly.
External links
Fitch's Paradox of Knowability [1]. Article at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, by Berit Brogaard and Joe Salerno. Not Every Truth Can Be Known: at least, not all at once [2]. Discussion page on an article of the same name by Greg Restall to appear in Salerno's book Joe Salerno [3]
References
[1] http:/ / plato. stanford. edu/ entries/ fitch-paradox/ [2] http:/ / consequently. org/ writing/ notevery/ [3] http:/ / sites. google. com/ site/ knowability/ joesalerno
Frederick Fitch, " A Logical Analysis of Some Value Concepts (http://www.jstor.org/pss/2271594)". Journal of Symbolic Logic Vol. 28, No. 2 (Jun., 1963), pp.135142 W. D. Hart. "The Epistemology of Abstract Objects", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, suppl. vol. 53, 1979, pp.15365. Johnathan Kvanvig. The Knowability Paradox (http://books.google.ca/books?id=nhRZqgREEQMC). Oxford University Press, 2006. Joe Salerno, ed. New essays on the knowability paradox (http://knowability.googlepages.com/home). Oxford University Press, to appear.
Grandfather paradox
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Grandfather paradox
The grandfather paradox is a proposed paradox of time travel first described (in this exact form) by the science fiction writer Ren Barjavel in his 1943 book Le Voyageur Imprudent (Future Times Three).[1] The paradox is this: suppose a man traveled back in time and killed his biological grandfather before the latter met the traveler's grandmother. As a result, one of the traveler's parents (and by extension the traveler himself) would never have been conceived. This would imply that he could not have traveled back in time after all, which means the grandfather would still be alive, and the traveler would have been conceived allowing him to travel back in time and kill his grandfather. Thus each possibility seems to imply its own negation, a type of logical paradox. Another alternative, is just the fact that the time traveller is alive in the present means that he failed in his endeavour to kill the grandparent. This would mean that you could act with complete freedom as whatever you did in the past cannot change the present because its implications have already been felt. Despite the name, the grandfather paradox does not exclusively regard the impossibility of one's own birth. Rather, it regards any action that makes impossible the ability to travel back in time in the first place. The paradox's namesake example is merely the most commonly thought of when one considers the whole range of possible actions. Another example would be using scientific knowledge to invent a time machine, then going back in time and (whether through murder or otherwise) impeding a scientist's work that would eventually lead to the very information that you used to invent the time machine. An equivalent paradox is known (in philosophy) as autoinfanticide, going back in time and killing oneself as a baby.[2] The grandfather paradox has been used to argue that backwards time travel must be impossible. However, a number of hypotheses have been postulated to avoid the paradox, such as the idea that the past is unchangeable, so the grandfather must have already survived the attempted killing (as stated earlier); or the time traveler creates an alternate time line in which the traveler was never born.
Scientific theories
Novikov self-consistency principle
The Novikov self-consistency principle and Kip S. Thorne expresses one view on how backwards time travel could be possible without a danger of paradoxes. According to this hypothesis, the only possible time lines are those entirely self-consistentso anything a time traveler does in the past must have been part of history all along, and the time traveler can never do anything to prevent the trip back in time from happening, since this would represent an inconsistency. In layman's terms, this is often called determinism. It conflicts with the notion of free-will. Succinctly, this explanation states that if time travel is possible, then actions are determined by history.
Parallel universes
There could be "an ensemble of parallel universes" such that when the traveller kills the grandfather, the act took place in (or resulted in the creation of) a parallel universe where the traveler's counterpart never exists as a result. However, his prior existence in the original universe is unaltered. Succinctly, this explanation states that: if time travel is possible, then multiple versions of the future exist in parallel universes. This theory would also apply if a person went back in time to shoot himself, because in the past he would be dead as in the future he would be alive and well. Examples of parallel universes postulated in physics are: In quantum mechanics, the many-worlds interpretation suggests that every seemingly random quantum event with a non-zero probability actually occurs in all possible ways in different "worlds", so that history is constantly branching into different alternatives. The physicist David Deutsch has argued that if backwards time travel is
Grandfather paradox possible, it should result in the traveler ending up in a different branch of history than the one he departed from.[3] See also quantum suicide and immortality. M-theory is put forward as a hypothetical master theory that unifies the six superstring theories, although at present it is largely incomplete. One possible consequence of ideas drawn from M-theory is that multiple universes in the form of 3-dimensional membranes known as branes could exist side-by-side in a fourth large spatial dimension (which is distinct from the concept of time as a fourth dimension) - see Brane cosmology. However, there is currently no argument from physics that there would be one brane for each physically possible version of history as in the many-worlds interpretation, nor is there any argument that time travel would take one to a different brane.
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Nonexistence theory
According to this theory, if one were to do something in the past that would cause their nonexistence, upon returning to the future, they would find themselves in a world where the effects of (and chain reactions thereof) their actions are not present, as the person never existed. Through this theory, they would still exist, though. A famous example of this theory is It's A Wonderful Life.
Theories in science fiction

Parallel universes resolution
The idea of preventing paradoxes by supposing that the time traveler is taken to a parallel universe while his original history remains intact, which is discussed above in the context of science, is also common in science fictionsee Time travel as a means of creating historical divergences.
Restricted action resolution

Another resolution, of which the Novikov self-consistency principle can be taken as an example, holds that if one were to travel back in time, the laws of nature (or other intervening cause) would simply forbid the traveler from doing anything that could later result in their time travel not occurring. For example, a shot fired at the traveler's grandfather misses, or the gun jams or misfires, or the grandfather is injured but not killed, or the person killed turns out to be not the real grandfatheror some other event prevents the attempt from succeeding. No action the traveler takes to affect or change history can ever succeed, as some form of "bad luck" or coincidence always prevents the outcome. In effect, the traveler cannot change history. Often in fiction, the time traveler does not merely fail to prevent the actions, but in fact precipitates them (see predestination paradox), usually by accident. This theory might lead to concerns about the existence of free will (in this model, free will may be an illusion, or at least not unlimited). This theory also assumes that causality must be constant: i.e. that nothing can occur in the absence of cause, whereas some theories hold that an event may remain constant even if its initial cause was subsequently eliminated. Closely related but distinct is the notion of the time line as self-healing. The time-traveller's actions are like throwing a stone in a large lake; the ripples spread, but are soon swamped by the effect of the existing waves. For instance, a time traveller could assassinate a politician who led his country into a disastrous war, but the politician's followers would then use his murder as a pretext for the war, and the emotional effect of that would cancel out the loss of the politician's charisma. Or the traveller could prevent a car crash from killing a loved one, only to have the loved one killed by a mugger, or fall down the stairs, choke on a meal, killed by a stray bullet, etc. In the 2002 film The Time Machine, this scenario is shown where the main character builds a time machine to save his fiance from being killed by a mugger, only for her to die in a car crash instead; as he learns from a trip to the future, he cannot save her with the machine or he would never have been inspired to build the machine so that he could go back and save her in the first place. In some stories it is only the event that precipitated the time traveler's decision to travel back in time that
Grandfather paradox cannot be substantially changed, in others all attempted changes "heal" in this way, and in still others the universe can heal most changes but not sufficiently drastic ones. This is also the explanation advanced by the Doctor Who role-playing game, which supposes that Time is like a stream; you can dam it, divert it, or block it, but the overall direction resumes after a period of conflict. It also may not be clear whether the time traveler altered the past or precipitated the future he remembers, such as a time traveler who goes back in time to persuade an artist whose single surviving work is famous to hide the rest of the works to protect them. If, on returning to his time, he finds that these works are now well-known, he knows he has changed the past. On the other hand, he may return to a future exactly as he remembers, except that a week after his return, the works are found. Were they actually destroyed, as he believed when he traveled in time, and has he preserved them? Or was their disappearance occasioned by the artist's hiding them at his urging, and the skill with which they were hidden, and so the long time to find them, stemmed from his urgency?
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Destruction resolution
Some science fiction stories suggest that any paradox would destroy the universe, or at least the parts of space and time affected by the paradox. The plots of such stories tend to revolve around preventing paradoxes, such as the final episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. A less destructive alternative of this theory suggests the death of the time traveller whether the history is altered or not; an example would be in the first part of the Back to the Future trilogy, where the lead character's alteration of history results in a risk of his own disappearance, and he has to fix the alteration to preserve his own existence. In this theory, killing one's grandfather would result in the disappearance of oneself, history would erase all traces of the person's existence, and the death of the grandfather would be caused by another means (say, another existing person firing the gun); thus, the paradox would never occur from a historical viewpoint.
Temporal Modification Negation Theory

While stating that if time travel is possible it would be impossible to violate the grandfather paradox, it goes further to state that any action taken that itself negates the time travel event cannot occur. The consequences of such an event would in some way negate that event, be it by either voiding the memory of what one is doing before doing it, by preventing the action in some way, or even by destroying the universe among other possible consequences. It states therefore that to successfully change the past one must do so incidentally. For example, if one tried to stop the murder of one's parents, he would fail. On the other hand, if one traveled back and did something else that as a result prevented the death of someone else's parents, then such an event would be successful, because the reason for the journey and therefore the journey itself remains unchanged preventing a paradox. In addition, if this event had some colossal change in the history of mankind, and such an event would not void the ability or purpose of the journey back, it would occur, and would hold. In such a case, the memory of the event would immediately be modified in the mind of the time traveler. An example of this would be for someone to travel back to observe life in Austria in 1887 and while there shoot five people, one of which was one of Hitler's parents. Hitler would therefore never have existed, but since this would not prevent the invention of the means for time travel, or the purpose of the trip, then such a change would hold. But for it to hold, every element that influenced the trip must remain unchanged. The Third Reich Would not exist and the world we know today would be completely different. This would void someone convincing another party to travel back to kill the people without knowing who they are and making the time line stick, because by being successful, they would void the first party's influence and therefore the second party's actions. These issues are treated humorously in an episode of Futurama in which Fry travels back in time and inadvertently causes his grandfather's death before he marries his grandmother. His distraught grandmother then seduces him, and on returning to his own time, Fry learns that he is his own grandfather.
Grandfather paradox
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Other considerations
Consideration of the grandfather paradox has led some to the idea that time travel is by its very nature paradoxical and therefore logically impossible, on the same order as round squares. For example, the philosopher Bradley Dowden made this sort of argument in the textbook Logical Reasoning, where he wrote:
Nobody has ever built a time machine that could take a person back to an earlier time. Nobody should be seriously trying to build one, either, because a good argument exists for why the machine can never be built. The argument goes like this: suppose you did have a time machine right now, and you could step into it and travel back to some earlier time. Your actions in that time might then prevent your grandparents from ever having met one another. This would make you not born, and thus not step into the time machine. So, the claim that there could be a time machine is self-contradictory.
However, some philosophers and scientists believe that time travel into the past need not be logically impossible provided that there is no possibility of changing the past, as suggested, for example, by the Novikov self-consistency principle. Bradley Dowden himself revised the view above after being convinced of this in an exchange with the philosopher Norman Swartz.[4] Consideration of the possibility of backwards time travel in a hypothetical universe described by a Gdel metric led famed logician Kurt Gdel to assert that time might itself be a sort of illusion.[5][6] He seems to have been suggesting something along the lines of the block time view in which time does not really "flow" but is just another dimension like space, with all events at all times being fixed within this 4-dimensional "block".
References
[1] Barjavel, Ren (1943). Le voyageur imprudent ("The imprudent traveler").; actually, the book refers to an ancestor of the time traveler not his grandfather. [2] Horwich, Paul (1987). Asymmetries in Time. Cambridge, MIT Press. pp.116. When the term was coined by Paul Horwich, he used the term autofanticide. [3] Deutsch, David (1991). "Quantum mechanics near closed timelike curves". Physical Review D 44 (10): 31973217. Bibcode1991PhRvD..44.3197D. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.44.3197. [4] "Dowden-Swartz Exchange" (http:/ / www. sfu. ca/ philosophy/ swartz/ time_travel1. htm). . [5] Yourgrau, Palle (2004). A World Without Time: The Forgotten Legacy Of Godel And Einstein. Basic Books. ISBN0-465-09293-4. [6] Holt, Jim (2005-02-21). "Time Bandits" (http:/ / www. newyorker. com/ printables/ critics/ 050228crat_atlarge). The New Yorker. . Retrieved 2006-10-19.
Liberal paradox
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Liberal paradox
The liberal paradox is a logical paradox advanced by Amartya Sen, building on the work of Kenneth Arrow and his impossibility theorem, which showed that within a system of menu-independent social choice, it is impossible to have both a commitment to "Minimal Liberty", which was defined as the ability to order tuples of choices, and Pareto optimality. Since this theorem was advanced in 1970, it has attracted a wide body of commentary from philosophers such as James M. Buchanan and Robert Nozick. The most contentious aspect is, on one hand, to contradict the libertarian notion that the market mechanism is sufficient to produce a Pareto-optimal societyand on the other hand, argue that degrees of choice and freedom, rather than welfare economics, should be the defining trait of that market mechanism. As a result it attracts commentary from both the left and the right of the political spectrum.
The theorem
The formal statement of the theorem is as follows. Suppose there is a set of social outcomes individuals each with preferences over . with at least two alternatives and there is a group of at least two
A benign social planner has to choose a single outcome from the set using the information about the individuals' preferences. The planner uses a social choice function. For every possible set of preferences, a social choice function selects a choice . There are two desirable properties we might ask of the social choice function: 1. A social choice function respects the Paretian principle (also called Pareto optimality) if it never selects an outcome when there is an alternative that everybody strictly prefers. So if there are two choices, such that for all individuals, then the social choice function does not select . 2. A social choice function respects minimal liberalism if there are two individuals whose preferences can veto some social outcomes. That is, there is one individual called the social choice function cannot chose pair of alternatives . If and one pair of alternatives and vice-versa. whose preferences can veto a choice over a (possibly different) . such that if strictly prefers to then
Similarly there must be another individual called
then the social choice function cannot select
Sen's impossibility theorem establishes that it's impossible for the social planner to satisfy condition 1 and condition 2. In other words, for every social choice function there is at least one set of preferences that force the planner to violate condition (1) or condition (2).
Sen's example
The following simple example involving two agents and three alternatives was put forward by Sen.[1] There is a copy of a certain book, say Lady Chatterly's Lover, which is viewed differently by individuals 1 and 2. The three alternatives are: that individual 1 reads it ( ), that individual 2 reads it ( ), that no one reads it ( ). Person 1, who is a prude, prefers most that no one reads it, but given the choice between either of the two reading it, he would prefer that he read it himself rather than exposing the gullible Mr. 2 to the influences of Lawrence. (Prudes, I am told, tend to prefer to be censors than being censored.) In decreasing order of preference, his ranking is . Person 2, however, prefers that either of them should read it rather than neither. Furthermore he takes delight in the thought that prudish Mr. 1 may have to read Lawrence, and his first preference is that person 1 should read it, next best that
Liberal paradox he himself should read it, and worst that neither should. His ranking is, therefore, .
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Suppose that we give each individual the right to decide whether they want or don't want to read the book. Then it's impossible to find a social choice function without violating "Minimal liberalism" or the "Paretian principle". "Minimal liberalism" requires that Mr. 1 not be forced to read the book, so cannot be chosen. It also requires that Mr. 2 not be forbidden from reading the book, so cannot be chosen. But alternative cannot be chosen either because of the Paretian principle. Both Mr. 1 and Mr. 2 agree that that they prefer Mr. 1 to read the book ( Mr. 2 ( ). ) than
Since we have ruled out any possible solutions, we must conclude that it's impossible to find a social choice function.
Another example
Suppose Alice and Bob have to decide whether to go to the cinema to see a 'chick flick', and that each has the liberty to decide whether to go themselves. If the personal preferences are based on Alice first wanting to be with Bob, then thinking it is a good film, and on Bob first wanting Alice to see it but then not wanting to go himself, then the personal preference orders might be: Alice wants: both to go > neither to go > Alice to go > Bob to go Bob wants: Alice to go > both to go > neither to go > Bob to go There are two Pareto efficient solutions: either Alice goes alone or they both go. Clearly Bob will not go on his own: he would not set off alone, but if he did then Alice would follow, and Alice's personal liberty means the joint preference must have both to go > Bob to go. However, since Alice also has personal liberty if Bob does not go, the joint preference must have neither to go > Alice to go. But Bob has personal liberty too, so the joint preference must have Alice to go > both to go and neither to go > Bob to go. Combining these gives Joint preference: neither to go > Alice to go > both to go > Bob to go and in particular neither to go > both to go. So the result of these individual preferences and personal liberty is that neither go to see the film. But this is Pareto inefficient given that Alice and Bob each think both to go > neither to go.
Bob Goes Alice Goes 4,3 Doesn't 1,1 Doesn't 2,4 3,2
The diagram shows the strategy graphically. The numbers represent ranks in Alice and Bob's personal preferences, relevant for Pareto efficiency (thus, either 4,3 or 2,4 is better than 1,1 and 4,3 is better than 3,2 making 4,3 and 2,4 the two solutions). The arrows represent transitions suggested by the individual preferences over which each has liberty, clearly leading to the solution for neither to go.
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Liberalism and externalities

The example shows that liberalism and Pareto-efficiency cannot always be attained at the same time. Hence, if liberalism exists in just a rather constrained way,[2] then Pareto-inefficiency could arise. Note that this is not always the case. For instance if one individual makes use of her liberal right to decide between two alternatives, chooses one of them and society would also prefer this alternative, no problem arises. Nevertheless, the general case will be that there are some externalities. For instance, one individual is free to go to work by car or by bicycle. If the individual takes the car and drives to work, whereas society wants him to go to work by bicycle there will be an externality. However, no one can force the other to prefer cycling. So, one implication of Sen's paradox is that these externalities will exist wherever liberalism exists.
Ways out of the paradox

There are several ways to resolve the paradox. First, the way Sen preferred, the individuals may decide simply to "respect" each other's choice by constraining their own choice. Assume that individual A orders three alternatives (x, y, z) according to x P y P z and individual B orders the same alternative according to z P x P y: according to the above reasoning, it will be impossible to achieve a Pareto-efficient outcome. But, if A refuses to decide over z and B refuses to decide over x, then for A follows x P y (x is chosen), and for B z P y (z is chosen). Hence A chooses x and respects that B chooses z; B chooses z and respects that A chooses x. So, the Pareto-efficient solution can be reached, if A and B constrain themselves and accept the freedom of the other player. A second way out of the paradox draws from game theory by assuming that individuals A and B pursue self-interested actions, when they decide over alternatives or pairs of alternatives. Hence, the collective outcome will be Pareto-inferior as the prisoner's dilemma predicts. The way out (except Tit for tat) will be to sign a contract, so trading away one's right to act selfishly and get the other's right to act selfishly in return. A third possibility starts with assuming that again A and B have different preferences towards four states of the world, w, x, y, and z. A's preferences are given by w P x P y P z; B's preferences are given by y P z P w P x. Now, liberalism implies that each individual is a dictator in a least one social area. Hence, A and B should be allowed to decide at least over one pair of alternatives. For A, the "best" pair will be (w,z), because w is most preferred and z is least preferred. Hence A can decide that w is chosen and at the same time make sure that z is not chosen. For B, the same applies and implies, that B would most preferably decide between y and x. Furthermore assume that A is not free to decide (w,z), but has to choose between y and x. Then A will choose x. Conversely, B is just allowed to choose between w and z and eventually will rest with z. The collective outcome will be (x,z), which is Pareto-inferior. Hence again A and B can make each other better off by employing a contract and trading away their right to decide over (x,y) and (w,z). The contract makes sure that A decides between w and z and chooses w. B decides between (x,y) and chooses y. The collective outcome will be (w,y), the Pareto-optimal result. Taken all together all three ways do not resolve the paradox as such. But, they answer the question: What can society do, if the paradox applies and no corresponding social decision function can handle the trade off between Pareto-optimality and liberalism? One sees that mutual acceptance and self-constraints or even contracts to trade away actions or rights are needed.
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References
[1] Amartya, Sen (1970). "The Impossibility of a Paretian Liberal". Journal of Political Economy 78: 152157. JSTOR1829633. [2] Sen, Amartya (1984) [1970]. Collective Choice and Social Welfare.
ch. 6.4 "Critique of Liberal Values" ch. 6.5, "Critique of the Pareto Principle" ch. 6*, "The Liberal Paradox"
Moore's paradox
Moore's paradox concerns the putative absurdity involved in asserting a first-person present-tense sentence such as 'It's raining but I don't believe that it is raining' or 'It's raining but I believe that it is not raining'. The first author to note this apparent absurdity was G.E. Moore.[1] These 'Moorean' sentences, as they have become known: 1. can be true, 2. are (logically) consistent, and moreover 3. are not (obviously) contradictions. The 'paradox' consists in explaining why asserting a Moorean sentence is (or less strongly, strikes us as being) weird, absurd or nonsensical in some way. The term 'Moore's Paradox' is due to Ludwig Wittgenstein,[2] who considered it Moore's most important contribution to philosophy.[3] Wittgenstein devoted numerous remarks to the problem in his later writings, which has brought Moore's Paradox the attention it might otherwise not have received.[4] Subsequent commentators have further noted that there is an apparent residual absurdity in asserting a first-person future-tense sentence such as 'It will be raining and I will believe that it is not raining'.[5] Moore's Paradox has also been connected to many other of the well-known logical paradoxes including, though not limited to, the liar paradox, the knower paradox, the unexpected hanging paradox, and the Preface paradox.[6] There is currently no generally accepted explanation of Moore's Paradox in the philosophical literature. However, while Moore's Paradox has perhaps been seen as a philosophical curiosity by philosophers themselves, Moorean-type sentences are used by logicians, computer scientists, and those working in the artificial intelligence community, as examples of cases in which a knowledge, belief or information system is unsuccessful in updating its knowledge/belief/information store in the light of new or novel information.[7]
The problem
Since Jaakko Hintikka's seminal treatment of the problem,[8] it has become standard to present Moore's Paradox as explaining why it is absurd to assert sentences that have the logical form: (OM) P and NOT(I believe that P), or (COM) P and I believe that NOT-P. Commentators nowadays refer to these, respectively, as the omissive and commissive versions of Moore's Paradox, a distinction according to the scope of the negation in the apparent assertion of a lack of belief ('I don't believe that p') or belief that NOT-P.[6] The terms pertain to the kind of doxastic error (i.e. error of belief) that one is subject to, or guilty of, if one is as the Moorean sentence says one is. Moore himself presented the problem in two ways.[1][9] The first more fundamental way of setting the problem up starts from the following three premises: 1. It can be true at a particular time both that P, and that I do not believe that P. 2. I can assert or believe one of the two at a particular time. 3. It is absurd to assert or believe both of them at the same time. I can assert that it is raining at a particular time. I can assert that I don't believe that it is raining at a particular time. If I say both at the same time, I am saying or doing something absurd. But the content of what I saythe proposition the sentence expressesis perfectly consistent: it may well be raining and I may not believe it. So why can't I assert
Moore's paradox that it is so? Moore presents the problem in a second, distinct, way: 1. It is not absurd to assert the past-tense counterpart, e.g. 'It was raining but I did not believe that it was raining'. 2. It is not absurd to assert the second- or third-person counterparts to Moore's sentences, e.g. 'It is raining but you do not believe that it is raining', or 'Michael is dead but they do not believe that he is'. 3. It is absurd to assert the present-tense 'It is raining and I don't believe that it is raining'. I can assert that I was a certain way (e.g. believing it was raining when it wasn't), that you, he, or they, are that way, but not that I am that way. Why not? Many commentatorsthough by no means allalso hold that Moore's Paradox arises not only at the level of assertion but also at the level of belief. Interestingly imagining someone who believes an instance of a Moorean sentence is tantamount to considering an agent who is subject to, or engaging in, self-deception (at least on one standard way of describing it).
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Proposed explanations
Philosophical interest in Moore's paradox, since Moore and Wittgenstein, has undergone a resurgence, starting with, though not limited to, Jaakko Hintikka,[8] continuing with Roy Sorensen,[6] David Rosenthal,[10] Sydney Shoemaker[11] and the first publication, in 2007, of a collection of articles devoted to the problem.[12] There have been several proposed constraints on a satisfactory explanation in the literature, including (though not limited to): It should explain the absurdity of both the omissive and the commissive versions. It should explain the absurdity of both asserting and believing Moore's sentences. It should preserve, and reveal the roots of, the intuition that contradiction (or something contradiction-like) is at the root of the absurdity. The first two conditions have generally been the most challenged, while the third appears to be the least controversial. Some philosophers have claimed that there is, in fact, no problem in believing the content of Moore's sentences (e.g. David Rosenthal). Others (e.g. Sydney Shoemaker) hold that an explanation of the problem at the level of belief will automatically provide us with an explanation of the absurdity at the level of assertion via the linking principle that what can reasonably be asserted is determined by what can reasonably be believed. Some have also denied (e.g. Rosenthal) that a satisfactory explanation to the problem need be uniform in explaining both the omissive AND commissive versions. Most of the explanations offered of Moore's paradox are united in holding that contradiction is at the heart of the absurdity. One type of explanation at the level of assertion exploits the view that assertion implies or expresses belief in some way so that if someone asserts that p they imply or express the belief that p. Several versions of this view exploit elements of speech act theory, which can be distinguished according to the particular explanation given of the link between assertion and belief. Whatever version of this view is preferred, whether cast in terms of the Gricean intentions (see Paul Grice) or in terms of the structure of Searlean illocutionary acts[13] (see speech act), it does not obviously apply to explaining the absurdity of the commissive version of Moore's paradox. To take one version of this type of explanation, if someone asserts p and conjoins it with the assertion (or denial) that he does not believe that p, then he has in that very act contradicted himself, for in effect what the speaker says is: I believe that p and I do not believe that p. The absurdity of asserting p & I do not believe that p is thus revealed as being of a more familiar kind. Depending on one's view of the nature of contradiction, one might thus interpret a speaker of the omissive Moorean sentence as asserting everything (that is, asserting too much) or asserting nothing (that is, not asserting enough). An alternative view is that the assertion "I believe that p" often (though not always) functions as an alternative way of asserting "p", so that the semantic content of the assertion "I believe that p" is just p: it functions as a statement
Moore's paradox about the world and not about anyone's state of mind. Accordingly what someone asserts when they assert "p and I believe that not-p" is just "p and not-p" Asserting the commissive version of Moore's sentences is again assimilated to the more familiar (putative) impropriety of asserting a contradiction.[14] At the level of belief, there are two main kinds of explanation. The first, much more popular one, agrees with those at the level of assertion that contradiction is at the heart of the absurdity. The contradiction is revealed in various ways, some using the resources of doxastic logic (e.g. Hintikka), others (e.g. Sorensen) principles of rational belief maintenance and formation, while still others appeal to our putative capacity for self-knowledge and the first-person authority (e.g. Shoemaker) we have over our states of mind. Another alternative view, due to Richard Moran,[15] views the existence of Moore's paradox as symptomatic of creatures who are capable of self-knowledge, capable of thinking for themselves from a deliberative point of view, as well as about themselves from a theoretical point of view. On this view, anyone who asserted or believed one of Moore's sentences would be subject to a loss of self-knowledgein particular, would be one who, with respect to a particular 'object', broadly construed, e.g. person, apple, the way of the world, would be in a situation which violates, what Moran calls, the Transparency Condition: if I want to know what I think about X, then I consider/think about nothing but X itself. Moran's view seems to be that what makes Moore's paradox so distinctive is not some contradictory-like phenomenon (or at least not in the sense that most commentators on the problem have construed it), whether it be located at the level of belief or that of assertion. Rather, that the very possibility of Moore's paradox is a consequence of our status as agents (albeit finite and resource-limited ones) who are capable of knowing (and changing) their own minds.
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References
[1] Moore, G. E. (1993). "Moore's Paradox". In Baldwin, Thomas. G. E. Moore: Selected Writings. London: Routledge. pp.207212. ISBN0-415-09853-X. [2] Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1953). Philosophical Investigations. Section II.x. Blackwell Publishers. p.190. [3] Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1974). von Wright, G. H.. ed. Letters to Russell, Keynes and Moore. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. [4] Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1980). Anscombe, G. E. M.; von Wright, G. H.. eds. Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, Volume I. Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. ISBN0-631-12541-8. [5] Bovens, Luc (1995). "'P and I Will Believe that not-P': Diachronic Constraints on Rational Belief". Mind 104 (416): 737760. doi:10.1093/mind/104.416.737. [6] Sorensen, Roy A. (1988). Blindspots. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN0-19-824981-0. [7] Philosophical Studies 128. 2006. [8] Hintikka, Jaakko (1962). Knowledge and Belief: An Introduction to the Logic of the Two Notions. Cornell, NY: Cornell University Press. [9] Moore, G. E. (1991). "Russell's Theory of Descriptions". In Schilpp, P. A.. The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell. The Library of Living Philosophers. 5. La Salle, IL: Open Court Publishing. pp.177225. [10] Rosenthal, David (1995). "Moore's Paradox and Consciousness". AI, Connectionism and Philosophical Psychology. Philosophical Perspectives. 9. Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview. pp.313334. ISBN0-924922-73-7. [11] Shoemaker, Sydney (1996). "Moore's Paradox and Self-Knowledge". The First-Person Perspective and other essays. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp.7496. ISBN0-521-56871-4. [12] Green, Mitchell S.; Williams, John N., eds. (2007). Moore's Paradox: New Essays on Belief, Rationality and the First-Person. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN978-0-19-928279-1. [13] Searle, John & Vanderveken, Daniel (1985). Foundations of Illocutionary Logic. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN0-521-26324-7. [14] Linville, Kent & Ring, Merrill. "Moore's Paradox Revisited". Synthese 87 (2): 295309. doi:10.1007/BF00485405. [15] Moran, Richard (2001). Authority & Estrangement: An Essay on Self-knowledge. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN0-691-08944-2.
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External links
"Epistemic Paradoxes" (including Moore's) at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://plato.stanford. edu/entries/epistemic-paradoxes/#MooPro)
Moravec's paradox
Moravec's paradox is the discovery by artificial intelligence and robotics researchers that, contrary to traditional assumptions, high-level reasoning requires very little computation, but low-level sensorimotor skills require enormous computational resources. The principle was articulated by Hans Moravec, Rodney Brooks, Marvin Minsky and others in the 1980s. As Moravec writes: "it is comparatively easy to make computers exhibit adult level performance on intelligence tests or playing checkers, and difficult or impossible to give them the skills of a one-year-old when it comes to perception and mobility."[1] Linguist and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker considers this the most significant discovery uncovered by AI researchers. In his book The Language Instinct, he writes: "The main lesson of thirty-five years of AI research is that the hard problems are easy and the easy problems are hard. The mental abilities of a four-year-old that we take for granted recognizing a face, lifting a pencil, walking across a room, answering a question in fact solve some of the hardest engineering problems ever conceived.... As the new generation of intelligent devices appears, it will be the stock analysts and petrochemical engineers and parole board members who are in danger of being replaced by machines. The gardeners, receptionists, and cooks are secure in their jobs for decades to come."[2] Marvin Minsky emphasizes that the most difficult human skills to reverse engineer are those that are unconscious. "In general, we're least aware of what our minds do best," he writes, and adds "we're more aware of simple processes that don't work well than of complex ones that work flawlessly."[3]
The biological basis of human skills

One possible explanation of the paradox, offered by Moravec, is based on evolution. All human skills are implemented biologically, using machinery designed by the process of natural selection. In the course of their evolution, natural selection has tended to preserve design improvements and optimizations. The older a skill is, the more time natural selection has had to improve the design. Abstract thought developed only very recently, and consequently, we should not expect its implementation to be particularly efficient. As Moravec writes: Encoded in the large, highly evolved sensory and motor portions of the human brain is a billion years of experience about the nature of the world and how to survive in it. The deliberate process we call reasoning is, I believe, the thinnest veneer of human thought, effective only because it is supported by this much older and much powerful, though usually unconscious, sensorimotor knowledge. We are all prodigious olympians in perceptual and motor areas, so good that we make the difficult look easy. Abstract thought, though, is a new trick, perhaps less than 100 thousand years old. We have not yet mastered it. It is not all that intrinsically difficult; it just seems so when we do it.[4] A compact way to express this argument would be: We should expect the difficulty of reverse-engineering any human skill to be roughly proportional to the amount of time that skill has been evolving in animals. The oldest human skills are largely unconscious and so appear to us to be effortless.
Moravec's paradox Therefore, we should expect skills that appear effortless to be difficult to reverse-engineer, but skills that require effort may not necessarily be difficult to engineer at all. Some examples of skills that have been evolving for millions of years: recognizing a face, moving around in space, judging peoples motivations, catching a ball, recognizing a voice, setting appropriate goals, paying attention to things that are interesting; anything to do with perception, attention, visualization, motor skills, social skills and so on. Some examples of skills that have appeared more recently: mathematics, engineering, human games, logic and much of what we call science. These are hard for us because they are not what our bodies and brains were primarily designed to do. These are skills and techniques that were acquired recently, in historical time, and have had at most a few thousand years to be refined, mostly by cultural evolution.[5]
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Historical influence on artificial intelligence

In the early days of artificial intelligence research, leading researchers often predicted that they would be able to create thinking machines in just a few decades (see history of artificial intelligence). Their optimism stemmed in part from the fact that they had been successful at writing programs that used logic, solved algebra and geometry problems and played games like checkers and chess. Logic and algebra are difficult for people and are considered a sign of intelligence. They assumed that, having (almost) solved the "hard" problems, the "easy" problems of vision and commonsense reasoning would soon fall into place. They were wrong, and one reason is that these problems are not easy at all, but incredibly difficult. The fact that they had solved problems like logic and algebra was irrelevant, because these problems are extremely easy for machines to solve.[6] Rodney Brooks explains that, according to early AI research, intelligence was "best characterized as the things that highly educated male scientists found challenging", such as chess, symbolic integration, proving mathematical theorems and solving complicated word algebra problems. "The things that children of four or five years could do effortlessly, such as visually distinguishing between a coffee cup and a chair, or walking around on two legs, or finding their way from their bedroom to the living room were not thought of as activities requiring intelligence."[7] This would lead Brooks to pursue a new direction in artificial intelligence and robotics research. He decided to build intelligent machines that had "No cognition. Just sensing and action. That is all I would build and completely leave out what traditionally was thought of as the intelligence of artificial intelligence."[7] This new direction, which he called "Nouvelle AI" was highly influential on robotics research and AI.[8]
Notes
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] Moravec 1988, p.15 Pinker 2007 Minsky 1988, p.29 Moravec 1988, pp.1516 Even given that cultural evolution is faster than genetic evolution, the difference in development time between these two kinds of skills is five or six orders of magnitude, and (Moravec would argue) there hasn't been nearly enough time for us to have "mastered" the new skills. [6] These are not the only reasons that their predictions did not come true: see the problems [7] Brooks (2002), quoted in McCorduck (2004, p.456) [8] McCorduck 2004, p.456
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References
Brooks, Rodney (1986), Intelligence Without Representation, MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Brooks, Rodney (2002), Flesh and Machines, Pantheon Books Campbell, Jeremy (1989), The Improbable Machine, Simon and Schuster, pp.3031 Minsky, Marvin (1986), The Society of Mind, Simon and Schuster, p.29 Moravec, Hans (1988), Mind Children, Harvard University Press McCorduck, Pamela (2004), Machines Who Think (http://www.pamelamc.com/html/machines_who_think. html) (2nd ed.), Natick, MA: A. K. Peters, Ltd., ISBN1-56881-205-1, p.456. Nilsson, Nils (1998), Artificial Intelligence: A New Synthesis, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, ISBN978-1-55860-467-4, pg. 7 Pinker, Steven (September 4, 2007) [1994], The Language Instinct, Harper Perennial Modern Classics, ISBN0061336467
Newcomb's paradox
Newcomb's paradox, also referred to as Newcomb's problem, is a thought experiment involving a game between two players, one of whom purports to be able to predict the future. Whether the problem is actually a paradox is disputed. Newcomb's paradox was created by William Newcomb of the University of California's Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. However, it was first analyzed and was published in a philosophy paper spread to the philosophical community by Robert Nozick in 1969, and appeared in Martin Gardner's Scientific American column in 1974. Today it is a much debated problem in the philosophical branch of decision theory but has received little attention from the mathematical side.
The problem
A person is playing a game operated by the Predictor, an entity somehow presented as being exceptionally skilled at predicting people's actions. The exact nature of the Predictor varies between retellings of the paradox. Some assume that the character always has a reputation for being completely infallible and incapable of error; others assume that the predictor has a very low error rate. The Predictor can be presented as a psychic, as a superintelligent alien, as a deity, as a brain-scanning computer, etc. However, the original discussion by Nozick says only that the Predictor's predictions are "almost certainly" correct, and also specifies that "what you actually decide to do is not part of the explanation of why he made the prediction he made". With this original version of the problem, some of the discussion below is inapplicable. The player of the game is presented with two boxes, one transparent (labeled A) and the other opaque (labeled B). The player is permitted to take the contents of both boxes, or just the opaque box B. Box A contains a visible $1,000. The contents of box B, however, are determined as follows: At some point before the start of the game, the Predictor makes a prediction as to whether the player of the game will take just box B, or both boxes. If the Predictor predicts that both boxes will be taken, then box B will contain nothing. If the Predictor predicts that only box B will be taken, then box B will contain $1,000,000. By the time the game begins, and the player is called upon to choose which boxes to take, the prediction has already been made, and the contents of box B have already been determined. That is, box B contains either $0 or $1,000,000 before the game begins, and once the game begins even the Predictor is powerless to change the contents of the boxes. Before the game begins, the player is aware of all the rules of the game, including the two possible contents of box B, the fact that its contents are based on the Predictor's prediction, and knowledge of the Predictor's infallibility. The only information withheld from the player is what prediction the Predictor made, and thus what the
Newcomb's paradox contents of box B are.

Predicted choice Actual choice A and B A and B B only B only A and B B only A and B B only Payout $1,000 $0 $1,001,000 $1,000,000
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The problem is called a paradox because two strategies that both sound intuitively logical give conflicting answers to the question of what choice maximizes the player's payout. The first strategy argues that, regardless of what prediction the Predictor has made, taking both boxes yields more money. That is, if the prediction is for both A and B to be taken, then the player's decision becomes a matter of choosing between $1,000 (by taking A and B) and $0 (by taking just B), in which case taking both boxes is obviously preferable. But, even if the prediction is for the player to take only B, then taking both boxes yields $1,001,000, and taking only B yields only $1,000,000taking both boxes is still better, regardless of which prediction has been made. The second strategy suggests taking only B. By this strategy, we can ignore the possibilities that return $0 and $1,001,000, as they both require that the Predictor has made an incorrect prediction, and the problem states that the Predictor is almost never wrong. Thus, the choice becomes whether to receive $1,000 (both boxes) or to receive $1,000,000 (only box B)so taking only box B is better. In his 1969 article, Nozick noted that "To almost everyone, it is perfectly clear and obvious what should be done. The difficulty is that these people seem to divide almost evenly on the problem, with large numbers thinking that the opposing half is just being silly."
The crux of the problem

The crux of the paradox is in the existence of two contradictory arguments, both being seemingly correct. 1. A powerful intuitive belief, that past events cannot be affected. My future action cannot determine the fate of an event that happened before the action. 2. Newcomb proposes a way of doing precisely this - affecting a past event. The prediction of the Predictor establishes equivalence between my choice (of renouncing the open box) and the content of the closed box, which was determined in the past. Since I can affect the future event, I can also affect the past event, which is equivalent to it. The use of first person in the formulation of the second argument is essential: only when playing the role of the chooser I feel that I determine the fate of the past event. Looking from aside at another person participating in the experiment does not arouse a feeling of contradiction. His choice and its prediction are part of a causal chain, that in principle is not problematic. A solution of the paradox must point out an error in one of the two arguments. Either the intuition is wrong, or there is something wrong with the way proposed for affecting the past.
The relationship to the idle argument

There is a version of the famous idle argument (see fatalism) that is equivalent to the paradox. It is this: Suppose that the omniscient predictor predicted the grade I will get in tomorrow's exam, and wrote his prediction in a note. Since the content of the note was determined a while ago, I cannot change it. Since I believe that it reflects precisely the grade I will get, I cannot also change my grade. So I can just as well rest, rather than prepare for the exam (hence the name "the idle argument").
Newcomb's paradox In both situations an equivalence between a past event P and a future event F is used to draw a paradoxical conclusion, and both use the same argumentation. In Newcomb's paradox the claim is "I can determine F, hence I can change P", while in the idle argument the claim is "I cannot change P, hence I cannot determine F", which is the same argument, formulated in reverse direction.
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Attempted resolutions
Many argue that the paradox is primarily a matter of conflicting decision making models. Using the expected utility hypothesis will lead one to believe that one should expect the most utility (or money) from taking only box B. However if one uses the Dominance principle, one would expect to benefit most from taking both boxes. More recent work has reformulated the problem as a noncooperative game in which players set the conditional distributions in a Bayes net. It is straightforward to prove that the two strategies for which boxes to choose make mutually inconsistent assumptions for the underlying Bayes net. Depending on which Bayes net one assumes, one can derive either strategy as optimal. In this there is no paradox, only unclear language that hides the fact that one is making two inconsistent assumptions.[1] Some argue that Newcomb's Problem is a paradox because it leads logically to self-contradiction. Reverse causation is defined into the problem and therefore logically there can be no free will. However, free will is also defined in the problem; otherwise the chooser is not really making a choice. Other philosophers have proposed many solutions to the problem, many eliminating its seemingly paradoxical nature: Some suggest a rational person will choose both boxes, and an irrational person will choose just the one, therefore rational people fare better, since the Predictor cannot actually exist. Others have suggested that an irrational person will do better than a rational person and interpret this paradox as showing how people can be punished for making rational decisions. Others have suggested that in a world with perfect predictors (or time machines because a time machine could be the mechanism for making the prediction) causation can go backwards.[2] If a person truly knows the future, and that knowledge affects his actions, then events in the future will be causing effects in the past. Chooser's choice will have already caused Predictor's action. Some have concluded that if time machines or perfect predictors can exist, then there can be no free will and Chooser will do whatever he's fated to do. Others conclude that the paradox shows that it is impossible to ever know the future. Taken together, the paradox is a restatement of the old contention that free will and determinism are incompatible, since determinism enables the existence of perfect predictors. Some philosophers argue this paradox is equivalent to the grandfather paradox. Put another way, the paradox presupposes a perfect predictor, implying the "chooser" is not free to choose, yet simultaneously presumes a choice can be debated and decided. This suggests to some that the paradox is an artifact of these contradictory assumptions. Nozick's exposition specifically excludes backward causation (such as time travel) and requires only that the predictions be of high accuracy, not that they are absolutely certain to be correct. So the considerations just discussed are irrelevant to the paradox as seen by Nozick, which focuses on two principles of choice, one probabilistic and the other causal assuming backward causation removes any conflict between these two principles. Newcomb's paradox can also be related to the question of machine consciousness, specifically if a perfect simulation of a person's brain will generate the consciousness of that person.[3] Suppose we take the Predictor to be a machine that arrives at its prediction by simulating the brain of the Chooser when confronted with the problem of which box to choose. If that simulation generates the consciousness of the Chooser, then the Chooser cannot tell if he is standing in front of the boxes in the real world or in the virtual world generated by the simulation in the past. The "virtual" Chooser would thus tell the Predictor which choice the "real" Chooser is going to make.
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Notes
[1] Wolpert, D. H.; Benford, G. (2010). What does Newcomb's paradox teach us?. arXiv:1003.1343. [2] Craig, William Lane (1988). "Tachyons, Time Travel, and Divine Omniscience". Journal of Philosophy 85 (3): 135150. JSTOR2027068. [3] Neal, R. M. (2006). Puzzles of Anthropic Reasoning Resolved Using Full Non-indexical Conditioning. arXiv:math.ST/0608592.
References
Nozick, Robert (1969), "Newcomb's Problem and Two principles of Choice," in Essays in Honor of Carl G. Hempel, ed. Nicholas Rescher, Synthese Library (Dordrecht, the Netherlands: D. Reidel), p.114-115. Bar-Hillel, Maya & Margalit, Avishai (1972), Newcomb's paradox revisited. British Journal of Philosophy of Science, 23, 295-304. Gardner, Martin (1974), "Mathematical Games," Scientific American, March 1974, p.102; reprinted with an addendum and annotated bibliography in his book The Colossal Book of Mathematics (ISBN 0-393-02023-1) Campbell, Richmond and Lanning Sowden, ed. (1985), Paradoxes of Rationality and Cooperation: Prisoners' Dilemma and Newcomb's Problem, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. (an anthology discussing Newcomb's Problem, with an extensive bibliography) Levi, Isaac (1982), "A Note on Newcombmania," Journal of Philosophy 79 (1982): 337-42. (a paper discussing the popularity of Newcomb's Problem) John Collins, "Newcomb's Problem", International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, Neil Smelser and Paul Baltes (eds), Elsevier Science (2001) (http://collins.philo.columbia.edu/econphil/newcomb. pdf) (Requires proper credentials)
External links
Newcomb's Paradox (http://www.kiekeben.com/newcomb.html) by Franz Kiekeben Thinking Inside the Boxes (http://www.slate.com/?id=2061419) by Jim Holt, for Slate Free Will: Two Paradoxes of Choice (http://mises.org/multimedia/mp3/Long/Long-3.mp3) (lecture) by Roderick T. Long Newcomb's Problem (http://w3.ub.uni-konstanz.de/kops/volltexte/2000/524/) by Marion Ledwig Newcomb's Problem and Regret of Rationality (http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/01/newcombs-proble. html) by Eliezer Yudkowsky The Resolution of Newcomb's Paradox (http://www.megasociety.org/noesis/44/newcomb.html) by Chris Langan
Omnipotence paradox
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Omnipotence paradox
The omnipotence paradox is a family of semantic paradoxes which address two issues: Is an omnipotent entity logically possible? and What do we mean by 'omnipotence'?. The paradox states that: if a being can perform any action, then it should be able to create a task which this being is unable to perform; hence, this being cannot perform all actions. Yet, on the other hand, if this being cannot create a task that it is unable to perform, then there exists something it cannot do. One version of the omnipotence paradox is the so-called paradox of the stone: "Could an omnipotent being create a stone so heavy that even he could not lift it?" If he could lift the rock, then it seems that the being could cease to be omnipotent, as the rock was not heavy enough; if he could not, it seems that the being was not omnipotent to begin with.[1]
14th-century depiction of Averroes (detail from Triunfo de Santo Toms by Andrea da Firenze), who address the omnipotence paradox in the 12th century
The argument is medieval, dating at least to the 12th century, addressed by Averros (11261198) and later by Thomas Aquinas.[2] Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (before 532) has a predecessor version of the paradox, asking whether it is possible for God to "deny himself". Many answers to the paradox have been proposed.
Overview
A common modern version of the omnipotence paradox is expressed in the question: "Can [an omnipotent being] create a stone so heavy that it cannot lift it?" This question generates a dilemma. The being can either create a stone which it cannot lift, or it cannot create a stone which it cannot lift. If the being can create a stone that it cannot lift, then it seems that it can cease to be omnipotent. If the being cannot create a stone which it cannot lift, then it seems it is already not omnipotent.[1] The problem is whether the above question is ad hoc, or, instead, is inherently required by the concept of omnipotence (is a material paradox). If it is ad hoc, then the concept of omnipotence does not include being subject to be exceeded. If it is inherently required, then there is no way to exclude answering the question in either the affirmative or the negative, and, thus, no way to determine whether an omnipotent being is logically possible or impossible. But, if the question is inherently required by the concept of omnipotence, then it seems the logic which allows it to be inherently required is a paradox since the particular concept of omnipotence which requires it is a paradox. But, whether the concept of omnipotence itself is a material paradox, or is simply too obscure to us to preclude being construed by paradoxical thinking, the central issue of the omnipotence paradox is whether the concept of the 'logically possible' is different for a world in which omnipotence exists from a world in which omnipotence does not exist. The reason this is the central issue is because our sense of material paradox, and of the logical contradiction of which material paradox is an expression, are functions of the fact that we presuppose that there must be something which exists which is inherently meaningful or logical, that is, which is concretely not a compound of other things or other concepts. So, for example, in a world in which exists a materially paradoxical omnipotence, its very paradoxicality seems either to be a material-paradox-of-a-material-paradox, or to be a non-paradox per the
Omnipotence paradox proposition that it exists (i.e., if it exists, then nothing has inherent meaning, including itself). Whereas, a world in which exists non-paradoxical omnipotence, its own omnipotence is coextensive with whatever is the concrete basis of our presupposition that something must be inherently meaningful. The dilemma of omnipotence is similar to another classic paradox, the irresistible force paradox: What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object? One response to this paradox is that if a force is irresistible, then, by definition, there is no truly immovable object; conversely, if an immovable object were to exist, then no force could be defined as being truly irresistible. Some claim that the only way out of this paradox is if the irresistible force and the immovable object never meet. But, this way out is not possible in the omnipotence case, because the purpose is to ask if the being's own inherent omnipotence makes its own inherent omnipotence impossible. Moreover, an object cannot in principle be immovable, if there is a force which may move it, regardless of whether the force and the object never meet. So, while, prior to any task, it is easy to imagine that omnipotence is in state of coherence with itself, some imaginable tasks are not possible for such a coherent omnipotence to perform without compromising its coherence.
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Types of omnipotence
Peter Geach describes and rejects four levels of omnipotence. He also defines and defends a lesser notion of the "almightiness" of God. 1. "Y is absolutely omnipotent" means that "Y" can do everything absolutely. Everything that can be expressed in a string of words even if it can be shown to be self-contradictory, "Y"is not bound in action, as we are in thought by the laws of logic."[3] This position is advanced by Descartes. It has the theological advantage of making God prior to the laws of logic. Some claim that it in addition gives rise to the theological disadvantage of making God's promises suspect. However, this claim is unfounded; for if God could do anything, then He could make it so all of His promises are genuine, and do anything, even to the contrary, while they remain so. On this account, the omnipotence paradox is a genuine paradox, but genuine paradoxes might nonetheless be so. 2. "Y is omnipotent" means "Y can do X" is true if and only if X is a logically consistent description of a state of affairs. This position was once advocated by Thomas Aquinas.[4] This definition of omnipotence solves some of the paradoxes associated with omnipotence, but some modern formulations of the paradox still work against this definition. Let X = "to make something that its maker cannot lift". As Mavrodes points out there is nothing logically contradictory about this; a man could, for example, make a boat which he could not lift.[5] It would be strange if humans could accomplish this feat, but an omnipotent being could not. Additionally, this definition has problems when X is morally or physically untenable for a being like God. 3. "Y is omnipotent" means "Y can do X" is true if and only if "Y does X" is logically consistent. Here the idea is to exclude actions which would be inconsistent for Y to do but might be consistent for others. Again sometimes it looks as if Aquinas takes this position.[6] Here Mavrodes' worry about X= "to make something its maker cannot lift" will no longer be a problem because "God does X" is not logically consistent. However, this account may still have problems with moral issues like X = "tells a lie" or temporal issues like X = "brings it about that Rome was never founded."[3] 4. "Y is omnipotent" means whenever "Y will bring about X" is logically possible, then "Y can bring about X" is true. This sense, also does not allow the paradox of omnipotence to arise, and unlike definition #3 avoids any temporal worries about whether or not an omnipotent being could change the past. However, Geach criticizes even this sense of omnipotence as misunderstanding the nature of God's promises.[3] 5. "Y is almighty" means that Y is not just more powerful than any creature; no creature can compete with Y in power, even unsuccessfully.[3] In this account nothing like the omnipotence paradox arises, but perhaps that is because God is not taken to be in any sense omnipotent. On the other hand, Anselm of Canterbury seems to think that almightiness is one of the things that makes God count as omnipotent.[7]
Omnipotence paradox St Augustine in his City of God writes "God is called omnipotent on account of His doing what He wills" and thus proposes the definition that "Y is omnipotent" means "If Y wishes to do X then Y can and does do X". The notion of omnipotence can also be applied to an entity in different ways. An essentially omnipotent being is an entity that is necessarily omnipotent. In contrast, an accidentally omnipotent being is an entity that can be omnipotent for a temporary period of time, and then becomes non-omnipotent. The omnipotence paradox can be applied differently to each type of being.[8] Some Philosophers, such as Ren Descartes, argue that God is absolutely omnipotent.[9] In addition, some philosophers have considered the assumption that a being is either omnipotent or non-omnipotent to be a false dilemma, as it neglects the possibility of varying degrees of omnipotence.[10] Some modern approaches to the problem have involved semantic debates over whether languageand therefore philosophycan meaningfully address the concept of omnipotence itself.[11]
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Proposed answers
A common response is that since God is supposedly omnipotent, the phrase "could not lift" doesn't make sense and the paradox is meaningless.[12][13] This may mean that the complexity involved in rightly understanding omnipotence---contra all the logical details involved in misunderstanding it---is a function of the fact that omnipotence, like infinity, is perceived at all by contrasting reference to those complex and variable things which it is not. But, an alternative meaning is that a non-corporeal God cannot lift anything, but can raise it (a linguistic pedantry) - or to use the beliefs of Christians and Hindus (that there is one God, who can be manifest as several different beings) that whilst it is possible for God to do all things, it is not possible for all his incarnations to do them. As such, God could create a stone so heavy that, in one incarnation, he was unable to lift it - but would be able to do something that an incarnation that could lift it couldn't. Other responses claim that the question is sophistry, meaning it makes grammatical sense, but has no intelligible meaning. The lifting a rock paradox (Can God lift a stone larger than he can carry?) uses human characteristics to cover up the main skeletal structure of the question. With these assumptions made, two arguments can stem from it: 1. Lifting covers up the definition of translation, which means moving something from one point in space to another. With this in mind, the real question would be, "Can God move a rock from one location in space to another that is larger than possible?" In order for the rock to not be able to move from one space to another, it would have to be larger than space itself. However, it is impossible for a rock to be larger than space, as space will always adjust itself to cover the space of the rock. If the supposed rock was out of space-time dimension, then the question would not make sense, because it would be impossible to move an object from one location in space to another if there is no space to begin with, meaning the faulting is with the logic of the question and not God's capabilities. 2. The words, "Lift a Stone", are used instead to substitute capability. With this in mind, essentially the question is asking if God is incapable, so the real question would be, "Is God capable of being incapable?" If God is capable of being incapable, it means that He is incapable, because He has the potential to not be able to do something. Conversely, if God is incapable of being incapable, then the two inabilities cancel each other out, making God have the capability to do something. The act of killing oneself is not applicable to an omnipotent being, since, despite that such an act does involve some power, it also involves a lack of power: the human person who can kill himself is already not indestructible, and, in fact, every agent constituting his environment is more powerful in some ways than himself. In other words, all non-omnipotent agents are concretely synthetic: constructed as contingencies of other, smaller, agents, meaning that they, unlike an omnipotent agent, logically can exist not only in multiple instantiation (by being constructed out of the more basic agents of which they are made), but are each bound to a differentiated location in space contra transcendent omnipresence.
Omnipotence paradox Isaac Asimov, a confirmed atheist, answered a variation of this question: what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object? He points out that Albert Einstein demonstrated the equivalence of mass-energy. That is, according to relativity theory, mass is simply frozen energy, energy is simply liquid mass. In order to be either "immovable" or "irresistible", the entity must possess the majority of energy in the system. No system can have two majorities. A universe in which there exists such a thing as an irresistible force is, by definition, a universe which cannot also contain an immovable object. And a universe which contains an immovable object cannot, by definition, also contain an irresistible force. So the question is essentially meaningless: either the force is irresistible or the object is immovable, but not both. Asimov points out that this question is the logical fallacy of the pseudo-question. Just because we can string words together to form what looks like a coherent sentence does not mean the sentence really makes any sense. Thomas Aquinas asserts that the paradox arises from a misunderstanding of omnipotence. He maintains that inherent contradictions and logical impossibilities do not fall under the omnipotence of God.[14] J. L Cowan sees this paradox as a reason to reject the concept of 'absolute' omnipotence,[15] while others, such as Ren Descartes, argue that God is absolutely omnipotent, despite the problem.[9] C. S. Lewis argues that when talking about omnipotence, referencing "a rock so heavy that God cannot lift it" is nonsense just as much as referencing "a square circle"; that it is not logically coherent in terms of power to think that omnipotence includes the power to do the logically impossible. So asking "Can God create a rock so heavy that even he cannot lift it?" is just as much nonsense as asking "Can God draw a square circle?" The logical contradiction here being God's simultaneous ability and disability in lifting the rock: the statement "God can lift this rock" must have a truth value of either true or false, it cannot possess both. This is justified by observing that in order for the omnipotent agent to create such a stone, the omnipotent agent must already be more powerful than itself: such a stone is too heavy for the omnipotent agent to lift, but the omnipotent agent already can create such a stone; If an omnipotent agent already is more powerful than itself, then it already is just that powerful. Which means that its power to create a stone thats too heavy for it to lift is identical to its power to lift that very stone. While this doesnt quite make complete sense, Lewis wished to stress its implicit point: that even within the attempt to prove that the concept of omnipotence is immediately incoherent, one admits that it is immediately coherent, and that the only difference is that this attempt if forced to admit this despite that the attempt is constituted by a perfectly irrational route to its own unwilling end, with a perfectly irrational set of 'things' included in that end. In other words, that the 'limit' on what omnipotence 'can' do is not a limit on its actual agency, but an epistemological boundary without which omnipotence could not be identified (paradoxically or otherwise) in the first place. In fact, this process is merely a fancier form of the classic Liar ParadoxA: If I say, "I am a liar", then how can it be true if I am telling the truth therewith, and, if I am telling the truth therewith, then how can I be a liar? So, to think that omnipotence is an epistemological paradox is like failing to recognize that, when taking the statement, 'I am a liar' self-referentially, the statement is reduced to an actual failure to lie. In other words, if one maintains the supposedly 'initial' position that the necessary conception of omnipotence includes the 'power' to compromise both itself and all other identity, and if one concludes from this position that omnipotence is epistemologically incoherent, then one implicitly is asserting that one's own 'initial' position is incoherent. Therefore the question (and therefore the perceived paradox) is meaningless. Nonsense does not suddenly acquire sense and meaning with the addition of the two words, "God can" before it.[12] Lewis additionally said that "unless something is self-evident, nothing can be proved", which implies for the debate on omnipotence that, as in matter, so in the human understanding of truth: it takes no true insight to destroy a perfectly integrated structure, and the effort to destroy has greater effect than an equal effort to build; so, a man is thought a fool who assumes its integrity, and thought an abomination who argues for it. It is easier to teach a fish to swim in outer space than to convince a room full of ignorant fools why it cannot be done. John Christian Uy said that it is just the same as someone with double-bladed sword (accidentally omnipotent), or sword and a shield (essentially omnipotent). Therefore, an accidentally omnipotent deity CAN remove its omnipotence while an essentially omnipotent deity CANNOT do anything that would make it non-omnipotent. Both however, have no limitations so far other than the essential omnipotent being who cannot do anything which will
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Omnipotence paradox make it non-omnipotent like making someone equal with him, lowering or improving himself(for omnipotence is the highest) etc. It could, however, make someone with a great power, though it cannot be 99% because Omnipotence is infinite, because that created being is not equal with him. Overall, God in the Christian Bible, is essentially omnipotent. William Jennings Bryan said this is roughly the view espoused by Matthew Harrison Brady, a character in the 1955 play Inherit the Wind loosely based upon William Jennings Bryan. In the climactic scene of the 1960 movie version, Brady argues, "Natural law was born in the mind of the Creator. He can change itcancel ituse it as he pleases!" But this solution merely pushes the problem back a step; one may ask whether an omnipotent being can create a stone so immutable that the being itself cannot later alter it. But a similar response can be offered to respond to this and any further steps. In a 1955 article published in the philosophy journal Mind, J. L. Mackie attempted to resolve the paradox by distinguishing between first-order omnipotence (unlimited power to act) and second-order omnipotence (unlimited power to determine what powers to act things shall have).[16] An omnipotent being with both first and second-order omnipotence at a particular time might restrict its own power to act and, henceforth, cease to be omnipotent in either sense. There has been considerable philosophical dispute since Mackie, as to the best way to formulate the paradox of omnipotence in formal logic.[17] Another common response to the omnipotence paradox is to try to define omnipotence to mean something weaker than absolute omnipotence, such as definition 3 or 4 above. The paradox can be resolved by simply stipulating that omnipotence does not require the being to have abilities which are logically impossible, but only to be able to do anything which conforms to the laws of logic. A good example of a modern defender of this line of reasoning is George Mavrodes.[5] Essentially, Mavrodes argues that it is no limitation on a being's omnipotence to say that it cannot make a round square. Such a "task" is termed by him a "pseudo-task" as it is self-contradictory and inherently nonsense. Harry Frankfurtfollowing from Descarteshas responded to this solution with a proposal of his own: that God can create a stone impossible to lift and also lift said stone For why should God not be able to perform the task in question? To be sure, it is a taskthe task of lifting a stone which He cannot liftwhose description is self-contradictory. But if God is supposed capable of performing one task whose description is self-contradictorythat of creating the problematic stone in the first placewhy should He not be supposed capable of performing anotherthat of lifting the stone? After all, is there any greater trick in performing two logically impossible tasks than there is in performing one?[18] If a being is accidentally omnipotent, then it can resolve the paradox by creating a stone which it cannot lift and thereby becoming non-omnipotent. Unlike essentially omnipotent entities, it is possible for an accidentally omnipotent being to be non-omnipotent. This raises the question, however, of whether or not the being was ever truly omnipotent, or just capable of great power.[8] On the other hand, the ability to voluntarily give up great power is often thought of as central to the notion of the Christian Incarnation.[19] If a being is essentially omnipotent, then it can also resolve the paradox (as long as we take omnipotence not to require absolute omnipotence). The omnipotent being is essentially omnipotent, and therefore it is impossible for it to be non-omnipotent. Further, the omnipotent being can do what is logically impossible and have no limitations just like the accidentally omnipotent but the ability to make oneself non-omnipotent. The creation of a stone which the omnipotent being cannot lift would be an impossibility. The omnipotent being cannot create such a stone because its power will be equal to him and thus, remove his omnipotence for there can only be one omnipotent being in existence, but nevertheless retains its omnipotence. This solution works even with definition 2, as long as we also know the being is essentially omnipotent rather than accidentally so. However, it is possible for non-omnipotent beings to compromise their own powers, which presents the paradox that non-omnipotent beings can do something (to themselves) which an essentially omnipotent being cannot do (to itself). This was essentially the position taken by Augustine of Hippo in his The City of God:
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For He is called omnipotent on account of His doing what He wills, not on account of His suffering what He wills not; for if that should befall [20] Him, He would by no means be omnipotent. Wherefore, He cannot do some things for the very reason that He is omnipotent.
Thus Augustine argued that God could not do anything or create any situation that would in effect make God not God. Some philosophers maintain that the paradox can be resolved if the definition of omnipotence includes Descartes' view that an omnipotent being can do the logically impossible. In this scenario, the omnipotent being could create a stone which it cannot lift, but could also then lift the stone anyway. Presumably, such a being could also make the sum 2 + 2 = 5 become mathematically possible or create a square triangle. This attempt to resolve the paradox is problematic in that the definition itself forgoes logical consistency. The paradox may be solved, but at the expense of making the logic a paraconsistent logic. This might not seem like a problem if one is already committed to dialetheism or some other form of logical transcendence. St Augustine's definition of omnipotence, i.e. that God can do and does everything that God wishes, resolves all possible paradoxes, because God, being perfectly rational, never wishes to do something that is paradoxical. If God can do absolutely anything, then God can remove His own omnipotence. If God can remove His own omnipotence, then God can create an enormous stone, remove His own omnipotence, then not be able to lift the stone. This preserves the belief that God is omnipotent because God can create a stone that He couldn't lift. Therefore, in this theory, God would not be omnipotent while not being able to lift the stone. This is a trivial solution because, for example, an omnipotent being could create a boulder that the strongest human could not lift (it needn't do that anyway since such boulders exist) and then give itself the potency of an average human; it would then not be able to lift the stone. This solves nothing as the entity that is unable to lift the stone is not "God" as understood by the paradox, but a very average being with the same potency as a human. The solution only produces a reduced-potency "God"; it does not deal with the matter at hand: God maintaining omnipotence even while performing a task, the success or failure of which seems to imply impotence. David Hemlock has proposed an incarnational resolution: "On one small planet, lying in a manger, one incarnate babe could not lift the rocks He had made. All the rocks of all of the starfields in Him consist, with their whirling atoms; by Him were and ever-are all things lifted up (Col 1:17; Phil 2:5-8)".[21]
Language and omnipotence

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein is often interpreted as arguing that language is not up to the task of describing the kind of power an omnipotent being would have. In his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus he stays generally within the realm of logical positivism, until claim 6.4, but at 6.41 and following the succeeding propositions argue that ethics and several other issues are "transcendental" subjects which we cannot examine with language. Wittgenstein also mentions the will, life after death, and God; arguing that "When the answer cannot be put into words, neither can the question be put into words".[22] Wittgenstein's work makes the omnipotence paradox a problem in semantics, the study of how symbols are given meaning. (The retort "That's only semantics" is a way of saying that a statement only concerns the definitions of words, instead of anything important in the physical world.) According to the Tractatus, then, even attempting to formulate the omnipotence paradox is futile, since language cannot refer to the entities the paradox considers. The final proposition of the Tractatus gives Wittgenstein's dictum for these circumstances: "What we cannot speak of, we must pass over in silence".[23] Wittgenstein's approach to these problems is influential among other 20th century religious thinkers such as D. Z. Phillips.[24] But in his later years, Wittgenstein wrote works which are often interpreted as conflicting with his positions in the Tractatus,[25] and indeed the later Wittgenstein is mainly seen as the leading critic of the early Wittgenstein.
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Other versions of the paradox

In the 6th century, Pseudo-Dionysius claims that a version of the omnipotence paradox constituted the dispute between St. Paul and Elmyas the Magician mentioned in Acts 13:8, but it is phrased in terms of a debate as to whether or not God can "deny himself" ala 2 Tim 2:13.[26] In the 11th century, St. Anselm argues that there are many things that God cannot do, but that nonetheless he counts as Omnipotent.[27] Thomas Aquinas advanced a version of the omnipotence paradox by asking whether God could create a triangle with internal angles that did not add up to 180 degrees. As Aquinas put it in Summa contra Gentiles:
Since the principles of certain sciences, such as logic, geometry and arithmetic are taken only from the formal principles of things, on which the essence of the thing depends, it follows that God could not make things contrary to these principles. For example, that a genus was not predicable of the species, or that lines drawn from the centre to the circumference were not equal, or that a triangle did not have three angles [28] equal to two right angles.
This can be done on a sphere, and not on a flat surface. The later invention of non-Euclidean geometry does not resolve this question; for one might as well ask, "If given the axioms of Riemannian geometry, can an omnipotent being create a triangle whose angles do not add up to more than 180 degrees?" In either case, the real question is whether or not an omnipotent being would have the ability to evade the consequences which follow logically from a system of axioms that the being created. A version of the paradox can also be seen in non-theological contexts. A similar problem occurs when accessing legislative or parliamentary sovereignty, which holds a specific legal institution to be omnipotent in legal power, and in particular such an institution's ability to regulate itself.[29] In a sense, the classic statement of the omnipotence paradox a rock so heavy that its omnipotent creator cannot lift it is grounded in Aristotelian science. After all, if one considers the stone's position relative to the sun around which the planet orbits, one could hold that the stone is constantly being liftedstrained though that interpretation would be in the present context. Modern physics indicates that the choice of phrasing about lifting stones should relate to acceleration; however, this does not in itself of course invalidate the fundamental concept of the generalized omnipotence paradox. However, one could easily modify the classic statement as follows: "An omnipotent being creates a universe which follows the laws of Aristotelian physics. Within this universe, can the omnipotent being create a stone so heavy that the being cannot lift it?" Ethan Allen's Reason addresses the topics of original sin, theodicy and several others in classic Enlightenment fashion.[30] In Chapter 3, section IV, he notes that "omnipotence itself" could not exempt animal life from mortality, since change and death are defining attributes of such life. He argues, "the one cannot be without the other, any more than there could be a compact number of mountains without valleys, or that I could exist and not exist at the same time, or that God should effect any other contradiction in nature." Labeled by his friends a Deist, Allen accepted the notion of a divine being, though throughout Reason he argues that even a divine being must be circumscribed by logic. In Principles of Philosophy, Descartes tried refuting the existence of atoms with a variation of this argument, claiming God could not create things so indivisible that he could not divide them. It is even in popular culture. In an episode of The Simpsons, Homer asks Ned Flanders the question "Could Jesus microwave a burrito so hot that He Himself could not eat it?" In one strip of the webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, a child is seen asking a priest "Could God make an argument so circular that even He couldn't believe it?" In the Marvel Comics Runaways, Victor Mancha, the technorganic android created by Ultron, is shown as unable to process correctly paradoxes: as such, it's known that a small numbers of well known paradoxes may force his logic in a permanent loop, shutting his functions down until someone steps in to give Victor the proper solution. As such, his peers stop him once by asking "Could God make a sandwitch so big that even he couldn't finish it?", and reboot
Omnipotence paradox his mind by explaining him a simplified version of the God as essentially omnipotent solution ("Yes. God could make a sandwitch so big that even he couldn't finish it, and eat it all").
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Notes
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] Savage, C. Wade. "The Paradox of the Stone" Philosophical Review, Vol. 76, No. 1 (Jan., 1967), pp. 7479 doi:10.2307/2182966 Averros, Tahafut al-Tahafut (The Incoherence of the Incoherence) trans. Simon Van Der Bergh, Luzac & Company 1969, sections 529536 Geach, P. T. "Omnipotence" 1973 in Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings, Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 6375 Aquinas, Thomas Summa Theologica Book 1 Question 25 article 3 Mavrodes, George. " Some Puzzles Concerning Omnipotence (http:/ / spot. colorado. edu/ ~kaufmad/ courses/ Mavrodes. pdf)" first published 1963 now in The Power of God: readings on Omnipotence and Evil. Linwood Urban and Douglass Walton eds. Oxford University Press 1978 pp. 13134 [6] Aquinas Summa Theologica Book 1 Question 25 article 4 response #3 [7] Anselm of Canterbury Proslogion Chap VII in The Power of God: readings on Omnipotence and Evil. Linwood Urban and Douglass Walton eds. Oxford University Press 1978 pp. 3536 [8] Hoffman, Joshua, Rosenkrantz, Gary. "Omnipotence" (http:/ / plato. stanford. edu/ archives/ sum2002/ entries/ omnipotence/ ) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2002 Edition). Edward N. Zalta (ed.). (Accessed on 19 April 2006) [9] Descartes, Rene, 1641. Meditations on First Philosophy. Cottingham, J., trans., 1996. Cambridge University Press. Latin original. Alternative English title: Metaphysical Meditations. Includes six Objections and Replies. A second edition published the following year, includes an additional Objection and Reply and a Letter to Dinet [10] Haeckel, Ernst. The Riddle of the Universe. Harper and Brothers, 1900. [11] Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (6.41 and following) [12] The Problem of Pain, Clive Staples Lewis, 1944 MacMillan [13] Loving Wisdom: Christian Philosophy of Religion by Paul Copan, Chalice Press, 2007 page 46 [14] http:/ / www. ccel. org/ a/ aquinas/ summa/ FP/ FP025. html#FPQ25A3THEP1 [15] Cowan, J. L. "The Paradox of Omnipotence" first published 1962, in The Power of God: Readings on Omnipotence and Evil. Linwood Urban and Douglass Walton eds. Oxford University Press 1978 pp. 14452 [16] Mackie, J. L., "Evil and Omnipotence." Mind LXIV, No, 254 (April 1955). [17] The Power of God: Readings on Omnipotence and Evil. Linwood Urban and Douglass Walton eds. Oxford University Press 1978. Keene and Mayo disagree p. 145, Savage provides 3 formalizations p. 13841, Cowan has a different strategy p. 147, and Walton uses a whole separate strategy p. 15363 [18] Frankfurt, Harry. "The Logic of Omnipotence" first published in 1964 in Philosophical Review and now in Necessity, Volition, and Love. Cambridge University Press November 28, 1998 pp.12 [19] Gore, Charles, "A Kenotic Theory of Incarnation" first published 1891, in The Power of God: readings on Omnipotence and Evil. Linwood Urban and Douglass Walton eds. Oxford University Press 1978 pp. 16568 [20] City of God, Book 5, Chapter 10 (http:/ / www. ccel. org/ ccel/ schaff/ npnf102. iv. V. 10. html) [21] http:/ / katachriston. wordpress. com/ 2011/ 04/ 01/ can-god-make-a-stone-he-cannot-lift/ [22] Wittgenstein, Ludwig. proposition 6.5 [23] Wittgenstein, Ludwig. proposition 7 [24] D. Z. Phillips "Philosophy, Theology and the Reality of God" in Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings. William Rowe and William Wainwright eds. 3rd ed. 1998 Oxford University Press [25] Hacker, P.M.S. Wittgenstein's Place in Twentieth-Century Analytic Philosophy. 1996 Blackwell [26] Pseudo-Dionysius, "Divine Names" 893B in Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works. trans Colm Luibheid Paulist Press. 1987. ISBN 0-8091-2838-1 [27] Anselm of Canterbury Proslogion Chap. VII, in The Power of God: readings on Omnipotence and Evil. Linwood Urban and Douglass Walton eds. Oxford University Press 1978 pp. 3536 [28] "Cum principia quarundam scientiarum, ut logicae, geometriae et arithmeticae, sumantur ex solis principiis formalibus rerum, ex quibus essentia rei dependet, sequitur quod contraria horum principiorum Deus facere non possit: sicut quod genus non sit praedicabile de specie; vel quod lineae ductae a centro ad circumferentiam non sint aequales; aut quod triangulus rectilineus non habeat tres angulos aequales duobus rectis". Aquinas, T. Summa Contra Gentiles, Book 2, Section 25. trans. Edward Buckner [29] Suber, P. (1990) The Paradox of Self-Amendment: A Study of Law, Logic, Omnipotence, and Change (http:/ / www. earlham. edu/ ~peters/ writing/ psa/ sec01. htm#C). Peter Lang Publishing [30] Allen, Ethan. Reason: The Only Oracle of Man. (http:/ / libertyonline. hypermall. com/ allen-reason. html) J.P. Mendum, Cornill; 1854. Originally published 1784. (Accessed on 19 April 2006)
Omnipotence paradox
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References
Allen, Ethan. Reason: The Only Oracle of Man. (http://libertyonline.hypermall.com/allen-reason.html) J.P. Mendum, Cornill; 1854. Originally published 1784. (Accessed on 19 April 2006) Augustine. City of God and Christian Doctrine. (http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf102.html) The Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1890. (Accessed on 26 September 2006) Burke, James. The Day the Universe Changed. Little, Brown; 1995 (paperback edition). ISBN 0-316-11704-8. Gleick, James. Genius. Pantheon, 1992. ISBN 0-679-40836-3. Haeckel, Ernst. The Riddle of the Universe. Harper and Brothers, 1900. Hoffman, Joshua, Rosenkrantz, Gary. "Omnipotence" (http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2002/entries/ omnipotence/) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2002 Edition). Edward N. Zalta (ed.). (Accessed on 19 April 2006) Mackie, J. L., "Evil and Omnipotence." Mind LXIV, No, 254 (April 1955). Wierenga, Edward. "Omnipotence" The Nature of God: An Inquiry into Divine Attributes (http://www.courses. rochester.edu/wierenga/REL111/omnipch.html). Cornell University Press, 1989. (Accessed on 19 April 2006) Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Available online (http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/ 5740) via Project Gutenberg. Accessed 19 April 2006.
Paradox of hedonism
The paradox of hedonism, also called the pleasure paradox, is the idea in the study of ethics which points out that pleasure and happiness are strange phenomena that do not obey normal principles. First explicitly noted by the philosopher Henry Sidgwick in The Methods of Ethics, the paradox of hedonism points out that pleasure cannot be acquired directly, it can only be acquired indirectly.
Overview
It is often said that we fail to attain pleasures if we deliberately seek them. This has been described variously, by many: John Stuart Mill, the utilitarian philosopher, in his autobiography: "But I now thought that this end [one's happiness] was only to be attained by not making it the direct end. Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness[....] Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness along the way[....] Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so." [1] Viktor Frankl in Man's Search for Meaning: Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. The more a man tries to demonstrate his sexual potency or a woman her ability to experience orgasm, the less they are able to succeed. Pleasure is, and must remain, a side-effect or by-product, and is destroyed and spoiled to the degree to which it is made a goal in itself. [2] Philosopher Sren Kierkegaard in Either/Or: Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.[3] Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in The Antichrist (1895) and The Will to Power (1901): What is good? Everything that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will to power, power itself. What is bad? Everything that is born of weakness.
Paradox of hedonism What is happiness? The feeling that power increases that a resistance is overcome.[4] [...] it is significantly enlightening to substitute for the individual happiness (for which every living being is supposed to strive) power [...] joy is only a symptom of the feeling of attained power [...] (one does not strive for joy [...] joy accompanies; joy does not move)[5] Psychologist Alfred Adler in The Neurotic Constitution (1912): Nietzsche's "will to power" and "will to seem" embrace many of our views, which again resemble in some respects the views of Fr and the older writers, according to whom the sensation of pleasure originates in a feeling of power, that of pain in a feeling of feebleness.[6] Poet and satirist Edward Young: The love of praise, howe'er concealed by art, Reigns more or less supreme in every heart; The Proud to gain it, toils on toils endure; The modest shun it, but to make it sure![7] Politician William Bennett: "Happiness is like a cat, If you try to coax it or call it, it will avoid you; it will never come. But if you pay no attention to it and go about your business, you'll find it rubbing against your legs and jumping into your lap." Novelist Joo Guimares Rosa: "Happiness is found only in little moments of inattention."[8]
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Example
Suppose Paul likes to collect stamps. According to most models of behavior, including not only utilitarianism, but most economic, psychological and social conceptions of behavior, it is believed that Paul likes collecting stamps because he gets pleasure from collecting stamps. Stamp collecting is an avenue towards acquiring pleasure. However, if you tell Paul this, he will likely disagree. He does get pleasure from collecting stamps, but this is not the process that explains why he collects stamps. It is not as though he says, I must collect stamps so I, Paul, can obtain pleasure. Collecting stamps is not just a means toward pleasure. He just likes collecting stamps. This paradox is often spun around backwards, to illustrate that pleasure and happiness cannot be reverse-engineered. If for example you heard that collecting stamps was very pleasurable, and began a stamp collection as a means towards this happiness, it would inevitably be in vain. To achieve happiness, you must not seek happiness directly, you must strangely motivate yourself towards things unrelated to happiness, like the collection of stamps. The hedonistic paradox would probably mean that if one sets the goal to please oneself too highly then the mechanism would in fact jam itself.
Suggested explanations
Happiness is often imprecisely equated with pleasure. If, for whatever reason, one does equate happiness with pleasure, then the paradox of hedonism arises. When one aims solely towards pleasure itself, one's aim is frustrated. Henry Sidgwick comments on such frustration after a discussion of self-love in the above-mentioned work: "I should not, however, infer from this that the pursuit of pleasure is necessarily self-defeating and futile; but merely that the principle of Egoistic Hedonism, when applied with a due knowledge of the laws of human nature, is practically self-limiting; i.e., that a rational method of attaining the end at which it aims requires that we should to some extent put it out of sight and not directly aim at it."[9] While not addressing the paradox directly, Aristotle commented on the futility of pursuing pleasure. Human beings are actors whose endeavors bring about consequences, and among these is pleasure. Aristotle then argues as follows:
Paradox of hedonism "How, then, is it that no one is continuously pleased? Is it that we grow weary? Certainly all human things are incapable of continuous activity. Therefore pleasure also is not continuous; for it accompanies activity."[10] Sooner or later, finite beings will be unable to acquire and expend the resources necessary to maintain their sole goal of pleasure; thus, they find themselves in the company of misery. On the other hand, David Pearce argues in his treatise The Hedonistic Imperative that humans might be able to use genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and neuroscience to eliminate suffering in all sentient life.
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References
[1] John Stuart Mill, Autobiography in The Harvard Classics, Vol. 25, Charles Eliot Norton, ed. (New York: P. F. Collier & Son Company, 1909 (p. 94) [2] Viktor Frankl. Man's Search for Meaning. [3] Sren Kierkegaard. Either/Or. Diapsalmata [4] The Antichrist, 2 [5] The Will to Power, 688 [6] Adler, Alfred (1912). The Neurotic Constitution (http:/ / www. archive. org/ details/ neuroticconstitu00adle). New York: Moffat, Yard and Company. pp. ix. . [7] Geoffrey Brennan. The Esteem Engine: A Resource for Institutional Design (http:/ / www. assa. edu. au/ publications/ occasional_papers/ 2005_No1. php) [8] Rosa, Guimares. Tutamia Terceiras Estrias (8.a ed.). Rio de Janeiro: Ed. Nova Fronteira, 2001, p. 60. [9] Henry Sidgwick. The Methods of Ethics. BookSurge Publishing (1 Mar 2001) (p. 3) [10] Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics, (Written 350 B.C.E) Book X, page 4 (http:/ / classics. mit. edu/ Aristotle/ nicomachaen. 10. x. html)
Further reading
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1175, 3-6 in The Basic Works of Aristotle, Richard McKeon ed. (New York: Random House, 1941) John Stuart Mill, Autobiography in The Harvard Classics, Vol. 25, Charles Eliot Norton, ed. (New York: P. F. Collier & Son Company, 1909) Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics (London: Macmillan & Co. Ltd., 1874/1963)
Paradox of nihilism
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Paradox of nihilism
Paradox of nihilism is the name of several paradoxes.
Meaning
According to Hegarty, the paradox of nihilism is "that the absence of meaning seems to be some sort of meaning".[1]
Truth
Niklas Luhmann construes the paradox as stating "that consequently, only the untrue could be the truth".[2] In a footnote in his PhD thesis, Slocombe equates nihilism with the liar paradox.[3]
Religion
Rivas locates the paradox in the "conservative attitude of Roman Catholicism" developed in reaction to Nietzschean nihilism, in that it "betrays a form of nihilism, that is, the forced oblivion of the real ambiguity and the paradox that inform the distinction between the secular and the sacred".[4]
Critical Legal Theory

In Critical Legal Studies (CLS) theory, the arguments used to criticize the centrist position also undermine the position of CLS.[5]
Ethics
According to Jonna Bornemark, "the paradox of nihilism is the choice to continue one's own life while at the same time stating that it is not worth more than any other life".[6] Richard Ian Wright sees relativism as the root of the paradox.[7]
References
[1] Hegarty, Paul (2006). "Noise Music" (http:/ / scirus. com/ srsapp/ sciruslink?src=web& url=http:/ / www. chass. toronto. edu/ epc/ srb/ vol%2016. 1. pdf) (PDF). The Semiotic Review of Books (955 Oliver Road, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada P7B 5E1: Department of Sociology, Lakehead University) 16 (1-2): 2. ISSN0847-1622. . Retrieved 4 April 2010. "Failure/impossibility: noise is only ever defined against something else, operating in the absence of meaning, but caught in the paradox of nihilism that the absence of meaning seems to be some sort of meaning." [2] Luhmann, Niklas (1 February 2002). "2 The Modernity of Science" (http:/ / books. google. com/ books?id=L0G2bwV9VMMC& pg=PA64). In Rasch, William; Bal, Mieke; de Vries, Hent. Theories of Distinction: Redescribing the Descriptions of Modernity. Cultural memory in the present. William Rasch (introduction), translations by Joseph O'Neil, Elliott Schreiber, Kerstin Behnke, William Whobrey. Stanford University Press. p.64. ISBN978-0-8047-4123-1. OCLC318368737. . Retrieved 4 April 2010. "... the loss of reference had to appear as a loss of truth, resulting in the paradox of nihilism, which states that consequently only the untrue could be truth." The quoted chapter was originally published as Luhmann, Niklas; Behnke, Kerstin (1994). Oppenheimer, Andrew. ed. "The Modernity of Science". New German Critique (New York: TELOS Press) (61 Special Issue on Niklas Luhmann (Winter 1994)): 923. ISSN1558-1462. JSTOR488618. OCLC50709608. There is a 2002 review of the book (http:/ / www. cjsonline. ca/ reviews/ luhmann. html) in Canadian Journal of Sociology Online. [3] Slocombe, Will (September 2003). Postmodern Nihilism: Theory and Literature. PhD theses from Aberystwyth University. University of Wales Aberystwyth. pp. 154. hdl:2160/267. "'There is no truth' is not inherently paradoxical. If it is considered true, then it creates a paradox because it is therefore false. However, if it is considered false, then no such paradox exists. Therefore, it is only when considered true that it creates a paradox, in much the same way as critics suggest that nihilism must be invalid for this very reason. Having now introduced this stronger formulation of nihilism, from this point on nihilism can be considered equivalent to the statement that 'This sentence is not true'. (footnote 110)" A revised version was published as Slocombe, Will (2006). Nihilism and the Sublime Postmodern : The (Hi)Story of a Difficult Relationship From Romanticism to Postmodernism (http:/ / books. google. com/ books?id=VLx7QgAACAAJ). Routledge. ISBN978-0-415-97529-2.
Paradox of nihilism
OCLC62281496. . Retrieved 5 April 2010. [4] Rivas, Virgilio Aquino (2008). "The Role of the Church in the Politics of Social Transformation: The Paradox of Nihilism" (http:/ / www. politicsandreligionjournal. com/ PDF/ broj 4/ rivas. pdf) (PDF). (Politics and Religion) (11000 Beograd (Belgrade, Serbia): Centar za prouavanje religije i versku toleranciju, 27.marta 95 (Center for Studies of Religion and Religious Tolerance)) II (2): 5377. ISSN1820-659X. . Retrieved 4 April 2010. [5] Belliotti, Raymond A. (1987). "critical legal studies: the paradoxes of indeterminacy and nihilism" (http:/ / psc. sagepub. com/ cgi/ reprint/ 13/ 2/ 145. pdf) (PDF). Philosophy & Social Criticism 13 (2): 145154. doi:10.1177/019145378701300203. . Retrieved 4 April 2010. "... Critical Legal Studies Movement (CLS) ... CLS' view generates a "paradox of nihilism" which CLS has recognized and tried unsuccessfully to resolve." (Subscription required) Belliotti, Raymond A. (25 January 1994). Justifying Law: The Debate Over Foundations, Goals, and Methods (http:/ / books. google. com/ books?id=YK0VEi-S8m4C& pg=PA169). Temple University Press. p.169. ISBN978-1-56639-203-7. . Retrieved 4 April 2010. "The argument supporting CLS' attack on centrist ideology, adhering as it does to social contingency, jurisprudential indeterminacy, and pervasive conditionality flowing from the fundamental contradiction, seems to preclude CLS from establishing a normative justification for its own vision. CLS' critical attack seems to cut the heart from all efforts to provide non-question-begging adjudication of epistemological and moral truth claims. This nihilistic paradox, in which CLS' critical attack is so extreme that it prohibits CLS from constructing persuasively its own alternative vision, ..." [6] Bornemark, Jonna (2006). "Limit-situation: Antinomies and Transcendence in Karl Jaspers Philosophy" (http:/ / cjas. dk/ index. php/ sats/ article/ viewArticle/ 703) (PDF). sats - Nordic Journal of Philosophy 7 (2). ISSN1600-1974. . Retrieved 5 April 2010. (Subscription
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required)
[7] Wright, Richard Ian (April 1994) (PDF). The Dream of Enlightenment: An Essay on the Promise of Reason and Freedom in Modernity (https:/ / circle. ubc. ca/ handle/ 2429/ 9168). University of British Columbia. . Retrieved 5 April 2010. "But essentially these values can be negated by extending the same critical methods which Marx uses to negate earlier philosophical idealism and liberal bourgeois ideology. In other words, from a Nietzschean perspective, Marx's foundational principles are not sufficient to defend his humanistic values. Thus it can be argued that they still maintain the residue of the Christian ethics and Platonic metaphysics which have permeated western thought for several thousand years and which continue to provide modem thinkers with many of their illusory presuppositions. Nevertheless, one is justified in asking: Without such presuppositions, does not the critique of law, politics, or "this earth" lose its ultimate justification or meaning? How can one critique laws without holding on to a sense of justice? And herein lies the crux of the paradox of nihilism. If nihilism is the basis of human existence then all values are relative, and as such, particular values can only be maintained through a "will to power." (page 97)"
Paradox of tolerance
The tolerance paradox arises from a problem that a tolerant person might be antagonistic toward intolerance, hence intolerant of it. The tolerant individual would then be by definition intolerant of intolerance. Many philosophers, including Karl Popper[1] and John Rawls,[2] have discussed this paradox.
References
[1] Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. 1, Notes to the Chapters: Ch. 7, Note 4 [2] Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 216 (http:/ / books. google. com/ books?id=TdvHKizvuTAC& pg=PA216& lpg=PA216#v=onepage& q=& f=false)
External links
The Concept of Toleration and its Paradoxes (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/toleration/#ConTolPar), in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The Paradoxes of Tolerance (http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/ detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=EJ707855& ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=EJ707855), Barbara Pasamonik in Social Studies, v95 n5 p206 Sep-Oct 2004. "Puzzles and Paradoxes of Tolerance" (http://books.google.com/books?id=S1j8KXp20qwC&pg=PA9& lpg=PA9&dq#v=onepage&q=&f=false), Hans Oberdiek, 2001. Tolerating the Intolerant (http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/2006/07/tolerating-the-intolerant.php), Michael Totten.
Predestination paradox
303
A predestination paradox (also called causal loop, causality loop, and, less frequently, closed loop or closed time loop) is a paradox of time travel that is often used as a convention in science fiction. It exists when a time traveller is caught in a loop of events that "predestines" or "predates" them to travel back in time. Because of the possibility of influencing the past while time traveling, one way of explaining why history does not change is by saying that whatever has happened must happen. A time traveler attempting to alter the past in this model, intentionally or not, would only be fulfilling their role in creating history as we know it, not changing it. Or that the time-traveler's personal knowledge of history already includes their future travels to their own experience of the past. In layman's terms, it means this: the time traveller is in the past, which means they were in the past before. Therefore, their presence is vital to the future, and they do something that causes the future to occur in the same way that their knowledge of the future has already happened. It is very closely related to the ontological paradox and usually occurs at the same time.
Examples
A dual example of a predestination paradox is depicted in the classic Ancient Greek play 'Oedipus': Laius hears a prophecy that his son will kill him and marry his wife. Fearing the prophecy, Laius pierces newborn Oedipus' feet and leaves him out to die, but a herdsman finds him and takes him away from Thebes. Oedipus, not knowing he was adopted, leaves home in fear of the same prophecy that he would kill his father and marry his mother. Laius, meanwhile, ventures out to find a solution to the Sphinx's riddle. As prophesied, Oedipus crossed paths with a wealthy man leading to a fight in which Oedipus slays him. Unbeknownst to Oedipus the man is Laius. Oedipus then defeats the Sphinx by solving a mysterious riddle to become king. He marries the widow queen Jocasta not knowing she is his mother. A typical example of a predestination paradox (used in The Twilight Zone episode "No Time Like the Past") is as follows: A man travels back in time. While trying to prevent a school fire he had read about in a historical account he had brought with him, he accidentally causes it. An example of a predestination paradox in the television show Family Guy (Season 9, Episode 16): Stewie and Brian travel back in time using Stewie's time machine. They are warped outside the space-time continuum, before the Big Bang. To return home, Stewie overloads the return pad and they are boosted back into the space-time continuum by an explosion. Stewie later studies the radiation footprints of the Big Bang and the explosion of his return pad. He discovers that they match, and he concludes that he is actually the creator of the universe. He explains his theory to Brian, who replies with "That doesn't make any sense; you were born into the universe. How could you create it?" Stewie explains that it is a temporal causality loop, which is an example of a predestination paradox. A variation on the predestination paradoxes which involves information, rather than objects, traveling through time is similar to the self-fulfilling prophecy: A man receives information about his own future, telling him that he will die from a heart attack. He resolves to get fit so as to avoid that fate, but in doing so overexerts himself, causing him to suffer the heart attack that kills him. Here is a peculiar example from Barry Dainton's Time and Space: Many years from now, a transgalactic civilization has discovered time travel. A deep-thinking temporal engineer wonders what would happen if a time machine were sent back to the singularity from which the
Predestination paradox big bang emerged. His calculations yield an interesting result: the singularity would be destabilized, producing an explosion resembling the big bang. Needless to say, a time machine was quickly sent on its way.[1] In all five examples, causality is turned on its head, as the flanking events are both causes and effects of each other, and this is where the paradox lies. In the third example, the paradox lies in the temporal causality loop. So, if Stewie had never traveled back in time, the universe would not exist. Since it would not have existed, it could not have created Stewie, so Stewie would not have existed. One example of a predestination paradox that is not simultaneously an ontological paradox is: In 1850, Bob's horse was spooked by something, and almost took Bob over a cliff, had it not been for a strange man stopping the horse. This strange man was later honored by having a statue of him erected. Two hundred years later, Bob goes back in time to sight-see, and sees someone's horse about to go over a cliff. He rushes to his aid and saves his life. In The Big Loop the Big Bang owes its causation to the temporal engineers. Interestingly enough, it seems the engineers could have chosen not to send the time machine back (after all, they knew what the result would be), thereby failing to cause the Big Bang. But the Big Bang failing to happen is obviously impossible because the universe does exist, so perhaps in the situation where the engineers decide not to send a time machine to the Big Bang's singularity, some other cause will turn out to have been responsible. In another example, on the show Mucha Lucha in the episode "Woulda Coulda Hasbeena", Senior Hasbeena goes back in time to stop a flash from blinding him in an important wrestling match, when the three main protagonists try to stop him due to dangerous possible outcomes he unleashes a disco ball move thereby blinding himself in the past causing the future he knows to that day. Another example is in "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time", when the player travels to the future and meets a man in a windmill, who tells him about a mean Ocarina kid who played a song that sped up his windmill and dried up the well. He then teaches Link the song, who plays it in the past, causing him to learn the song in the future. This also an example of a Bootstrap Paradox, as the song itself was never written, but taught back and forth between Link and the man in the windmill. In most examples of the predestination paradox, the person travels back in time and ends up fulfilling their role in an event that has already occurred. In a self-fulfilling prophecy, the person is fulfilling their role in an event that has yet to occur, and it is usually information that travels in time (for example, in the form of a prophecy) rather than a person. In either situation, the attempts to avert the course of past or future history both fail.
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Examples from fiction

Time travel
Many fictional works have dealt with various circumstances that can logically arise from time travel, usually dealing with paradoxes. The predestination paradox is a common literary device in such fiction. In Robert Heinlein's "All You Zombies", a young man (later revealed to be intersex) is taken back in time and tricked into impregnating his younger, female self (before he underwent a sex change); he then turns out to be the offspring of that union, with the paradoxical result that he is his own mother and father. As the story unfolds, all the major characters are revealed to be the same person, at different stages of her/his life. In another of his stories, "By His Bootstraps", the protagonist in a series of twists, interacts with future versions of himself. The Man Who Folded Himself is a 1973 science fiction novel by David Gerrold that deals with time travel and the predestination paradox, much like Heinlein's. The protagonist, Daniel Eakins, inherits a time belt from his "uncle" that allows him to travel in time. This results in a series of time paradoxes, which are only resolved by the existence of multiple universes and multiple histories. Eakins, who repeatedly encounters alternate versions of
Predestination paradox himself, finds himself in progressively more bizarre situations. The character spends much of his own contorted lifetime at an extended party with dozens of versions of himself at different ages, before understanding the true nature of the gathering, and his true identity. Much of the book deals with the psychological, physical, and personal challenges that manifest when time travel is possible for a single individual at the touch of a button. Eakins repeatedly meets himself; has sex with himself; and ultimately cohabitates with an opposite-sex version of himself. Eventually, that relationship ends up with a male child who he finally realizes is him, and he is now his own "uncle". In the SpongeBob SquarePants episode SB-129m, Squidward, inspired by 'jellyfishing', teaches prehistoric SpongeBob and Patrick to catch a jelly in a net. This means that Squidward invented Jellyfishing. In the video game Timesplitters: Future Perfect the main protagonist, Sergeant Cortez, often helps himself solve puzzles, and protects himself during hard situations. In Flatterland, Vikki Line and the Space Hopper fall into a black hole, are rescued by future versions of themselves, and then go back in time to rescue themselves. In the American Dad! episode "Fart-Break Hotel", Steve becomes drawn to a Patrick Nagel painting of a woman. A hotel concierge explains to Steve that the painting was made in 1981, meaning Steve would have to travel back in time to meet the woman. After successfully traveling back in time, Steve meets Nagel, who drugs his champagne, causing Steve to pass out. When he wakes up, he finds himself naked on a bed and sees the painting of the woman. However, Nagel explains that he painted Steve, meaning Steve was the woman in the painting he had become attracted to. In the film 12 Monkeys, James Cole travels into the past to stop an attack attributed to the elusive "Army of the Twelve Monkeys", which leads indirectly to the formation of the group. The fatal shooting at the end of the movie is witnessed by his childhood version and leads to the nightmares that haunt him throughout his life. In The Twilight Zone 2002-2003 revival, in the episode, Cradle of Darkness, Andrea (played by Katherine Heigl) goes back in time to assassinate Adolf Hitler while he is a baby. She kills the baby (whom she presumes to be actual Adolf Hitler, though the viewer might note it seems like a very normal baby, perhaps not very dark hair), but the nanny (discovering the death) replaces the baby with a street gypsy's baby (the mother being a very crazy looking woman who has black hair resembling the Hitler we know), and she presents this baby to the father as his own. The father proceeds to introduce this son to his guests as "Adolf", presumably the Adolf Hitler known to history in the first place. In Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey the antagonist, unhappy with the future, sends evil robots back in time to kill Bill and Ted. When his robots are defeated, he goes back himself and takes control of the world's satellites so the whole world can see them defeated. Instead, the whole world watches them play their music, cementing their place in history. In Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure we see that the band could not have formed if not for Rufus appearing from the future to help them with their history project. The episode "Roswell That Ends Well" of the animated television series Futurama puts a more humorous spin on the paradox. In the episode, the main characters go back in time to 1947 in Roswell, New Mexico, sparking the Roswell UFO Incident. Meanwhile, Fry, told that the death of his grandfather Enos would nullify his own existence, becomes obsessed with protecting the man. He shuts Enos in a deserted house in the desert in order to protect him, failing to realize that the house is in a nuclear testing site. The resulting atomic test kills Enos, but Fry does not disappear. Fry later comforts Enos' fiance, no longer believing her to be his future grandmother. He has sex with her, only to realize afterward that she is his grandmother and therefore he is his own grandfather. The video game Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, the Prince is chased by the Dahaka, whose purpose is to preserve the time-line by erasing the Prince from it. Unable to fight the monster, the Prince travels to the Island of Time to kill the Empress of Time, who created the time-manipulating sands from the first game. He hopes to prevent the sands from being created, since it was the sands that put him in his current predicament. However, the
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Predestination paradox Prince realizes too late that killing the Empress is what creates the sands, and hence he becomes the architect of his own fate. A secondary paradox is the Sand Wraith, who seems to stalk the Prince throughout the first half of the game, even trying to kill him at one point. The wraith is killed by the Dahaka shortly before the Prince kills the Empress. After killing the Empress, the Prince realizes that he can change his fate by using the Mask of the Wraith, which transforms him into the Sand Wraith and sends him back in time a short distance. He learns that the wraith (who he now understands to be his future self) was trying to protect him, rather than attack him. Upon reaching the point at which the Dahaka is supposed to kill him, the Prince uses his knowledge of the encounter to have his younger self die instead, ending the mask's power and creating a grandfather paradox as well. The film Donnie Darko incorporates an example of fictional predestination paradox. Donnie avoids death by a jet engine that appears out of nowhere, only to later, because of information he has learned since, send the engine back in time himself so that he may die by it. He thereby negates all activity that occurred between the appearance of the engine and him sending it back, including his learning of the reason that he must die. This is explained through use of a tangent universe and a physical and temporal theory. In Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry is saved from the Dementors by a stag patronus. At that time, he thought it was his dead father's spirit of some sort watching over him. After traveling back in time, he realizes he was the one who produced the patronus- after watching himself being attacked and seeing that no one had produced the stag patronus- he himself casts the spell, producing the stag patronus he had seen earlier. [2] Similarly, in the film, Harry and his friends are alerted to the presence of the Minister for Magic when a rock hits Harry in the head; but after traveling back in time, Hermione recognizes the same rock and throws it at Harry herself. In the Legacy of Kain video game series, more specifically Soul Reaver, Soul Reaver 2, and Defiance, the predestination is evident in the Soul Reaver as well as Raziel, whose soul is contained inside. Through the storyline of the 3 games it is learned that Raziel's soul must become part of the Reaver, despite the fact that it has been a part of the weapon the whole time. Defiance ends in Raziel being stabbed by the Reaver, allowing his soul to be transferred to it, however because of the purification his soul had gone through earlier the cycle is broken rather than beginning again. In the Terminator films, Skynet, a computer program that controls nearly the whole world in the future, sends a machine to the past in order to kill John Connor, the future leader of the human resistance, at different points of his life: once before he is conceived (by killing his mother, Sarah Connor), again when he is 10 years old (in Terminator 2: Judgment Day) and a final time a few days before Judgment Day happens (Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines). In the second film Dr. Dyson (Joe Morton), the lead scientist for the Skynet project, explains that the surviving arm and CPU chip of the original Terminator was analyzed and found that the technology was so advanced, they (humans) would have never invented the technology themselves and was used to create Skynet in the first place. However, all the components and research were destroyed in an attempt to prevent Skynet, but in (Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines) Skynet is built anyway without any information or components from the future, implying that it was inevitable. In a not yet made movie, the humans somehow successfully invaded the complex in which the time machine is placed, manage to send someone else to the past so that the Connors can be protected, which is what starts the series. In The Terminator, the machines send the T-800 and the humans send Kyle Reese: Kyle will be John Connor's father (that is, if Skynet had not have happened, Kyle Reese would have no reason to go back in time to protect Sarah, and thus John Connor would not have been born). In the episode "He's Our You" of the television series Lost, several characters travel back into the 1970s. One of them, Sayid Jarrah, encounters the younger version of Benjamin Linus, the leader of the Others, and a man who has committed various acts such as betraying the Dharma Initiative and causing their complete genocide by the Others, the manipulation and deceit towards various people on the show and caused much strife to Sayid personally including recruiting him to become an assassin during his wife's funeral. When Sayid meets Ben's younger version he believes that it is his destiny to kill him and prevent all of the bad things he does from ever
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Predestination paradox happening. However when he does this by shooting him, Ben is taken to the Others where they state that they could heal him in a mysterious temple but, "his innocence would be lost" and he would "always be one of them." By trying to prevent Ben from doing the things he did, Sayid actually caused him to become the evil manipulator that he is and caused all of the evil acts he committed. In Artemis Fowl: The Time Paradox, Artemis's mother contracts the deadly magical disease, Spelltropy. To save his mother, he travels into the past to save the Silky Sifaka lemur, which he kills at age 10 by handing to the Extinctionists. In the past, Artemis the elder meets Opal Koboi, who follows Artemis into the future. In the present, Opal gives Artemis's mother Spelltropy-like symptoms, which causes Artemis to time-travel in the first place. In the 2008 episode of Doctor Who: "The Doctor's Daughter", the TARDIS takes the Doctor, Donna, and Martha to find the source of the Doctor's Daughter's signal. However, the TARDIS arrives early, which leads the Doctor to the accidental creation of his daughter, thus activating the signal. In the 2010 episode "The Big Bang", the Doctor is released from the Pandorica by Rory Williams, using the sonic screwdriver supplied by the Doctor after his release. In the 2011 episode "Let's Kill Hitler", Mels, a friend who Amy and Rory name their daughter Melody after, turns out to be a pre-regeneration version of River Song, who in the prior episode, "A Good Man Goes To War", was established to be an alias used by their daughter as an adult, an alias she adopts shortly after regenerating and hearing the Doctor, Amy, and Rory refer to her as such, having known her only by her alias until recently. In Red vs Blue, when the character Church is thrown back in time in Episode 50, he tries to prevent certain things from happening, in the process leading to everything becoming the way it was: kicking dirt on a switch hoping it to be replaced, instead it was kept and later got stuck; giving his captain painkillers to prevent a heart attack, but killing him because the captain is allergic to aspirin; trying to make the tank not kill him by disabling the friendly-fire protocol, which later proves his death; telling the tank and robot that they should not leave and build a robot army, thereby giving them the idea to do it; trying to shoot O'Malley with the rocket launcher only to shoot Tucker because of the launcher's highly defective targeting system and his inability to aim. In the PlayStation 2 video game Shadow Hearts: Covenant Karin Koenig, one of the main protagonists, falls in love with Yuri Hyuga. She is gently rejected because Yuri still has feelings for the exorcist Alice Elliot, who died in the previous game. Unrequited love does not stop her from fighting alongside Yuri, though, until at the end of the game when she is flung into the past and meets Yuri's father. There you finally see a picture she is given earlier in the game by Yuri's aunt that shows his father, mother and Yuri as a child. It's obvious the woman in the picture is Karin, thus making her Yuri's mother. She ends up being the only one staying in the past because she knows she is to become Yuri's mother and assumes the alias "Anne". She also takes back a cross Yuri gave to her, which is the same cross that belongs to his mother. The cross becomes an Ontological paradox. The Black Sabbath song "Iron Man" tells the story of a man who time travels into the future of the world, and sees the apocalypse. In the process of returning to the present, he is turned into steel by a magnetic field. He is rendered mute, unable verbally to warn people of his time of the impending destruction. His attempts to communicate are ignored and mocked. This causes Iron Man to become angry, and have his revenge on mankind, causing the destruction seen in his vision. In The Penguins of Madagascar, the episode "It's About Time" sees Kowalski constructing a time machine called the "Chronotron". A future Kowalski tells Private to convince his present self not to complete it. After he decides to destroy the Chronotron, another Kowalski from the future tells Skipper to convince him to save the Chronotron. When the present Kowalski spots his future selves, a vortex appears. The present Kowalski activates the Chronotron and goes back in time to talk to Private. When Private points out that if Kowalski had not invented the Chronotron then he would not have gone back in the first place to tell himself not to make it, the future Kowalski then goes back in time to talk to Skipper. Rico then throws the Chronotron into the vortex, sealing it. While a baffled Kowalski tries rationalizing that such a simple thing defies all laws of the universe, Skipper
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Predestination paradox simply states that Rico is a maverick who makes his own rules, and tells Kowalski to invent something that will not destroy the world. In the Red Dwarf episode "Timeslides", Dave Lister travels back in time using a mutated photograph of a pub in Liverpool where his band once played a gig to give his teenage self the idea of inventing the Tension Sheet (a stress relief tool invented by Fred 'Thickie' Holden, a former classmate of Arnold Rimmer, which earned him millions). This causes him to become rich and famous in the past and never get stuck on Red Dwarf. Arnold Rimmer, in an attempt to experience fame and fortune for himself, travels back even further in time to his school days, to give his own younger self the idea of inventing the Tension Sheet instead. Unfortunately for Rimmer, while he is giving young Rimmer the idea, the conversation is overheard by Thickie Holden (who sleeps in the next bed) and he is able to patent the idea before young Rimmer can, therefore putting everything back to how it was at the start of the episode. In the PC game Fallout 2, there is a side quest where the protagonist enters a time travel device and travels back in time to Vault 13, prior to the events of Fallout 1. During this time travel period, the hero sabotages the vault's water chip, thus starting the series of events of the first game and ultimately the birth of our hero. After sabotaging the water chip the game informs us that the hero "feels better about his future". In the British Television show Misfits, The group repeatedly encounters a man they call Superhoodie, who seems to know a lot about them. He's almost always seen whenever they have to deal with a dangerous situation and helps them out of it. The character Alisha Bailey eventually discovers he's really a future version of their friend Simon Bellamy and begins a relationship with him. He's shot and killed while trying to protect Alisha from a man who believes he's in a violent video game. He requests she doesn't tell his past self who he is and she agrees. Alisha, because of future Simon, begins respecting present day Simon and the two become closer. Alisha is killed by Rachel, a woman who the Misfits killed, but was returned in ghost form by a medium named Jonas to exact revenge on them. As Alisha dies in Simon's arms, she tells him Superhoodie's true identity. Later, Simon acquires a one-way time travel ability from a power dealer named Seth, traveling back and becoming Superhoodie. Rudy Wade, a member of the group, mentions that the paradox will continue and they'll probably just keep going in circles. In The Transformers episode "The Key to Vector Sigma", Optimus Prime assists in the creation of the Aerialbots who, in the later episode "War Dawn", are sent back in time and become instrumental in the creation of Optimus Prime, thus ensuring their own creation in the future. In Sam & Max Season Two there exist 2 examples of this paradox: In "Ice Station Santa", Sam and Max must save their future selves from being killed. In "What's New, Beelzebub?" they are saved by their past selves; this creates a never ending cycle of "save and later be saved; the savers are later saved". In "Chariots of the Dogs", Sam and Max are given an egg by their future selves from "What's New, Beelzebub?" who they also give a remote control too. Later, in What's new Beelzebub S&M give their past selves the egg and get the remote from them which, once again, creates a never ending cycle. However it is still unknown how the egg got into the hands of the Future S&M's in the first place. In the Chinese novel Bu Bu Jing Xin, centering the rivalry of Kangxi Emperor's sons for the throne during the 18th century Qing Dynasty, which will results the monarch's fourth son Yinzhen as Yongzheng Emperor. Its main character, Ma'ertai Ruoxi (Zhang Xiao), a time traveler from the 21st century, aware the princes' feud would leads to a tragic outcome. However, she is romantically entangled with the three of them, unawares that her relationship with them would inadvertently leading history to be unfold as written in the future instead of changing it. In the Rampage of Haruhi Suzumiya, the fifth in a series of light novels by Nagaru Tanigawa, is about Haruhi, a girl who can unconsciously change the universe to her tastes (like a deity) and wishes that the summer holidays would never end. As a result, the summer loops over 15,527 times before her friend Kyon realises what is happening. He tries to break the time loop many times by trying to stop her leaving a restaurant to go home at the
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Predestination paradox end of the day. He eventually succeeds by convincing Haruhi to come to a study session, as neither of them have done their homework yet. Although this was only a 30 page chapter in the book, the much-anticipated second season aired what was essentially the same episode eight times, with minor differences in camera angles, the characters' clothes etc. This caused a lot of tension for fans and caused many of them to drop the series. In the 20th episode of the second season of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, the main character Twilight Sparkle receives a warning from her future self, and drives herself crazy in an attempt to avoid an unspecified upcoming catastrophic disaster, which the future Twilight couldn't explain exactly. Later it comes out that there is no such disaster, and that her future self just tried to tell her not to worry too much about the future, which accidentally caused her worrying about the future.
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Prophecies
Prior to the use of time travel as a plot device, the self-fulfilling prophecy variant was more common. In Revenge of the Sith, Anakin Skywalker has visions of his wife dying in childbirth. In his attempt to gain enough power to save her, he falls to the dark side of the force and becomes Darth Vader. His wife is heartbroken upon learning this and argues with him. In his anger, he uses his power to hurt her, which eventually leads her to die in childbirth. Shakespeare's Macbeth is a classic example of this. The three Witches give Macbeth a prophecy that he will eventually become king, but the offspring of his best friend will rule after him. Macbeth kills his king and his friend Banquo. In addition to these prophecies, other prophecies foretelling his downfall are given, such as that he will not be attacked until a forest moves to his castle, and that no man ever born of a woman can kill him. In the end, fate is what drives the House of Macbeth mad and ultimately kills them, as Macbeth is killed by a man who was never 'born' as the man was torn from his mother's womb by caesarean section. In the movie Minority Report, murders are prevented through the efforts of three psychic mutants who can see crimes before they are committed. When police chief John Anderton is implicated in a murder-to-be, he sets out on a crusade to figure out why he would kill a man he has yet to meet. Many of the signposts on his journey to meet fate were predicted exactly as they occur, and his search leads him inexorably to the scene of the crime, where he cannot stop himself from killing the other man. In the end, the prediction itself is what had set the chain of events in motion. In Lost, Desmond Hume's future flashes regarding Charlie's deaths eventually lead to his death. Desmond has a vision in which Charlie pushes a button below a flashing light which allows the other castaways to be rescued just before he drowns. However when the event occurs, events happen slightly differently than in Desmond's vision and it is suggested that Charlie may have been able to save himself without jeopardizing the hopes of rescue, if he had not believed his death was crucial in the rescue of the other castaways. Yet there are examples of prophecies that happen slowly, if at all. In Red Dwarf: "Stasis Leak", when Lister travels back in time to meet with Kochanski to marry her, he finds out from his future self from 5 years later that he is going to pass through a wormhole and end up in a parallel universe version of Earth in 1985 but after 8 whole series, this has never happened (although similar events happen in "Backwards"). In the Harry Potter Universe by J. K. Rowling a prophecy by Sybill Trelawney is overheard by Severus Snape about the birth of a wizard "with the power to vanquish" Voldemort. This prophecy was only partially overheard by Severus Snape, who relayed what he heard to Voldemort. To stop the prophecy from coming true, Voldemort attempted to kill Harry while he was an infant, but his curse backfired on him, separating his soul from his body for 13 years, and transferring some of his powers, as well as a part of his severed soul, to Harry. Dumbledore tells Harry several times that the prophecy is only true because the Dark Lord believes it. Harry is free to turn his back on it, but the fact that Voldemort will never turn his back on it, and therefore never rest until he has killed Harry, makes it inevitable that Harry will have to kill Voldemort, or vice versa. Moreover Harry wished to finish Voldemort only because Voldemort killed his parents following the prophecy.
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References
[1] Dainton, Barry (1958). Time and Space. Montreal, California: McGill-Queen's University Press. p.126. ISBN0-7735-2306-5 [2] Silberstein, Michael (2004). "Space, Time, and Magic". In Baggett, David and Shawn E. Klein. Harry Potter and Philosophy. United States: Open Court Publishing. p.198.
Gerrold, David (1973). The Man Who Folded Himself. Random House. ISBN1-932100-04-0.
Zeno's paradoxes
Zeno's paradoxes are a set of philosophical problems generally thought to have been devised by Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea (ca. 490 - 430 BC) to support Parmenides's doctrine that "all is one" and that, contrary to the evidence of our senses, the belief in plurality and change is mistaken, and in particular that motion is nothing but an illusion. It is usually assumed, based on Plato's Parmenides 128c-d, that Zeno took on the project of creating these paradoxes because other philosophers had created paradoxes against Parmenides's view. Thus Zeno can be interpreted as saying that to assume there is plurality is even more absurd than assuming there is only "the One". (Parmenides 128d). Plato makes Socrates claim that Zeno and Parmenides were essentially arguing exactly the same point (Parmenides 128a-b). Some of Zeno's nine surviving paradoxes (preserved in Aristotle's Physics[1] and Simplicius's commentary thereon) are essentially equivalent to one another. Aristotle offered a refutation of some of them.[1] Three of the strongest and most famousthat of Achilles and the tortoise, the Dichotomy argument, and that of an arrow in flightare presented in detail below. Zeno's arguments are perhaps the first examples of a method of proof called reductio ad absurdum also known as proof by contradiction. They are also credited as a source of the dialectic method used by Socrates.[2] Some mathematicians, such as Carl Boyer, hold that Zeno's paradoxes are simply mathematical problems, for which modern calculus provides a mathematical solution.[3] Some philosophers, however, say that Zeno's paradoxes and their variations (see Thomson's lamp) remain relevant metaphysical problems.[4][5][6] The origins of the paradoxes are somewhat unclear. Diogenes Laertius, a fourth source for information about Zeno and his teachings, citing Favorinus, says that Zeno's teacher Parmenides was the first to introduce the Achilles and the Tortoise Argument. But in a later passage, Laertius attributes the origin of the paradox to Zeno, explaining that Favorinus disagrees.[7]
The Paradoxes of Motion

Achilles and the tortoise
In a race, the quickest runner can never overtake the slowest, since the pursuer must first reach the point whence the pursued started, so that the slower must always hold a lead.
Aristotle, Physics VI:9, 239b15
In the paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise, Achilles is in a footrace with the tortoise. Achilles allows the tortoise a head start of 100 metres, for example. If we suppose that each racer starts running at some constant speed (one very fast and one very slow), then after some finite time, Achilles will have run 100 metres, bringing him to the tortoise's starting point. During this time, the tortoise has run a much shorter distance, say, 10 metres. It will then take Achilles some further time to run that distance, by which time the tortoise will have advanced farther; and then more time still to reach this third point, while the tortoise moves ahead. Thus, whenever Achilles reaches somewhere the tortoise has been, he still has farther to go. Therefore, because there are an infinite number of points Achilles must reach
Zeno's paradoxes where the tortoise has already been, he can never overtake the tortoise.[8][9]
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The dichotomy paradox
That which is in locomotion must arrive at the half-way stage before it arrives at the goal.
Suppose Homer wants to catch a stationary bus. Before he can get there, he must get halfway there. Before he can get halfway there, he must get a quarter of the way there. Before traveling a quarter, he must travel one-eighth; before an eighth, one-sixteenth; and so on.
The resulting sequence can be represented as:
This description requires one to complete an infinite number of tasks, which Zeno maintains is an impossibility. This sequence also presents a second problem in that it contains no first distance to run, for any possible (finite) first distance could be divided in half, and hence would not be first after all. Hence, the trip cannot even begin. The paradoxical conclusion then would be that travel over any finite distance can neither be completed nor begun, and so all motion must be an illusion. This argument is called the Dichotomy because it involves repeatedly splitting a distance into two parts. It contains some of the same elements as the Achilles and the Tortoise paradox, but with a more apparent conclusion of motionlessness. It is also known as the Race Course paradox. Some, like Aristotle, regard the Dichotomy as really just another version of Achilles and the Tortoise.[10] There are two versions of the dichotomy paradox. In the other version, before Homer could reach the stationary bus, he must reach half of the distance to it. Before reaching the last half, he must complete the next quarter of the distance. Reaching the next quarter, he must then cover the next eighth of the distance, then the next sixteenth, and so on. There are thus an infinite number of steps that must first be accomplished before he could reach the bus, with no way to establish the size of any "last" step. Expressed this way, the dichotomy paradox is very much analogous to that of Achilles and the tortoise.
The arrow paradox
If everything when it occupies an equal space is at rest, and if that which is in locomotion is always occupying such a space at any moment, the flying arrow is therefore motionless.
In the arrow paradox (also known as the fletcher's paradox), Zeno states that for motion to occur, an object must change the position which it occupies. He gives an example of an arrow in flight. He states that in any one (durationless) instant of time, the arrow is neither moving to where it is, nor to where it is not.[11] It cannot move to where it is not, because no time elapses for it to move there; it cannot move to where it is, because it is already there. In other words, at every instant of time there is no motion occurring. If everything is motionless at every instant, and time is entirely composed of instants, then motion is impossible.
Zeno's paradoxes Whereas the first two paradoxes presented divide space, this paradox starts by dividing timeand not into segments, but into points.[12]
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Three other paradoxes as given by Aristotle

Paradox of Place: " if everything that exists has a place, place too will have a place, and so on ad infinitum."[13] Paradox of the Grain of Millet: " there is no part of the millet that does not make a sound: for there is no reason why any such part should not in any length of time fail to move the air that the whole bushel moves in falling. In fact it does not of itself move even such a quantity of the air as it would move if this part were by itself: for no part even exists otherwise than potentially."[14] The Moving Rows (or Stadium): "The fourth argument is that concerning the two rows of bodies, each row being composed of an equal number of bodies of equal size, passing each other on a race-course as they proceed with equal velocity in opposite directions, the one row originally occupying the space between the goal and the middle point of the course and the other that between the middle point and the starting-post. This...involves the conclusion that half a given time is equal to double that time."[15] For an expanded account of Zeno's arguments as presented by Aristotle, see Simplicius' commentary On Aristotle's Physics.
Proposed solutions
According to Simplicius, Diogenes the Cynic said nothing upon hearing Zeno's arguments, but stood up and walked, in order to demonstrate the falsity of Zeno's conclusions. To fully solve any of the paradoxes, however, one needs to show what is wrong with the argument, not just the conclusions. Through history, several solutions have been proposed, among the earliest recorded being those of Aristotle and Archimedes. Aristotle (384 BC322 BC) remarked that as the distance decreases, the time needed to cover those distances also decreases, so that the time needed also becomes increasingly small.[16][17] Aristotle also distinguished "things infinite in respect of divisibility" (such as a unit of space that can be mentally divided into ever smaller units while remaining spatially the same) from things (or distances) that are infinite in extension ("with respect to their extremities").[18] Before 212 BC, Archimedes had developed a method to derive a finite answer for the sum of infinitely many terms that get progressively smaller. (See: Geometric series, 1/4 + 1/16 + 1/64 + 1/256 + , The Quadrature of the Parabola.) Modern calculus achieves the same result, using more rigorous methods (see convergent series, where the "reciprocals of powers of 2" series, equivalent to the Dichotomy Paradox, is listed as convergent). These methods allow the construction of solutions based on the conditions stipulated by Zeno, i.e. the amount of time taken at each step is geometrically decreasing.[3][19] Aristotle's objection to the arrow paradox was that "Time is not composed of indivisible nows any more than any other magnitude is composed of indivisibles."[20] Saint Thomas Aquinas, commenting on Aristotle's objection, wrote "Instants are not parts of time, for time is not made up of instants any more than a magnitude is made of points, as we have already proved. Hence it does not follow that a thing is not in motion in a given time, just because it is not in motion in any instant of that time."[21] Bertrand Russell offered what is known as the "at-at theory of motion". It agrees that there can be no motion "during" a durationless instant, and contends that all that is required for motion is that the arrow be at one point at one time, at another point another time, and at appropriate points between those two points for intervening times. In this view motion is a function of position with respect to time.[22][23] Nick Huggett
Zeno's paradoxes argues that Zeno is begging the question when he says that objects that occupy the same space as they do at rest must be at rest.[12] Another proposed solution is to question one of the assumptions Zeno used in his paradoxes (particularly the Dichotomy), which is that between any two different points in space (or time), there is always another point. Without this assumption there are only a finite number of distances between two points, hence there is no infinite sequence of movements, and the paradox is resolved. The ideas of Planck length and Planck time in modern physics place a limit on the measurement of time and space, if not on time and space themselves. According to Hermann Weyl, the assumption that space is made of finite and discrete units is subject to a further problem, given by the "tile argument" or "distance function problem".[24] [25] According to this, the length of the hypotenuse of a right angled triangle in discretized space is always equal to the length of one of the two sides, in contradiction to geometry. Jean Paul van Bendegem has argued that the Tile Argument can be resolved, and that discretization can therefore remove the paradox.[3][26] Hans Reichenbach has proposed that the paradox may arise from considering space and time as separate entities. In a theory like general relativity, which presumes a single space-time continuum, the paradox may be blocked.[27]
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The paradoxes in modern times

Infinite processes remained theoretically troublesome in mathematics until the late 19th century. The epsilon-delta version of Weierstrass and Cauchy developed a rigorous formulation of the logic and calculus involved. These works resolved the mathematics involving infinite processes.[28] While mathematics can be used to calculate where and when the moving Achilles will overtake the Tortoise of Zeno's paradox, philosophers such as Brown and Moorcroft[4][5] claim that mathematics does not address the central point in Zeno's argument, and that solving the mathematical issues does not solve every issue the paradoxes raise. Zeno's arguments are often misrepresented in the popular literature. That is, Zeno is often said to have argued that the sum of an infinite number of terms must itself be infinitewith the result that not only the time, but also the distance to be travelled, become infinite. However, none of the original ancient sources has Zeno discussing the sum of any infinite series. Simplicius has Zeno saying "it is impossible to traverse an infinite number of things in a finite time". This presents Zeno's problem not with finding the sum, but rather with finishing a task with an infinite number of steps: how can one ever get from A to B, if an infinite number of (non-instantaneous) events can be identified that need to precede the arrival at B, and one cannot reach even the beginning of a "last event"?[4][5][6][29] Today there is still a debate on the question of whether or not Zeno's paradoxes have been resolved. In The History of Mathematics, Burton writes, "Although Zeno's argument confounded his contemporaries, a satisfactory explanation incorporates a now-familiar idea, the notion of a 'convergent infinite series.'"[30] Bertrand Russell offered a "solution" to the paradoxes based on modern physics, but Brown concludes "Given the history of 'final resolutions', from Aristotle onwards, it's probably foolhardy to think we've reached the end. It may be that Zeno's arguments on motion, because of their simplicity and universality, will always serve as a kind of 'Rorschach image' onto which people can project their most fundamental phenomenological concerns (if they have any)."[4]
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The quantum Zeno effect

In 1977,[31] physicists E. C. G. Sudarshan and B. Misra studying quantum mechanics discovered that the dynamical evolution (motion) of a quantum system can be hindered (or even inhibited) through observation of the system.[32] This effect is usually called the "quantum Zeno effect" as it is strongly reminiscent of Zeno's arrow paradox. This effect was first theorized in 1958.[33]
Zeno behaviour
In the field of verification and design of timed and hybrid systems, the system behaviour is called Zeno if it includes an infinite number of discrete steps in a finite amount of time.[34] Some formal verification techniques exclude these behaviours from analysis, if they are not equivalent to non-Zeno behaviour.[35][36] In systems design these behaviours will also often be excluded from system models, since they cannot be implemented with a digital controller.[37] A simple example of a system showing Zeno behaviour is a bouncing ball coming to rest. The physics of a bouncing ball can be mathematically analyzed in such a way, ignoring factors other than rebound, to predict an infinite number of bounces.
Writings about Zenos paradoxes

Zenos paradoxes have inspired many writers Leo Tolstoy in War and Peace (Part 11,Chapter I) discusses the race of Achilles and the tortoise when critiquing "historical science". In the dialogue "What the Tortoise Said to Achilles", Lewis Carroll describes what happens at the end of the race. The tortoise discusses with Achilles a simple deductive argument. Achilles fails in demonstrating the argument because the tortoise leads him into an infinite regression. In Gdel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter, the various chapters are separated by dialogues between Achilles and the tortoise, inspired by Lewis Carrolls works. The Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges discusses Zenos paradoxes many times in his work, showing their relationship with infinity. Borges also used Zenos paradoxes as a metaphor for some situations described by Kafka. Borges traces, in an essay entitled "Avatars of the Tortoise", the many recurrences of this paradox in works of philosophy. The successive references he traces are Agrippa the Skeptic, Thomas Aquinas, Hermann Lotze, F.H. Bradley and William James.[38] In Tom Stoppard's play Jumpers, the philosopher George Moore attempts a practical disproof with bow and arrow of the Dichotomy Paradox, with disastrous consequences for the hare and the tortoise. Harry Mulisch's philosophical magnum opus, De compositie van de wereld (Amsterdam, 1980) is based on Zeno's Paradoxes mostly. Along with Herakleitos' thoughts and Cusanus' coincidentia oppositorum they constitute the foundation for his own system of the 'octave'. In the novel Small Gods by Terry Pratchett the prophet Brutha encounters several Ephebian (Greek) philosophers in the country, attempting to disprove Zeno's paradox by shooting arrows at a succession of tortoises. So far, this has resulted only in a succession of "tortoise-kabobs." In Scott Adams's comic strip Dilbert of 13 August 2005 Dilbert says that nobody wants to take more than half of what is left of the last doughnut, which he calls "Xeno's Doughnut"[39] In Randall Munroe's comic strip xkcd of 23 December 2011, an Advent calendar covers the distance from December 23 to Christmas. However, it's "Zeno's Advent Calendar": each window cutting in half the time to wait. In the tooltip, Munroe notes after 11:59:57 pm on Christmas Eve, you'd have trouble swallowing the chocolates fast enough to keep up, proposing a "liquify-and-chug apparatus to get up over the 11:59:59 barrier."[40]
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Notes
[1] Aristotle's Physics (http:/ / classics. mit. edu/ Aristotle/ physics. html) "Physics" by Aristotle translated by R. P. Hardie and R. K. Gaye [2] ([fragment 65], Diogenes Laertius. IX (http:/ / classicpersuasion. org/ pw/ diogenes/ dlzeno-eleatic. htm) 25ff and VIII 57) [3] Boyer, Carl (1959). The History of the Calculus and Its Conceptual Development (http:/ / books. google. com/ ?id=w3xKLt_da2UC& dq=zeno+ calculus& q=zeno#v=snippet& q=zeno). Dover Publications. p.295. ISBN9780486605098. . Retrieved 2010-02-26. "If the paradoxes are thus stated in the precise mathematical terminology of continuous variables (...) the seeming contradictions resolve themselves." [4] Brown, Kevin. "Zeno and the Paradox of Motion" (http:/ / www. mathpages. com/ rr/ s3-07/ 3-07. htm). Reflections on Relativity. . Retrieved 2010-06-06. [5] Moorcroft, Francis. "Zeno's Paradox" (http:/ / web. archive. org/ web/ 20100418141459id_/ http:/ / www. philosophers. co. uk/ cafe/ paradox5. htm). Archived from the original (http:/ / www. philosophers. co. uk/ cafe/ paradox5. htm) on 18 April 2010. . [6] Papa-Grimaldi, Alba (1996). "Why Mathematical Solutions of Zeno's Paradoxes Miss the Point: Zeno's One and Many Relation and Parmenides' Prohibition" (http:/ / philsci-archive. pitt. edu/ 2304/ 1/ zeno_maths_review_metaphysics_alba_papa_grimaldi. pdf) (PDF). The Review of Metaphysics. pp.299314. . [7] Diogenes Laertius, Lives, 9.23 and 9.29. [8] "Math Forum" (http:/ / mathforum. org/ isaac/ problems/ zeno1. html). ., matchforum.org [9] Huggett, Nick (2010). "Zeno's Paradoxes: 3.2 Achilles and the Tortoise" (http:/ / plato. stanford. edu/ entries/ paradox-zeno/ #AchTor). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. . Retrieved 2011-03-07. [10] Huggett, Nick (2010). "Zeno's Paradoxes: 3.1 The Dichotomy" (http:/ / plato. stanford. edu/ entries/ paradox-zeno/ #Dic). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. . Retrieved 2011-03-07. [11] Laertius, Diogenes (about 230 CE). "Pyrrho" (http:/ / en. wikisource. org/ wiki/ Lives_of_the_Eminent_Philosophers/ Book_IX#Pyrrho). Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers. IX. passage 72. ISBN1116719002. . [12] Huggett, Nick (2010). "Zeno's Paradoxes: 3.3 The Arrow" (http:/ / plato. stanford. edu/ entries/ paradox-zeno/ #Arr). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. . Retrieved 2011-03-07. [13] Aristotle Physics IV:1, 209a25 (http:/ / classics. mit. edu/ Aristotle/ physics. 4. iv. html) [14] Aristotle Physics VII:5, 250a20 (http:/ / classics. mit. edu/ Aristotle/ physics. 7. vii. html) [15] Aristotle Physics VI:9, 239b33 (http:/ / classics. mit. edu/ Aristotle/ physics. 6. vi. html) [16] Aristotle. Physics 6.9 [17] Aristotle's observation that the fractional times also get shorter does not guarantee, in every case, that the task can be completed. One case in which it does not hold is that in which the fractional times decrease in a harmonic series, while the distances decrease geometrically, such as: 1/2 s for 1/2 m gain, 1/3 s for next 1/4 m gain, 1/4 s for next 1/8 m gain, 1/5 s for next 1/16 m gain, 1/6 s for next 1/32 m gain, etc. In this case, the distances form a convergent series, but the times form a divergent series, the sum of which has no limit. Archimedes developed a more explicitly mathematical approach than Aristotle. [18] Aristotle. Physics 6.9; 6.2, 233a21-31 [19] George B. Thomas, Calculus and Analytic Geometry, Addison Wesley, 1951 [20] Aristotle. Physics (http:/ / classics. mit. edu/ Aristotle/ physics. 6. vi. html). VI. Part 9 verse: 239b5. ISBN0585092052. . [21] Aquinas. Commentary on Aristotle's Physics, Book 6.861 [22] Huggett, Nick (1999). Space From Zeno to Einstein. ISBN0262082713. [23] Salmon, Wesley C. (1998). Causality and Explanation (http:/ / books. google. com/ ?id=uPRbOOv1YxUC& pg=PA198& lpg=PA198& dq=at+ at+ theory+ of+ motion+ russell#v=onepage& q=at at theory of motion russell& f=false). p.198. ISBN9780195108644. . [24] Van Bendegem, Jean Paul (17 March 2010). "Finitism in Geometry" (http:/ / plato. stanford. edu/ entries/ geometry-finitism/ #SomParSolProDea). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. . Retrieved 2012-01-03. [25] Cohen, Marc (11 December 2000). "ATOMISM" (https:/ / www. aarweb. org/ syllabus/ syllabi/ c/ cohen/ phil320/ atomism. htm). History of Ancient Philosophy, University of Washington. . Retrieved 2012-01-03. [26] van Bendegem, Jean Paul (1987). "Discussion:Zeno's Paradoxes and the Tile Argument". Philosophy of Science (Belgium) 54 (2): 295302. doi:10.1086/289379. JSTOR187807. [27] Hans Reichenbach (1958) The Philosophy of Space and Time. Dover [28] Lee, Harold (1965). "Are Zeno's Paradoxes Based on a Mistake?". Mind (Oxford University Press) 74 (296): 563570. JSTOR2251675. [29] Huggett, Nick (2010). "Zeno's Paradoxes: 5. Zeno's Influence on Philosophy" (http:/ / plato. stanford. edu/ entries/ paradox-zeno/ #ZenInf). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. . Retrieved 2011-03-07. [30] Burton, David, A History of Mathematics: An Introduction, McGraw Hill, 2010, ISBN 978-0073383156 [31] Sudarshan, E. C. G.; Misra, B. (1977). "The Zenos paradox in quantum theory". Journal of Mathematical Physics 18 (4): 756763. Bibcode1977JMP....18..756M. doi:10.1063/1.523304 [32] W.M.Itano; D.J.Heinsen, J.J.Bokkinger, D.J.Wineland (1990). "Quantum Zeno effect" (http:/ / www. boulder. nist. gov/ timefreq/ general/ pdf/ 858. pdf) (PDF). PRA 41 (5): 22952300. Bibcode1990PhRvA..41.2295I. doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.41.2295. . [33] Khalfin, L.A. (1958). Soviet Phys. JETP 6: 1053 [34] Paul A. Fishwick, ed. (1 June 2007). "15.6 "Pathological Behavior Classes" in chapter 15 "Hybrid Dynamic Systems: Modeling and Execution" by Pieter J. Mosterman, The Mathworks, Inc." (http:/ / books. google. com/ ?id=cM-eFv1m3BoC& pg=SA15-PA22). Handbook of dynamic system modeling. Chapman & Hall/CRC Computer and Information Science (hardcover ed.). Boca Raton, Florida, USA: CRC Press.
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pp.1522 to 1523. ISBN9781584885658. . Retrieved 2010-03-05. [35] Lamport, Leslie (2002) (PDF). Specifying Systems (http:/ / research. microsoft. com/ en-us/ um/ people/ lamport/ tla/ book-02-08-08. pdf). Addison-Wesley. p.128. ISBN0-321-14306-X. . Retrieved 2010-03-06. [36] Zhang, Jun; Johansson, Karl; Lygeros, John; Sastry, Shankar (2001). "Zeno hybrid systems" (http:/ / aphrodite. s3. kth. se/ ~kallej/ papers/ zeno_ijnrc01. pdf). International Journal for Robust and Nonlinear control. . Retrieved 2010-02-28. [37] Franck, Cassez; Henzinger, Thomas; Raskin, Jean-Francois (2002). A Comparison of Control Problems for Timed and Hybrid Systems (http:/ / mtc. epfl. ch/ ~tah/ Publications/ a_comparison_of_control_problems_for_timed_and_hybrid_systems. html). . Retrieved 2010-03-02. [38] Borges, Jorge Luis (1964). Labyrinths. London: Penguin. pp.237243. ISBN0811200124. [39] http:/ / search. dilbert. com/ comic/ Xeno [40] http:/ / xkcd. com/ 994/
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References
Kirk, G. S., J. E. Raven, M. Schofield (1984) The Presocratic Philosophers: A Critical History with a Selection of Texts, 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521274559. Huggett, Nick (2010). "Zeno's Paradoxes" (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paradox-zeno/). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 2011-03-07. Plato (1926) Plato: Cratylus. Parmenides. Greater Hippias. Lesser Hippias, H. N. Fowler (Translator), Loeb Classical Library. ISBN 0674991850. Sainsbury, R.M. (2003) Paradoxes, 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521483476.
External links
Silagadze, Z . K. " Zeno meets modern science, (http://uk.arxiv.org/abs/physics/0505042)" Zeno's Paradox: Achilles and the Tortoise (http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/ ZenosParadoxAchillesAndTheTortoise/) by Jon McLoone, Wolfram Demonstrations Project. Kevin Brown on Zeno and the Paradox of Motion (http://www.mathpages.com/rr/s3-07/3-07.htm) Palmer, John (2008). "Zeno of Elea" (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zeno-elea/). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. This article incorporates material from Zeno's paradox on PlanetMath, which is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
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Physics
Algol paradox
In stellar astronomy, the Algol paradox is an apparently paradoxical situation when elements of a binary star seem to evolve in discord with the established theories of stellar evolution. A fundamental feature of these theories is that the rate of evolution of stars depends on the mass of the star: The greater the mass of the star, the faster this evolution, and the more quickly it leaves the main-sequence, entering either a subgiant or giant phase. In the case of Algol and other binary stars we can observe something completely different: The less massive star is already a subgiant, and the star with much greater mass is still on the main-sequence. Initially, this seems paradoxical as the partner stars of the binary are thought to have formed at approximately the same time and so should have similar ages. Thus the more massive star, rather than the less massive one, should have left the main sequence. The paradox is resolved by the fact that in many binary stars, there can be a flow of material between the two stars, disturbing the normal process of stellar evolution. As the flow progresses, the evolutionary stage of the stars will advance, even as the relative masses change. Eventually, the originally more massive star will reach the next stage in its evolution despite having lost much of its mass to its companion.
Archimedes paradox
The Archimedes paradox, named after Archimedes of Syracuse, states that an object can float in a quantity of water that has less volume than the object itself, if its average density is less than that of water. The implication of this is that a large, massive object can float in a relatively small volume of liquid, provided that it is surrounded by it. One extreme application of the paradox is that a battleship can float in a few buckets of water, provided that the water surrounds the hull completely and that the ship would have floated had it been in open water.
Origin
Archimedes' principle (also referred to as the Law of Buoyancy) states that "The buoyant force is equal to the weight of the displaced fluid." In the case of a ship, the upward force exerted on it is equal to the weight of water of equal volume to the part of the ship that is submerged. If this upward force is greater than the weight of the ship, then the ship will float. The Archimedes Paradox implies that if a mould of the hull of ship is made and a relatively small amount of water is placed in the mould, then the ship would float on the thin layer of water between itself and the mould, even though the total volume of water is much less than the volume of the ship.
Archimedes paradox
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Explanation
The paradox originates from the fact that the volume of the immersed part of the object is important, not the actual volume of water that is displaced by it. In other words, no fluid needs to be actually displaced for Archimedes' principle to take effect. The object merely needs to be surrounded by the fluid. One method offered to visualize the solution to the paradox is to conduct a simple thought experiment. Instead of a ship suspended in the water, imagine a lightweight bucket filled with water. Since the density of the bucket of water is the same as the water in the dock, the bucket would remain suspended, or floating. Nothing changes hydrostatically by replacing the bucket with a ship of equal or lower density than water (which it would have to be or else it would sink in open water anyway), therefore the ship would also float.
References
Prof. Robert L. Merlino (2003). "Statics - Fluids at rest" [1]. Retrieved 2006-11-26. Carol Hodanbosi (1996). "Buoyancy: Archimedes Principle" [2]. Retrieved 2006-11-26.
External links
Can a Battleship Float on a Gallon of Water? [3]
References
[1] http:/ / www. physics. uiowa. edu/ ~rmerlino/ 6Fall06/ 6S06pp_L13. ppt [2] http:/ / www. grc. nasa. gov/ WWW/ K-12/ WindTunnel/ Activities/ buoy_Archimedes. html [3] http:/ / www. wiskit. com/ marilyn/ battleship. html
Aristotle's wheel paradox

Aristotle's wheel paradox is a paradox from the Greek work Mechanica traditionally attributed to Aristotle. There are two wheels, one within the other, whose rims take the shape of two circles with different diameters. The wheels roll without slipping for a full revolution. The paths traced by the bottoms of the wheels are straight lines, which are apparently the wheels' circumferences. But the two lines have the same length, so the wheels must have the same circumference, contradicting the assumption that they have different sizes: a paradox. The fallacy is the assumption that the smaller wheel indeed traces out its circumference, without ensuring that it, too, rolls without slipping on a fixed surface. In fact, it is impossible for both wheels to perform such motion. Physically, if two joined concentric wheels with different radii were rolled along parallel lines then at least one would slip; if a system of cogs was used to prevent slippage then the wheels would jam. A modern approximation of such an experiment is often performed by car drivers who park too close to a curb. The car's outer tire rolls without slipping on the road surface while the inner hubcap both rolls and slips across the curb; the slipping is evidenced by a screeching noise.[1] Mathematically, the number of points in the inner circle is equal to the number of points in the outer circle, i.e. there is a bijection between them. This does not apply to physical wheels because they are made of discrete atoms, so the
Aristotle's wheel paradox number of atoms of the larger wheel is greater if the wheels have the same density, width and thickness (only their radii are different).
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References
[1] Bunch, Bryan H. (1982). Mathematical Fallacies and Paradoxes. Van Nostrand Reinhold. pp.39. ISBN0-442-24905-5.
Further reading
Rota Aristotelica, The Archimedes Project, Digital Research Library (http://archimedes.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/ cgi-bin/toc/toc.cgi?page=1106;dir=hutto_dicti_078_en_1795;step=textonly) Weisstein, Eric W., " Aristotle's Wheel Paradox (http://mathworld.wolfram.com/AristotlesWheelParadox. html)" from MathWorld.
Bell's spaceship paradox

Bell's spaceship paradox is a thought experiment in special relativity involving accelerated spaceships and strings. The results of this thought experiment are for many people paradoxical. While J. S. Bell's 1976 version[1] of the paradox is the most widely known, it was first designed by E. Dewan and M. Beran in 1959[2] as an argument for the physical reality of length contraction.
Bell's thought experiment

In Bell's version of the thought experiment, two spaceships, which are initially at rest in some common inertial reference frame, are connected by a taut string. At time zero in the common inertial frame, both spaceships start to accelerate, in such a way that they remain a fixed distance apart as viewed from the original rest frame. Question: Does the string break (i.e. does the distance between the two spaceships increase in the reference frame of either spaceship)? In a minor variant, both spaceships stop accelerating after a certain period of time previously agreed upon. The captain of each ship shuts off his engine after this time period has passed, as measured by an onboard clock. This allows before and after comparisons in suitable inertial reference frames in the sense of elementary special relativity. Note that one ship will observe the other accelerating differently from itself if the two ships are to accelerate identically in the original rest frame, because of the relativity of simultaneity.
According to discussions by Dewan & Beran and also Bell, in the spaceship launcher's reference frame the distance between the ships will remain constant while the elastic limit of the string is length contracted, so that at a certain point in time the string should break.
The situation from the viewpoint of an observer at rest. Above: the spaceships at takeoff. Below: at 60% of the speed of light. Their distance L remains the same; the spaceships themselves and the string undergo a length contraction to 80% of their length at rest. Therefore the string breaks.
Bell's spaceship paradox Objections and counter-objections have been published to the above analysis. For example, Paul Nawrocki suggests that the string should not break,[3] while Edmond Dewan defends his original analysis from these objections in a reply.[4] Bell reported that he encountered much skepticism from "a distinguished experimentalist" when he presented the paradox. To attempt to resolve the dispute, an informal and non-systematic canvas was made of the CERN theory division. According to Bell, a "clear consensus" of the CERN theory division arrived at the answer that the string would not break. Bell goes on to add, "Of course, many people who get the wrong answer at first get the right answer on further reflection".[1] Later, Matsuda and Kinoshita[5] reported receiving much criticism after publishing an article on their independently rediscovered version of the paradox in a Japanese journal. Matsuda and Kinoshita do not cite specific papers, however, stating only that these objections were written in Japanese.
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Analysis
In the following analysis we will treat the spaceships as point masses and only consider the length of the string. We will analyze the variant case previously mentioned, where both spaceships shut off their engines after some time period T. According to the discussions by Dewan & Beran and also Bell, in the spaceship launcher's reference system (which we'll call S) the distance L between the spaceships (A and B) must remain constant by definition. This may be illustrated as follows. The displacement as a function of time along the x-axis of S can be written as a function of time f(t), for t > 0. The function f(t) depends on engine thrust over time and is the same for both spaceships. Following this reasoning, the position coordinate of each spaceship as a function of time is
where f(0) is assumed to be equal to 0 xA(t) is the position (x coordinate) of spaceship A at time t xB(t) is the position (x coordinate) of spaceship B at time t a0 is the position of spaceship A at time 0 b0 is the position of spaceship B at time 0. This implies that xA(t) xB(t) = a0 b0, which is a constant, independent of time. In other words, the distance L remains the same. This argument applies to all types of synchronous motion. Thus the details of the form of f(t) are not needed to carry out the analysis. Note that the form of the function f(t) for constant proper acceleration is well known (see the article hyperbolic motion).
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Referring to the space-time diagram on the right, we can see that both spaceships will stop accelerating at events A and B, which are simultaneous in the launching frame S. We can also see from this space-time diagram that events A and B are not simultaneous in a frame comoving with the spaceships. This is an example of the relativity of simultaneity. From our previous argument, we can say that the length of the line segment AB equals the length of the line segment AB, which is equal to the initial distance L between spaceships before they started accelerating. We can also say that the velocities of A and B in frame S, after the end of the acceleration phase, are equal to v. Finally, we can say that the proper distance between spaceships A and B after the end of the acceleration phase in a comoving frame is equal to the Lorentz length of the line segment AB. The line AB is defined to be a line of constant t, where t is the time coordinate in the comoving frame, a time coordinate which can be computed from the coordinates in frame S via the Lorentz transform
The world lines (navy blue curves) of two observers A and B who accelerate in the same direction with the same constant magnitude acceleration. At A' and B', the observers stop accelerating. The dotted lines are "lines of simultaneity" for observer A. Is the spacelike line segment AB longer than the spacelike line segment AB?
Transformed into a frame comoving with the spaceships, the line AB is a line of constant t by definition, and represents a line between the two ships "at the same time" as simultaneity is defined in the comoving frame. Mathematically, in terms of the coordinates in frames S and S, we can represent the above statements by the following equation
which results in
In frame S, since both ends of the rope are marked simultaneously,
where
so
Calculate
so
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Therefore
Thus, when switching the description to the comoving frame, the distance between the spaceships appears to increase by the relativistic factor
Consequently, the string is stretched. Alternatively, one can arrive at the same last equation with a bit less effort starting from the equation
Remembering that
(the two ships stop accelerating simultaneously in the "launching" frame S), and using the above formula
and the definition of L, one easily gets
Bell pointed out that the length contraction of objects as well as the lack of length contraction between objects in frame S can be explained physically, using Maxwell's laws. The distorted intermolecular fields cause moving objects to contract, or to become stressed if hindered from doing so. In contrast, no such forces act on the space between objects. The Bell spaceship paradox is very rarely mentioned in textbooks, but appears occasionally in special relativity notes on the internet. An equivalent problem is more commonly mentioned in textbooks. This is the problem of Born rigid motion. Rather than ask about the separation of spaceships with the same acceleration, the problem of Born rigid motion asks, "What acceleration profile is required by the second spaceship so that the distance between the spaceships remains constant in their proper frame?" The accelerations of the two spaceships must in general be different.[6][7] In order for the two spaceships, initially at rest in an inertial frame, to maintain a constant proper distance, the lead spaceship must have a lower proper acceleration.[7]
References
[1] Bell, John Stewart (1987). Speakable and unspeakable in quantum mechanics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN0-521-52338-9. A widely available book which contains a reprint of Bell's 1976 paper [2] Dewan, Edmond M.; Beran, Michael J. (March 20, 1959). "Note on stress effects due to relativistic contraction" (http:/ / scitation. aip. org/ vsearch/ servlet/ VerityServlet?KEY=AJPIAS& ONLINE=YES& smode=strresults& sort=chron& maxdisp=25& threshold=0& possible1=Note+ on+ stress+ effects+ due+ to+ relativistic+ contraction& possible1zone=article& fromyear=1959& fromvolume=27& OUTLOG=NO& viewabs=AJPIAS& key=DISPLAY& docID=1& page=1& chapter=0). American Journal of Physics (American Association of Physics Teachers) 27 (7): 517518. Bibcode1959AmJPh..27..517D. doi:10.1119/1.1996214. . Retrieved 2006-10-06. [3] Nawrocki, Paul J. (October 1962). "Stress Effects due to Relativistic Contraction" (http:/ / scitation. aip. org/ getabs/ servlet/ GetabsServlet?prog=normal& id=AJPIAS000030000010000771000001& idtype=cvips& gifs=yes). American Journal of Physics 30 (10): 771772. Bibcode1962AmJPh..30..771N. doi:10.1119/1.1941785. . Retrieved 2006-10-06. [4] Dewan, Edmond M. (May 1963). "Stress Effects due to Lorentz Contraction" (http:/ / scitation. aip. org/ getabs/ servlet/ GetabsServlet?prog=normal& id=AJPIAS000031000005000383000001& idtype=cvips& gifs=yes). American Journal of Physics 31 (5): 383386. Bibcode1963AmJPh..31..383D. doi:10.1119/1.1969514. . Retrieved 2006-10-06. (Note that this reference also contains the first presentation of the ladder paradox.) [5] Matsuda, Takuya; and Kinoshita, Atsuya (2004). "A Paradox of Two Space Ships in Special Relativity". AAPPS Bulletin February: ?. eprint version (http:/ / skfiz. wdfiles. com/ local--files/ materialy/ space_ships. pdf)

[6] Misner, Charles; Thorne, Kip S.; and Wheeler, John Archibald (1973). Gravitation. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman. p.165. ISBN0-7167-0344-0. [7] Nikoli, Hrvoje (6 April 1999). "Relativistic contraction of an accelerated rod" (http:/ / scitation. aip. org/ getabs/ servlet/ GetabsServlet?prog=normal& id=AJPIAS000067000011001007000001& idtype=cvips& gifs=yes). American Journal of Physics (American Association of Physics Teachers) 67 (11): 10071012. arXiv:physics/9810017. Bibcode1999AmJPh..67.1007N. doi:10.1119/1.19161. . Retrieved 2006-10-07. eprint version (http:/ / arxiv. org/ abs/ physics/ 9810017)
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External links
Michael Weiss, Bell's Spaceship Paradox (http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/ spaceship_puzzle.html) (1995), USENET Relativity FAQ
Further reading
Romain, Jacques E. (1963). "A Geometric approach to Relativistic paradoxes". American Journal of Physics 31 (8): 576579. Bibcode1963AmJPh..31..576R. doi:10.1119/1.1969686. Hsu, Jong-Ping; and Suzuki, Nobuhiro (2005). "Extended Lorentz Transformations for Accelerated Frames and the Solution of the "Two-Spaceship Paradox"". Association of Asia Pacific Physical Societies (AAPPS) Bulletin October: ?. eprint version (http://www.aapps.org/archive/bulletin/vol15/15-5/15_5_p17p21.pdf) Franklin, Jerrold (2010). "Lorentz contraction, Bell's spaceships, and rigid body motion in special relativity". European Journal of Physics 31 (2): 291298. Bibcode2010EJPh...31..291F. doi:10.1088/0143-0807/31/2/006. <http://arxiv.org/abs/0906.1919> Redi D.V.(2010)"Relativistic length agony continued" <http://arxiv.org/abs/1005.4623> Peregoudov, D V (2009). "Letters And Comments: Comment on 'Note on Dewan-Beran-Bell's spaceship problem'". European Journal of Physics (L3: Institute of Physics) 30.1: L3L5. Bibcode2009EJPh...30L...3P. doi:10.1088/0143-0807/30/1/L02. ISSN01430807. OCLC311827234 Foukzon J., Podosyonov S.A., Potapov A.A.,(2009),"Relativistic length expansion in general accelerated system revisited".<http://arxiv.org/abs/0910.2298> Podosyonov S.A., Foukzon J. and Potapov A.A.,(2010) "A Study of the Motion of a Relativistic Continuous Medium", Gravitation and Cosmology, 2010,Vol.16,No.4,pp.307312.ISSN 0202-2893, http:/ / www. springerlink. com/ content/ j8kr55831h411365/ http:/ / www. scribd. com/ doc/ 38943606/ Gravitation-and-Cosmology-BELL
Bentley's paradox
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Bentley's paradox
Bentley's paradox is a cosmological paradox pointing to a problem occurring when Newton's theory of the gravitation is applied to cosmology: "According to Newton, each star in the universe ought to be attracted towards every other star. They should not remain motionless, at a constant distance from each other, but should all fall together to some central point. Newton admitted as much in a letter to Richard Bentley, a leading Cambridge philosopher of the time. The solution for this paradox is that, all the stars are not influenced by one gravitational force but there are many forces acting on the body, hence, forcing it to be either temporarily stationary, or to undergo very slight motion. The theory of Big Crunch suggests a same thing, that the Universe will collapse by a bang at a point where all matter meets."[1]
References and notes

[1] "This Month in Physics History - Einstein's Biggest Blunder", APS News, Vol. 14, Nr. 7, July 2005, online (http:/ / www. aps. org/ publications/ apsnews/ 200507/ history. cfm)
Black hole information paradox

The black hole information paradox results from the combination of quantum mechanics and general relativity. It suggests that physical information could permanently disappear in a black hole, allowing many physical states to evolve into the same state. This is controversial because it violates a commonly assumed tenet of sciencethat in principle complete information about a physical system at one point in time should determine its state at any other time.[1] A fundamental postulate of quantum mechanics is that complete information about a system is encoded in its wave function. The evolution of the wave function is determined by a unitary operator, and unitarity implies that information is conserved in the quantum sense.
Artist's representation of a black hole
There are two main principles in play: quantum determinism, and reversibility. Quantum determinism means that given a present wave function, its future changes are uniquely determined by the evolution operator. Reversibility refers to the fact that the evolution operator has an inverse, meaning that the past wave functions are similarly unique. The combination of the two means that information must always be preserved. Starting in the mid 1970's, Stephen Hawking and Jacob Bekenstein put forward theoretical arguments based on general relativity and quantum field theory that appeared to be inconsistent with information conservation. Specifically, Hawking's calculations[2] indicated that black hole evaporation via Hawking radiation does not preserve information. Today, many physicists believe that the holographic principle (specifically the AdS/CFT duality) demonstrates that Hawking's conclusion was incorrect, and that information is in fact preserved.[3] In 2004 Hawking himself conceded a bet he had made, agreeing that black hole evaporation does in fact preserve information.
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Hawking radiation
In 1975, Stephen Hawking and Jacob Bekenstein showed that black holes should slowly radiate away energy, which poses a problem. From the no hair theorem, one would expect the Hawking radiation to be completely independent of the material entering the black hole. Nevertheless, if the material entering the black hole were a pure quantum state, the transformation of that state into the mixed state of Hawking radiation would destroy information about the original quantum state. This violates Liouville's theorem and presents a physical paradox. More precisely, if there is an entangled pure state, and one part of the entangled system is thrown into the black hole while keeping the other part outside, the result is a mixed state after the partial trace is taken over the interior of the black hole. But since everything within the interior of the black hole will hit the singularity within a finite time, the part which is traced over partially might disappear completely from the physical system.
Hawking remained convinced that the equations of black hole thermodynamics together with the no-hair theorem led to the conclusion that quantum information may be destroyed. This annoyed many physicists, notably John Preskill, who in 1997 bet Hawking and Kip Thorne that information was not lost in black holes. The implications Hawking had opined led to the Susskind-Hawking battle, where Leonard Susskind and Gerard 't Hooft publicly 'declared war' on Hawking's solution, with Susskind publishing a popular book about the debate in 2008 (The Black Hole War: My battle with Stephen Hawking to make the world safe for quantum mechanics, ISBN 9780316016407). The book carefully notes that the "war" was purely a scientific one, and that at a personal level, the participants remained friends.[4] The solution to the problem that concluded the battle is the holographic principle, which was first proposed by 't Hooft but was given a precise string theory interpretation by Susskind. With this, as the title of an article puts it, "Susskind quashes Hawking in quarrel over quantum quandary".[5] There are various ideas about how the paradox is solved. Since the 1997 proposal of the AdS/CFT correspondence, the predominant belief among physicists is that information is preserved and that Hawking radiation is not precisely thermal but receives quantum corrections. Other possibilities include the information being contained in a Planckian remnant left over at the end of Hawking radiation or a modification of the laws of quantum mechanics to allow for non-unitary time evolution. In July 2004, Stephen Hawking published a paper and announced a theory that quantum perturbations of the event horizon could allow information to escape from a black hole, which would resolve the information paradox[6]. His argument assumes the unitarity of the AdS/CFT correspondence which implies that an AdS black hole that is dual to a thermal conformal field theory. When announcing his result, Hawking also conceded the 1997 bet, paying Preskill with a baseball encyclopedia "from which information can be retrieved at will." However, Thorne remains unconvinced of Hawking's proof and declined to contribute to the award. According to Roger Penrose, loss of unitarity in quantum systems is not a problem: quantum measurements are by themselves already non-unitary. Penrose claims that quantum systems will in fact no longer evolve unitarily as soon as gravitation comes into play, precisely as in black holes. The Conformal Cyclic Cosmology advocated by Penrose critically depends on the condition that information is in fact lost in black holes. This new cosmological model might in future be tested experimentally by detailed analysis of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB): if true the CMB should exhibit circular patterns with slightly lower or slightly higher temperatures. In November 2010,
The Penrose diagram of a black hole which forms, and then completely evaporates away. Information falling into it will hit the singularity.
Black hole information paradox Penrose and V. G. Gurzadyan announced they had found evidence of such circular patterns, in data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) corroborated by data from the BOOMERanG experiment.[7] The significance of the findings was subsequently debated by others.[8]
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Main approaches to the solution of the paradox

Information is irretrievably lost: Advantage: Seems to be a direct consequence of relatively non-controversial calculation based on semiclassical gravity. Disadvantage: Violates unitarity, as well as energy conservation or causality. Information gradually leaks out during the black-hole evaporation: Advantage: Intuitively appealing because it qualitatively resembles information recovery in a classical process of burning. Disadvantage: Requires a large deviation from classical and semiclassical gravity (which do not allow information to leak out from the black hole) even for macroscopic black holes for which classical and semiclassical approximations are expected to be good approximations. Information suddenly escapes out during the final stage of black-hole evaporation: Advantage: A significant deviation from classical and semiclassical gravity is needed only in the regime in which the effects of quantum gravity are expected to dominate. Disadvantage: Just before the sudden escape of information, a very small black hole must be able to store an arbitrary amount of information, which violates the Bekenstein bound. Information is stored in a Planck-sized remnant: Advantage: No mechanism for information escape is needed. Disadvantage: A very small object must be able to store an arbitrary amount of information, which violates the Bekenstein bound. Information is stored in a massive remnant: Advantage: No mechanism for information escape is needed and a large amount of information does not need to be stored in a small object. Disadvantage: No appealing mechanism that could stop Hawking evaporation of a macroscopic black hole is known. Information is stored in a baby universe that separates from our own universe: Advantage: No violation of known general principles of physics is needed. Disadvantage: It is difficult to find an appealing concrete theory that would predict such a scenario. Information is encoded in the correlations between future and past:[9][10] Advantage: Semiclassical gravity is sufficient, i.e., the solution does not depend on details of (still not well understood) quantum gravity. Disadvantage: Contradicts the intuitive view of nature as an entity that evolves with time.
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References
[1] Stephen Hawking (2006). The Hawking Paradox. Discovery Channel, The: Discovery, Inc.. [2] S. W. Hawking, "Particle Creation by Black Holes, Commun. Math. Phys. 43, 199 (1975) http:/ / www. springerlink. com/ content/ c4553033029k5wk6/ [3] J L F Barbn, "Black holes, information and holography" J. Phys.: Conf. Ser. 171 01 (2009) doi:10.1088/1742-6596/171/1/012009 http:/ / iopscience. iop. org/ 1742-6596/ 171/ 1/ 012009 p.1: "The most important departure from conventional thinking in recent years, the holographic principle...provides a definition of quantum gravity...[and] guarantees that the whole process is unitary." [4] The Black Hole War p. 10: "It was not a war between angry enemies; indeed the main participants are all friends. But it was a fierce intellectual struggle of ideas between people who deeply respected each other but also profoundly disagreed." [5] http:/ / richarddawkins. net/ articles/ 2846 [6] Baez, John. "This Week's Finds in Mathematical Physics (Week 207)" (http:/ / math. ucr. edu/ home/ baez/ week207. html). . Retrieved 2011-09-25. [7] Gurzadyan, V. G.; Penrose, R. (2010). Concentric circles in WMAP data may provide evidence of violent pre-Big-Bang activity. 1011. pp. 3706. arXiv:1011.3706. Bibcode2010arXiv1011.3706G. [8] See Conformal Cyclic Cosmology for more info. [9] Hartle, James B. (1998). "Generalized Quantum Theory in Evaporating Black Hole Spacetimes". Black Holes and Relativistic Stars: 195. arXiv:gr-qc/9705022. Bibcode1998bhrs.conf..195H. [10] Nikolic, Hrvoje (2009). "Resolving the black-hole information paradox by treating time on an equal footing with space". Physics Letters B (Phys. Lett.) 678 (2): 218221. arXiv:0905.0538. Bibcode2009PhLB..678..218N. doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2009.06.029.
External links
Black Hole Information Loss Problem (http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/BlackHoles/ info_loss.html), a USENET physics FAQ page Preskill, John (1992). "Do black holes destroy information?". An international symposium on Black Holes: 22. arXiv:hep-th/9209058. Bibcode1993bhmw.conf...22P. Discusses methods of attack on the problem, and their apparent shortcomings. Report (http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996193) on Hawking's 2004 theory at New Scientist Report (http://www.nature.com/news/2004/040715/full/news040712-12.html) on Hawking's 2004 theory at Nature Hawking, S. W. (July 2005), Information Loss in Black Holes, arxiv:hep-th/0507171 (http://arxiv.org/abs/ hep-th/0507171). Stephen Hawking's purported solution to the black hole unitarity paradox. Hawking and unitarity (http://motls.blogspot.com/2005/07/hawking-and-unitarity.html): an up-to-date discussion of the information loss paradox and Stephen Hawking's role in it The Hawking Paradox - BBC Horizon documentary (2005) (http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/ horizon/hawking_prog_summary.shtml) "Horizon" The Hawking Paradox (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0819995/) at the Internet Movie Database
Braess's paradox
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Braess's paradox
Braess's paradox, credited to the mathematician Dietrich Braess, states that adding extra capacity to a network when the moving entities selfishly choose their route, can in some cases reduce overall performance. This is because the Nash equilibrium of such a system is not necessarily optimal. The paradox is stated as follows: "For each point of a road network, let there be given the number of cars starting from it, and the destination of the cars. Under these conditions one wishes to estimate the distribution of traffic flow. Whether one street is preferable to another depends not only on the quality of the road, but also on the density of the flow. If every driver takes the path that looks most favorable to him, the resultant running times need not be minimal. Furthermore, it is indicated by an example that an extension of the road network may cause a redistribution of the traffic that results in longer individual running times." The reason for this is that in a Nash equilibrium, drivers have no incentive to change their routes. If the system is not in a Nash equilibrium, selfish drivers must be able to improve their respective travel times by changing the routes they take. In the case of Braess's paradox, drivers will continue to switch until they reach Nash equilibrium, despite the reduction in overall performance. If the latency functions are linear then adding an edge can never make total travel time at equilibrium worse by a factor of more than 4/3.[1]
Example
Consider a road network as shown in the adjacent diagram, on which 4000 drivers wish to travel from point Start to End. The travel time in minutes on the Start-A road is the number of travelers (T) divided by 100, and on Start-B is a constant 45 minutes (likewise with the roads across from them). If the dashed road does not exist (so the traffic network has 4 roads in total), the time needed to drive Start-A-End route with A drivers would be . And the time needed to drive the Start-B-End route with B drivers would be . If either route were shorter, it would not be a Nash
equilibrium: a rational driver would switch routes from the longer route to the shorter route. As there are 4000 drivers, the fact that can be used to derive the fact that when the system is at equilibrium. Therefore, each route takes minutes. Now suppose the dashed line is a road with an extremely short travel time of approximately 0 minutes. In this situation, all drivers will choose the Start-A route rather than the Start-B route, because Start-A will only take minutes at its worst, whereas Start-B is guaranteed to take 45 minutes. Once at point A, every rational driver will elect to take the "free" road to B and from there continue to End, because once again A-End is guaranteed to take 45 minutes while A-B-End will take at most minutes. Each driver's travel time is minutes, an increase from the 65 minutes required when the fast A-B road did not exist. No
driver has an incentive to switch, as the two original routes (Start-A-End and Start-B-End) are both now 85 minutes. If every driver were to agree not to use the A-B path, every driver would benefit by reducing their travel time by 15 minutes. However, because any single driver will always benefit by taking the A-B path, the socially optimal distribution is not stable and so Braess's paradox occurs.
Braess's paradox
329
Existence of an equilibrium
Let of the form be the formula for the cost of people driving along edge and people driving along edge . If a traffic graph has linear edges (those . Let the energy of e, be where are constants) then an equilibrium will always exist.
Suppose we have a linear traffic graph with
(If
let
). Let the total energy of the traffic graph be the sum of the energies of every edge in the
graph. Suppose that the distribution for the traffic graph is not an equilibrium. There must be at least one driver who can switch their route and improve total travel time. Suppose their original route is while their new route is . Let be total energy of the traffic graph, and consider what happens when the route will be reduced by and so the will be reduced is removed. The energy of each edge by new route, decrease. As
. Note that this is simply the total travel time needed to take the original route. If we then add the , will be increased by the total travel time needed to take the new route. Because the must decrease. If we repeat this process, will continue to
new route is shorter than the original route,
must remain positive, eventually an equilibrium must occur.
Finding an equilibrium
The above proof outlines a procedure known as Best Response Dynamics, which finds an equilibrium for a linear traffic graph and terminates in a finite number of steps. The algorithm is termed "best response" because at each step of the algorithm, if the graph is not at equilibrium then some driver has a best response to the strategies of all other drivers, and switches to that response. Pseudocode for Best Response Dynamics: Let P be some traffic pattern. while P is not at equilibrium: compute the potential energy e of P for each driver d in P: for each alternate path p available to d: compute the potential energy n of the pattern when d takes path p if n < e: modify P so that d takes path p continue the topmost while At each step, if some particular driver could do better by taking an alternate path (a "best response"), doing so strictly decreases the energy of the graph. If no driver has a best response, the graph is at equilibrium. Since the energy of the graph strictly decreases with each step, the Best Response Dynamics algorithm must eventually halt.
Braess's paradox
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How far from optimal is traffic at equilibrium

At worst, traffic in equilibrium is twice as bad as socially optimal[1] Proof = starting point for car j = target for car j Strategies for car j are possible paths from Each edge e has a travel function Energy on edge e with x drivers: to for some
Total time spent by all drivers on that edge: ((where there are x terms)) E(e) is less than or equal to T(e)
Resulting Inequality
If Z is a traffic pattern:
If we start from a socially optimal traffic pattern Z and end in an equilibrium pattern Z':
Thus we can see that worst is twice as bad as optimal.
How rare is Braess's paradox?

In 1983 Steinberg and Zangwill provided, under reasonable assumptions, necessary and sufficient conditions for Braess's paradox to occur in a general transportation network when a new route is added. (Note that their result applies to the addition of any new route not just to the case of adding a single link.) As a corollary, they obtain that Braess's paradox is about as likely to occur as not occur; their result applies to random rather than planned networks and additions. In Seoul, South Korea, a speeding-up in traffic around the city was seen when a motorway was removed as part of the Cheonggyecheon restoration project.[2] In Stuttgart, Germany after investments into the road network in 1969, the traffic situation did not improve until a section of newly-built road was closed for traffic again.[3] In 1990 the closing of 42nd street in New York City reduced the amount of congestion in the area.[4] In 2008 Youn, Gastner and Jeong demonstrated specific routes in Boston, New York City and London where this might actually occur and pointed out roads that could be closed to reduce predicted travel times.[5]
Braess's paradox
331
References
[1] von Ahn L (2008-10-02). "Modeling Network Traffic Using Game Theory" (http:/ / scienceoftheweb. org/ 15-396/ lectures/ lecture10. pdf). Science of the Web: Lecture 10. Carnegie Mellon University. . Retrieved 2008-11-16. [2] Easley, D and Kleinberg, J: "Networks", page 71. Cornell Store Press, 2008 [3] Kndel W (1969). Graphentheoretische Methoden und ihre Anwendungen. Springer-Verlag. pp.579. ISBN9783540046684. [4] Kolata, Gina (1990-12-25). "What if They Closed 42d Street and Nobody Noticed?" (http:/ / query. nytimes. com/ gst/ fullpage. html?res=9C0CE7D81530F936A15751C1A966958260& scp=8& sq=& st=nyt). New York Times. . Retrieved 2008-11-16. [5] Youn H, Gastner MT, Jeong H (September 2008). "Price of anarchy in transportation networks: efficiency and optimality control". Phys. Rev. Lett. 101 (12): 128701. arXiv:0712.1598. Bibcode2008PhRvL.101l8701Y. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.101.128701. PMID18851419.
Further reading
D. Braess, ber ein Paradoxon aus der Verkehrsplanung. Unternehmensforschung 12, 258268 (1969) (http:// homepage.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/Dietrich.Braess/paradox.pdf) (http://homepage.rub.de/Dietrich.Braess/ Paradox-BNW.pdf) Katharina Belaga-Werbitzky: Das Paradoxon von Braess in erweiterten Wheatstone-Netzen mit M/M/1-Bedienern ISBN 3-89959-123-2 Translation of the Braess 1968 article from German to English appears as the article "On a paradox of traffic planning," by D. Braess, A. Nagurney, and T. Wakolbinger in the journal Transportation Science, volume 39, 2005, pp.446450. More information (http://supernet.som.umass.edu/cfoto/braess-visit/braessvisit.html) A. D. Irvine. How Braess's Paradox Solves Newcomb's Problem. International Studies in Philosophy of Science, Vol. 7 (1993), no. 2, 145164. R. Steinberg and W.I. Zangwill. The Prevalence of Braess's Paradox. Transportation Science, Vol. 17 (1983), no. 3, 301318. A. Rapoport, T. Kugler, S. Dugar, and E. J. Gisches, Choice of routes in congested trafc networks: Experimental tests of the Braess Paradox. Games and Economic Behavior 65 (2009) (http://www.parisschoolofeconomics.eu/ IMG/pdf/Choices_of_routes.pdf) T. Roughgarden. "The Price of Anarchy." MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2005.
External links
Software Testing Paradoxes (http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/05/12/TestRun/default.aspx) Braess's homepage (http://homepage.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/Dietrich.Braess/#paradox) Characterizing Braess's Paradox for Traffic Networks (http://tigger.uic.edu/~hagstrom/Research/Braess/) The Road Network Paradox (http://www.davros.org/science/roadparadox.html) An article on New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/1990/12/25/health/ what-if-they-closed-42d-street-and-nobody-noticed.html)
Cool tropics paradox
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The cool tropics paradox refers to an apparent difference between modelled estimates of tropical temperatures during warm, ice-free periods of the Cretaceous and Eocene, and the colder temperatures which proxies suggested were present. The long-standing paradox was resolved when it became clear that the proxies were misleading, meaning that tropics were warmer than previously believed.
Origin of the paradox

The cool tropics paradox. The geological evidence appeared to Proxy-based reconstructions of paleotemperature constrain temperatures to the red/blue band, whereas models produced appeared to predict a low temperature gradient the brown line taking just continental configuration into account, and between the tropics and poles. Data from the blue line when they included increased atmospheric CO2. Vertical surface-dwelling foramanifera suggested that during axis: Temperature; horizontal:latitude. the late Cretaceous, an unusually warm period, sea surface temperatures were cooler than today's.[1] The term was later applied to similar situations, for example during the Eocene.
Climate models which worked during the Tertiary failed to produce this low temperature gradient; in order to match the observed data, they predicted that the tropics should be 40C or more - much hotter than the proxies said they were, and much hotter than the tropical surface temperatures observed today, which average around 25C (77F). To attempt to match the data, bizarre models involving unreasonable eddies were required.
Models
Models were developed to predict and explain the lack of ice during the warm periods of the Cretaceous and Eocene. Models are developed according to the fundamental principle that they should be kept as simple as possible. Consequently, the first models attempted to explain the lack of ice using solely the different continental configuration.[2] These could not produce an ice-free state without using an increased atmospheric concentration of CO2; this assumption was checked against the evidence and found to be valid.[2] This introduced a new difficulty: more CO2 would produce warmer tropical sea temperatures, and the evidence suggested they were the same or even colder than today's.[2]
Data supporting cool tropical oceans

Foramaniferal data, suggesting tropical temperatures cooler than today's, disagreed with terrestrial proxies, which spoke of warmer temperatures[3] - although most of the terrestrial figures are based on extrapolation of data from outside the tropics.[4]
Sources of error
Analytical error is around 23C for individual specimens, but this drops to 0.51.0C when a sample is analysed not enough to explain the discrepancy.[2] Other factors mean that any pristine sample can be considered to have an associated error of up to 3C.[2] Changes in salinity, kinetic and diagenesis, can also confound analysis: the latter two are each estimated to reduce estimated temperatures by 12C, and are difficult to quantify.[2]
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Reconciling the data with the model

Taking the data to be true, how could they be reconciled with the predictions of the model? The only way the model could be "tweaked" was by fiddling with the parameterisation of clouds, one of the most unpredictable aspects of any model. The model was adjusted to assume that the higher CO2 levels produced more tropical cloud, shielding these regions from the sun's heat.[2] However, there was no evidence for this behaviour, and still left problems. The poles were still warmer than the models predicted.[2] Further feedbacks, including increased poleward heat transport by the oceans, and vegetational responses at high latitudes, were proposed, but these didn't fully explain behaviour in the southern hemisphere, and winter, respectively.[2]
Unravelling the paradox

Hints of warmth - terrestrial proxies
Data from terrestrial proxies suggested that the equator may have reached 30C[4] - however, this figure is based upon extrapolation of data found outside the tropics.[4] This would imply that the foramaniferal proxies were wrong the tests may perhaps have been overprinted by diagenesis. Researchers turned to shallow marine molluscs as it is easy to determine whether their shells had been altered by diagenesis.
Detecting diagenesis in molluscs

Many mollusc shells are constructed from aragonite, a mineral that is quickly replaced by calcite by diagenetic alteration.[3] Also, near-shore molluscs preserve seasonal variability in their shells, a feature that would be lost in the presence of a diagenetic signal.[3] This removes ambiguity about whether or not a shell has been affected by post-deposition processes.
Data from molluscs

Evidence from the molluscs suggested a cooling between the Eocene and Oligocene.[3] Taken from the Mississippi embayment, they recorded temperatures of around 26C in the Eocene, and 22C in the Oligocene; this cooling was markedly seasonal, with reconstructed water temperatures being 5 cooler in the summer, but just 3 cooler in winter.[3] This trend fits best if CO2 was the dominant force for cooling.[3] The winter temperatures of molluscs match well with the foramaniferal temperatures, suggesting that foramanifera predominantly grew during the winter months.[3] The overall temperatures corresponded well with terrestrial and modelled estimates of a sea surface temperature around 45 warmer than today's.[3]
Reassessment of the foramaniferal record

The magnesium/calcium paleothermometer is a recently developed alternative to the 18O method, and avoids many of the uncertainties inherent in the latter method. Use of this technique generates results more consistent with those expected, in contrast to the original 18O records from the same sites.[5] Further painstaking studies targeted solely those foramanifera which could be demonstrated not to have undergone any diagenesis in fact give a 18O signature similar to that expected,[6] suggesting that poor preservation was responsible for the original confusion.
334
References
[1] D'hondt, S.; Arthur, M.A. (1996). "Late Cretaceous Oceans and the Cool Tropic Paradox". Science 271 (5257): 1838. doi:10.1126/science.271.5257.1838. [2] Crowley, T.J.; Zachos, J.C. (2000). "Comparison of zonal temperature profiles for past warm time periods" (http:/ / books. google. com/ ?id=GdFd-5TZa6oC& pg=PA50& dq=Crowley+ Zachos). Warm Climates in Earth History (Cambridge University Press): 5076. ISBN9780521641425. . Retrieved 2008-04-24. [3] Kobashi, T.; Grossman, E.L.; Yancey, T.E.; Dockery, D.T. (2001). "Reevaluation of conflicting Eocene tropical temperature estimates: Molluskan oxygen isotope evidence for warm low latitudes". Geology 29 (11): 983986. doi:10.1130/0091-7613(2001)029<0983:ROCETT>2.0.CO;2. [4] Lunt, D.J.; Ross, I.; Hopley, P.J.; Valdes, P.J. (2007). [Scholar?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&sa=G&oi=qs&q=%22cool+tropics+paradox%22+author:l-kump "Modelling Late Oligocene C4 grasses and climate"]. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 251 (2): 239253. doi:10.1016/j.palaeo.2007.04.004. Scholar?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&sa=G&oi=qs&q=%22cool+tropics+paradox%22+author:l-kump. Retrieved 2008-04-24. [5] Tripati, A.K.; Delaney, M.L.; Zachos, J.C.; Anderson, L.D.; Kelly, D.C.; Elderfield, H. (2003). "Tropical sea-surface temperature reconstruction for the early Paleogene using Mg/Ca ratios of planktonic foraminifera". Paleoceanography 18 (4): 2525. doi:10.1029/2003PA000937. [6] Pearson, P.N.; Ditchfield, P.W.; Singano, J.; Harcourt-brown, K.G.; Nicholas, C.J.; Olsson, R.K.; Shackleton, N.J.; Hall, M.A. (2001). "Warm tropical sea surface temperatures in the Late Cretaceous and Eocene epochs". Nature 413 (6855): 481487. doi:10.1038/35097000. PMID11586350.
D'Alembert's paradox
In fluid dynamics, d'Alembert's paradox (or the hydrodynamic paradox) is a contradiction reached in 1752 by French mathematician Jean le Rond d'Alembert.[1] D'Alembert proved that for incompressible and inviscid potential flow the drag force is zero on a body moving with constant velocity relative to the fluid.[2] Zero drag is in direct contradiction to the observation of substantial drag on bodies moving relative to fluids, such as air and water; especially at high velocities corresponding with high Reynolds numbers. It is a particular example of the reversibility paradox[3]. DAlembert, working on a 1749 Prize Problem of the Berlin Academy on flow drag, concluded: "It seems to me that the theory (potential flow), developed in all possible rigor, gives, at least in several cases, a strictly vanishing resistance, a singular paradox which I leave to future Geometers to elucidate".[4] A physical paradox indicates flaws in the theory. Fluid mechanics was thus discredited by engineers from the start, which resulted in an unfortunate split between the field of hydraulics, observing phenomena which could not be explained, and theoretical fluid mechanics explaining phenomena which could not be observed in the words of the Chemistry Nobel Laureate Sir Cyril Hinshelwood.[5] According to scientific consensus, the occurrence of the paradox is due to neglect of the effects of viscosity. In conjunction with scientific experiments, there were huge advances in the theory of viscous fluid friction during the 19th century. With respect to the paradox, this culminated in the discovery and description of thin boundary layers by Ludwig Prandtl in 1904. Even at very high Reynolds numbers, the thin boundary layers remain as a result of viscous forces. These viscous forces cause friction drag on streamlined objects, and for bluff bodies the additional result is flow separation and a low-pressure wake behind the object, leading to form drag.[6][7][8][9] The general view in the fluid mechanics community is that, from a practical point of view, the paradox is solved along the lines suggested by Prandtl.[6][7][8][9][10][11] A formal mathematical proof is lacking, and difficult to provide, as in so many other fluid-flow problems involving the NavierStokes equations (which are used to describe viscous flow).
335
Viscous friction: Saint-Venant, Navier and Stokes

First steps towards solving the paradox were made by Saint-Venant, who modelled viscous fluid friction. Saint-Venant states in 1847:[12] "But one finds another result if, instead of an ideal fluid object of the calculations of the geometers of the last century one uses a real fluid, composed of a finite number of molecules and exerting in its state of motion unequal pressure forces or forces having components tangential to the surface elements through which they act; components to which we refer as the friction of the fluid, a name which has been given to them since Descartes and Newton until Venturi." Soon after, in 1851, Stokes calculated the drag on a sphere in Stokes flow, known as Stokes' law.[13] Stokes flow is the low Reynolds-number limit of the NavierStokes equations describing the motion of a viscous liquid.[14] However, when the flow problem is put into a non-dimensional form, the viscous NavierStokes equations converge for increasing Reynolds numbers towards the inviscid Euler equations, suggesting that the flow should converge towards the inviscid solutions of potential flow theory having the zero drag of the d'Alembert paradox. Of this, there is no evidence found in experimental measurements of drag and flow visualisations.[15] This again raised questions concerning the applicability of fluid mechanics in the second half of the 19th century.
Inviscid separated flow: Kirchhoff and Rayleigh

In the second half of the 19th century, focus shifted again towards using inviscid flow theory for the description of fluid dragassuming that viscosity becomes less important at high Reynolds numbers. The model proposed by Kirchhoff[17] and Rayleigh[18] was based on the [19] free-streamline theory of Helmholtz and consists of a steady wake behind the body. Assumptions applied to the wake region include: flow velocities equal to the body velocity, and a constant pressure. This wake region is separatedfrom the potential flow outside the body and wakeby vortex sheets with discontinuous jumps in the Steady and separated incompressible potential flow around a plate in two tangential velocity across the [16] dimensions, with a constant pressure along the two free streamlines separating [20][21] interface. In order to have a non-zero from the plate edges. drag on the body, the wake region must extend to infinity. This condition is indeed fulfilled for the Kirchhoff flow perpendicular to a plate. The theory correctly states the drag force to be proportional to the square of the velocity.[22] In first instance, the theory could only be applied to flows separating at sharp edges. Later, in 1907, it was extended by Levi-Civita to flows separating from a smooth curved boundary.[23] It was readily known that such steady flows are not stable, since the vortex sheets develop so-called KelvinHelmholtz instabilities.[21] But this steady-flow model was studied further in the hope it still could give a reasonable estimate of drag. Rayleigh asks "... whether the calculations of resistance are materially affected by this circumstance as the pressures experienced must be nearly independent of what happens at some distance in the rear of the obstacle, where the instability would first begin to manifest itself."[18]
D'Alembert's paradox However, fundamental objections arose against this approach: Kelvin observed that if a plate is moving with constant velocity through the fluid, the velocity in the wake is equal to that of the plate. The infinite extent of the wakewidening with the distance from the plate, as obtained from the theoryresults in an infinite kinetic energy in the wake, which must be rejected on physical grounds.[22][24] Moreover, the observed pressure differences between front and back of the plate, and resulting drag forces, are much larger than predicted: for a flat plate perpendicular to the flow the predicted drag coefficient is CD=0.88, while in experiments CD=2.0 is found. This is mainly due to suction at the wake side of the plate, induced by the unsteady flow in the real wake (as opposed to the theory which assumes a constant flow velocity equal to the plate's velocity).[25] So, this theory is found to be unsatisfactory as an explanation of drag on a body moving through a fluid. Although it can be applied to so-called cavity flows where, instead of a wake filled with fluid, a vacuum cavity is assumed to exist behind the body.[21][22][26]
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Thin boundary layers: Prandtl

The German physicist Ludwig Prandtl suggested in 1904[27] that the effects of a thin viscous boundary layer possibly could be the source of substantial drag. Prandtl put forward the idea that, at high velocities and high Reynolds numbers, a no-slip boundary condition causes a strong variation of the flow speeds over a thin layer near the wall of the body. This leads to the generation of vorticity and viscous dissipation of kinetic energy in the boundary layer. The energy dissipation, which is lacking in the inviscid theories, results for bluff bodies in separation of the flow. The low pressure in the wake region causes form drag, and this can be larger than the friction drag due to the viscous shear stress at the wall.[15]
Evidence that Prandtl's scenario occurs for bluff bodies in flows of high Reynolds numbers can be seen in impulsively started flows around a cylinder. Initially the flow resembles potential flow, after which the flow separates near the rear stagnation point. Thereafter, the separation points move upstream, resulting in a low-pressure region of separated flow.[15] Prandtl made the hypothesis that the viscous effects are important in thin layers called boundary layers adjacent to solid boundaries, and that viscosity has no role of importance outside. The boundary-layer thickness becomes smaller when the viscosity reduces. The full problem of viscous flow, described by the non-linear NavierStokes equations, is in general not mathematically solvable. However, using his hypothesis (and backed up by experiments) Prandtl was able to derive an approximate model for the flow inside the boundary layer, called boundary-layer theory; while the flow outside the boundary layer could be treated using inviscid flow theory. Boundary-layer theory is amenable to the method of matched asymptotic expansions for deriving approximate solutions. In the simplest case of a flat plate parallel to the incoming flow, boundary-layer theory results in (friction) drag, whereas all inviscid flow theories will predict zero drag. Importantly for aeronautics, Prandtl's theory can be applied directly to
Pressure distribution for the flow around a circular cylinder. The dashed blue line is the pressure distribution according to potential flow theory, resulting in d'Alembert's paradox. The solid blue line is the mean pressure distribution as found in experiments at high Reynolds numbers. The pressure is the radial distance from the cylinder surface; a positive pressure (overpressure) is inside the cylinder, towards the centre, while a negative pressure (underpressure) is drawn outside the cylinder.
D'Alembert's paradox streamlined bodies like airfoils where, in addition to surface-friction drag, there is also form drag. Form drag is due to the effect of the boundary layer and thin wake on the pressure distribution around the airfoil.[8][28]
337
Open questions
To verify, as Prandtl suggested, that a vanishingly small cause (vanishingly small viscosity for increasing Reynolds number) has a large effect substantial drag may be very difficult. The mathematician Garrett Birkhoff in the opening chapter of his book Hydrodynamics from 1950,[29] addresses a number of paradoxes of fluid mechanics (including d'Alembert's paradox) and expresses a clear doubt in their official resolutions: "Moreover, I think that to attribute them all to the neglect of viscosity is an unwarranted oversimplification The root lies deeper, in lack of precisely that deductive rigor whose importance is so commonly minimized by physicists and engineers."[30] In particular, on d'Alembert's paradox, he considers another possible route to the creation of drag: instability of the potential flow solutions to the Euler equations. Birkhoff states: "In any case, the preceding paragraphs make it clear that the theory of non-viscous flows is incomplete. Indeed, the reasoning leading to the concept of a "steady flow" is inconclusive; there is no rigorous justification for the elimination of time as an independent variable. Thus though Dirichlet flows (potential solutions) and other steady flows are mathematically possible, there is no reason to suppose that any steady flow is stable."[31] In his 1951 review[32] of Birkhoff's book, the mathematician James J. Stoker sharply criticizes the first chapter of the book: "The reviewer found it difficult to understand for what class of readers the first chapter was written. For readers that are acquainted with hydrodynamics the majority of the cases cited as paradoxes belong either to the category of mistakes long since rectified, or in the category of discrepancies between theory and experiments the reasons for which are also well understood. On the other hand, the uninitiated would be very likely to get the wrong ideas about some of the important and useful achievements in hydrodynamics from reading this chapter." In the second and revised edition of Birkhoff's Hydrodynamics in 1960, the above two statements no longer appear.[33] The importance and usefulness of the achievements, made on the subject of the d'Alembert paradox, are reviewed by Stewartson thirty years later. His long 1981 survey article starts with:[10] "Since classical inviscid theory leads to the patently absurd conclusion that the resistance experienced by a rigid body moving through a fluid with uniform velocity is zero, great efforts have been made during the last hundred or so years to propose alternate theories and to explain how a vanishingly small frictional force in the fluid can nevertheless have a significant effect on the flow properties. The methods used are a combination of experimental observation, computation often on a very large scale, and analysis of the structure of the asymptotic form of the solution as the friction tends to zero. This three-pronged attack has achieved considerable success, especially during the last ten years, so that now the paradox may be regarded as largely resolved." For many paradoxes in physics, their resolution often lies in transcending the available theory.[34] In the case of d'Alembert's paradox, the essential mechanism for its resolution was provided by Prandtl through the discovery and modelling of thin viscous boundary layers which are non-vanishing at high Reynolds numbers.[27]
338
Zero drag in potential flow

Potential flow
The three main assumptions in the derivation of d'Alembert's paradox is that the flow is incompressible, inviscid and irrotational.[35] An inviscid fluid is described by the Euler equations, which for an incompressible flow read
Streamlines for the potential flow around a circular cylinder in a uniform onflow.
where u denotes the flow velocity of the fluid, p the pressure, the density, and is the gradient operator. The assumption that the flow is irrotational means that the velocity satisfies u = 0. Hence, we have
where the first equality is a vector calculus identity and the second equality uses that the flow is irrotational. Furthermore, for every irrotational flow, there exists a velocity potential such that u = . Substituting this all in the equation for momentum conservation yields
Thus, the quantity between brackets must be constant (any t-dependence can be eliminated by redefining ). Assuming that the fluid is at rest at infinity and that the pressure is defined to be zero there, this constant is zero, and thus
which is the Bernoulli equation for unsteady potential flow.
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Zero drag
Now, suppose that a body moves with constant velocity v through the fluid, which is at rest infinitely far away. Then the velocity field of the fluid has to follow the body, so it is of the form u(x, t) = u(x vt, 0), and thus:
Since u = , this can be integrated with respect to x:
The force F that the fluid exerts on the body is given by the surface integral
where A denotes the body surface and n the normal vector on the body surface. But it follows from (2) that
thus
with the contribution of R(t) to the integral being equal to zero. At this point, it becomes more convenient to work in the vector components. The kth component of this equation reads
Let V be the volume occupied by the fluid. The divergence theorem says that
The right-hand side is an integral over an infinite volume, so this needs some justification, which can be provided by appealing to potential theory to show that the velocity u must fall off as r3 corresponding to a dipole potential field in case of a three-dimensional body of finite extent where r is the distance to the centre of the body. The integrand in the volume integral can be rewritten as follows:
where first equality (1) and then the incompressibility of the flow are used. Substituting this back into the volume integral and another application of the divergence theorem again. This yields
Substituting this in (3), we find that
The fluid cannot penetrate the body and thus n u = n v on the body surface. Thus,
Finally, the drag is the force in the direction in which the body moves, so
340
Hence the drag vanishes. This is d'Alembert's paradox.
Notes
[1] Jean Le Rond d'Alembert (1752). [2] Grimberg, Pauls & Frisch (2008). [3] Falkovich, G. (2011). Fluid Mechanics, a short course for physicists (http:/ / www. cambridge. org/ gb/ knowledge/ isbn/ item6173728/ ?site_locale=en_GB). Cambridge University Press. p.32. ISBN978-1-107-00575-4. . [4] Reprinted in: Jean le Rond d'Alembert (1768). [5] M.J. Lighthill (1956), "Physics of gas flow at very high speeds", Nature 178 (4529): 343, Bibcode1956Natur.178..343., doi:10.1038/178343a0 Report on a conference. [6] Landau & Lifshitz (1987), p. 15. [7] Batchelor (2000), pp. 264265, 303, 337. [8] Schlichting, Hermann; Gersten, Klaus (2000), Boundary-layer theory (8th revised and enlarged ed.), Springer, ISBN978-3-540-66270-9, pp. XIXXXIII. [9] Veldman, A.E.P. (2001), "Matched asymptotic expansions and the numerical treatment of viscousinviscid interaction", Journal of Engineering Mathematics 39: 189206, doi:10.1023/A:1004846400131 [10] Stewartson (1981). [11] Feynman, R.P.; Leighton, R.B.; Sands, M. (1963), The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, ISBN978-0-201-02116-5, Vol. 2, 415: The limit of zero viscosity, pp. 419 4110. [12] Saint-Venant, A. (1847), "Mmoire sur la thorie de la rsistance des fluides. Solution du paradoxe propos ce sujet par d'Alembert aux gomtres. Comparaison de la thorie aux expriences" (http:/ / gallica. bnf. fr/ ark:/ 12148/ bpt6k29812), Comptes Rendu des Sances de l'Academie des Science 24: 243246, , retrieved 2008-08-15 [13] Stokes, G.G. (1851), "On the effect of the internal friction of fluids on the motion of pendulums", Trans. Cambridge Phil. Soc. 9: 8106, Bibcode1851TCaPS...9....8S. Reprinted in Stokes, G.G., Mathematical and Physical Papers (Cambridge Univ. Press) 3 [14] The Stokes flow equations have a solution for the flow around a sphere, but not for the flow around a circular cylinder. This is due to the neglect of the convective acceleration in Stokes flow. Convective acceleration is dominating over viscous effects far from the cylinder (Batchelor, 2000, p. 245). A solution can be found when convective acceleration is taken into account, for instance using the Oseen equations (Batchelor, 2000, pp. 245246). [15] Batchelor (2000), pp. 337343 & plates. [16] Batchelor (2000), p. 499, eq. (6.13.12). [17] Kirchhoff, G. (1869), "Zur Theorie freier Flssigkeitsstrahlen", Journal fr die reine und angewandte Mathematik 70: 289298 [18] Rayleigh, Lord (1876), "On the resistance of fluids", Philosophical Magazine 5 (2): 430441. Reprinted in: Scientific Papers 1:287296. [19] Helmholtz, H. L. F. von (1868), "ber discontinuierliche Flssigkeitsbewegungen", Monatsberichte der Kniglichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin 23: 215228. Reprinted in: Philosophical Magazine (1868) 36:337346. [20] Batchelor (2000), pp. 338339 [21] Wu, T. Y. (1972), "Cavity and wake flows", Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics 4: 243284, Bibcode1972AnRFM...4..243W, doi:10.1146/annurev.fl.04.010172.001331 [22] Lamb, H. (1994), Hydrodynamics (6th ed.), Cambridge University Press, p.679, ISBN978-0-521-45868-9 [23] Levi-Civita, T. (1907), "Scie e leggi di resistenza", Rendeconti del Circolo Matematico di Palermo 23: 137 [24] Lord Kelvin (1894), "On the doctrine of discontinuity of fluid motion, in connection with the resistance against a solid moving through a fluid", Nature 50 (1300): 5245, 549, 5735, 5978, Bibcode1894Natur..50..524K, doi:10.1038/050524e0 Reprinted in: Mathematical and Physical Papers 4: 215230. [25] Batchelor (2000), p. 500. [26] Batchelor (2000), pp. 493494. [27] Prandtl (1904). [28] Batchelor (2000) pp. 302314 & 331337. [29] Garrett Birkhoff, Hydrodynamics: a study in logic, fact, and similitude, Princeton University Press, 1950 [30] Birkhoff (1950) p. 4. [31] Birkhoff (1950) p. 21. [32] James J. Stoker (1951), "Review: Garrett Birkhoff, Hydrodynamics, a study in logic, fact, and similitude" (http:/ / projecteuclid. org/ DPubS/ Repository/ 1. 0/ Disseminate?view=body& id=pdf_1& handle=euclid. bams/ 1183516308), Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 57 (6): 497499, doi:10.1090/S0002-9904-1951-09552-X, . [33] Closest to the first quote comes, on page 5:
D'Alembert's paradox "...It is now usually claimed that such paradoxes are due to the differences between real fluids having small but finite viscosity, and ideal fluids having zero viscosity. Thus it is essentially implied that one can rectify Lagrange's claim, by substituting Navier-Stokes for Euler. This claim will be discussed critically in Ch. II; it may well be correct in principle for incompressible viscous flow. However, taken literally, I think it is still very misleading, unless explicit attention is paid to the plausible hypotheses listed above, and to the lack of rigor implied by their use. Though I do not know of any case when a deduction, both physically and mathematically rigorous, has led to a wrong conclusion, very few of the deductions of rational hydrodynamics can be established rigorously. The most interesting ones involve free use of Hypotheses (A)-(F)..."
The Lagrange claim is given by Birkhoff on page 3:
341
"...One owes to Euler the first general formulas for fluid motion ... presented in the simple and luminous notation of partial differences ... By this discovery, all fluid mechanics was reduced to a single point of analysis, and if the equations involved were integrable, one could determine completely, in all cases, the motion of a fluid moved by any forces..."
(Birkhoff, 1960, 2nd ed.) [34] For instance, the paradox of the constancy of the speed of light in all directions, was solved by the special theory of relativity. [35] This article follows the derivation in Section 6.4 of Batchelor (2000).
References
Historical
d'Alembert, Jean Le Rond (1752), Essai d'une nouvelle thorie de la rsistance des fluides (http://gallica.bnf.fr/ ark:/12148/bpt6k206036b) d'Alembert, Jean le Rond (1768), "Memoir XXXIV", Opuscules Mathmatiques, 5 (I ed.), pp.132138. Prandtl, Ludwig (1904), Motion of fluids with very little viscosity (http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=712863& id=1&qs=Ntt=prandtl%2B452&Ntk=all&Ntx=mode%20matchall&N=0&Ns=HarvestDate%7c1), 452, NACA Technical Memorandum
Further reading
Batchelor, G. (2000), An introduction to fluid dynamics, Cambridge Mathematical Library (2nd ed.), Cambridge University Press, ISBN978-0-521-66396-0, MR1744638 Grimberg, G.; Pauls, W.; Frisch, U. (2008), "Genesis of dAlemberts paradox and analytical elaboration of the drag problem", Physica D 237 (1417): 18781886, arXiv:0801.3014, Bibcode2008PhyD..237.1878G, doi:10.1016/j.physd.2008.01.015 Landau, L. D.; Lifshitz, E. M. (1987), Fluid Mechanics, Course of Theoretical Physics, 6 (2nd ed.), Pergamon Press, ISBN0-08-339932-8 Falkovich, G. (2011). Fluid Mechanics, a short course for physicists (http://www.cambridge.org/gb/ knowledge/isbn/item6173728/?site_locale=en_GB). Cambridge University Press. ISBN978-1-107-00575-4. Stewartson, K. (1981), "D'Alembert's Paradox", SIAM Review 23 (3): 308343, doi:10.1137/1023063
342
External links
Potential Flow and d'Alembert's Paradox (http://www.mathpages.com/home/kmath211/kmath211.htm) at MathPages Fluid Mechanics webpage with video, Q&A etc (http://www.weizmann.ac.il/complex/falkovich/ fluid-mechanics)
Denny's paradox
In the study of animal locomotion on the surface layer of water, Denny's paradox refers to the apparent impossibility of surface-dwelling animals such as the water strider generating enough propulsive force to move. It is named after Mark Denny. If capillary waves are assumed to generate the momentum transfer to the water, the animal's legs must move faster than the phase speed of the waves, given by
where
is the acceleration due to gravity,
is the strength of surface tension, and
the density of water. For
standard conditions, this works out to be about 0.23m/s. Infant water striders' legs move at speeds much less than this and, according to this physical picture, cannot move. Writing in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics, David Hu and John Bush state that Denny's paradox "rested on two flawed assumptions. First, water striders' motion was assumed to rely on the generation of capillary waves, since the propulsive force was thought to be that associated with wave drag on the driving leg. Second, in order to generate capillary waves, it was assumed that the strider leg speed must exceed the minimum wave speed, m/s. We note that this second assumption is strictly true only for steady motions" [1].
References
[1] David L. Hu; John W. M. Bush (2010). "The hydrodynamics of water-walking arthropods". Journal of Fluid Mechanics 644: 533.
Ehrenfest paradox
343
Ehrenfest paradox
The Ehrenfest paradox concerns the rotation of a "rigid" disc in the theory of relativity. In its original formulation as presented by Paul Ehrenfest 1909 in the Physikalische Zeitschrift,[1] it discusses an ideally rigid cylinder that is made to rotate about its axis of symmetry. The radius R as seen in the laboratory frame is always perpendicular to its motion and should therefore be equal to its value R0 when stationary. However, the circumference (2R) should appear Lorentz-contracted to a smaller value than at rest, by the usual factor . This leads to the contradiction that R=R0 and R<R0. (Note that a cylinder was considered in order to circumvent the possibility of a disc "dishing" out of its plane of rotation and trivially satisfying C<2R. Subsequently when a rotating disc is substituted it is assumed that this distortion possibility is also excluded). The paradox has been deepened further by later reasoning that since measuring rods aligned along the periphery and moving with it should appear contracted, more would fit around the circumference, which would thus measure greater than 2R. The Ehrenfest paradox may be the most basic phenomenon in relativity that has a long history marked by controversy and which still gets different interpretations published in peer-reviewed journals. Any rigid object made from real materials, which is rotating with the transverse velocity close to the speed of sound in this material, must exceed the point of rupture due to centrifugal force because centrifugal pressure can not exceed shear modulus of material
where
is speed of sound,
is density and
is shear modulus. Thus, in the case of speed of light, is only a
thought experiment. Neutron-degenerate matter allows velocities close to speed of light, because e.g. the speed of neutron-star oscillations is relativistic, however these bodies can not be said to be "rigid".
Essence of the paradox

Imagine a disk of radius R rotating with constant angular velocity . Let us fix the reference frame to the stationary center of the disk. Then the magnitude of the relative velocity of any point in the circumference of the disk is . So the circumference will undergo Lorentz contraction by a factor of .
However the radius being perpendicular to the direction of motion, will not undergo any contraction. So we have
. This is paradoxical, since Euclidean geometry tells us it should be exactly equal to .

Ehrenfest paradox - Circumference of a rotating disk should contract but not the radius, as radius is in perpendicular to the direction of motion.
Ehrenfest's argument
Ehrenfest paradox Ehrenfest considered an ideally Born rigid cylinder that is made to rotate. Assuming that the cylinder does not expand or contract, its radius stays the same. But measuring rods laid out along the circumference should be Lorentz-contracted to a smaller value than at rest, by the usual factor . This leads to the paradox that the rigid measuring rods would have to separate from one another due to Lorentz contraction; the discrepancy noted by Ehrenfest seems to suggest that a rotated Born rigid disk should shatter. Thus Ehrenfest argued by reductio ad absurdum that Born rigidity is not generally compatible with special relativity. It's worth mentioning that according to special relativity an object cannot be spun up from a non-rotating state while maintaining Born rigidity, but once it has achieved a constant nonzero angular velocity it does maintain Born rigidity without violating special relativity, and then (as Einstein later showed) a disk riding observer will measure a circumference: .
344
Brief history
Citations to the papers mentioned below (and many which are not) can be found in a paper by yvind Grn which is available on-line[2]. 1909: Max Born introduces a notion of rigid motion in special relativity.[3] 1909: After studying Born's notion of rigidity, Paul Ehrenfest demonstrated by means of a paradox about a cylinder that goes from rest to rotation, that most motions of extended bodies cannot be Born rigid.[1] 1910: Gustav Herglotz and Fritz Noether independently elaborated on Born's model and showed, that Born rigidity only allows of three degrees of freedom for bodies in motion. That is, it's possible that a body is capable of moving in uniform translation and uniform rotation, yet accelerated rotation is impossible. So a Born rigid body cannot be brought from a state of rest into rotation, confirming Ehrenfest's result.[4][5]
1910: Max Planck calls attention to the fact that one should not confuse the problem of the contraction of a disc due to spinning it up, with that of what disk-riding observers will measure as compared to stationary observers. He suggests that resolving the first problem will require introducing some material model and employing the theory of elasticity.[6]
This figure shows the world line of a Langevin observer (red helical curve). The figure also depicts the light cones at several events with the frame field of the Langevin observer passing through that event.
1910: Theodor Kaluza points out that there is nothing inherently paradoxical about the static and disk-riding observers obtaining different results for the circumference. This does however imply, he argues, that "the geometry of the rotating disk" is non-euclidean. He asserts without proof that this geometry is in fact essentially just the geometry of the hyperbolic plane.[7] 1911: Max von Laue shows, that an accelerated body has an infinite amount of degrees of freedom, thus no rigid bodies can exist in special relativity.[8] 1916: While writing up his new general theory of relativity, Albert Einstein notices that disk-riding observers measure a longer circumference, C= 2 r (1v2)1. That is, because rulers moving parallel to their length axis appear shorter as measured by static observers, the disk-riding observers can fit more small rulers of a given length around the circumference than stationary observers could. 1922: Henri Becquerel claims that Ehrenfest was right, not Einstein.
Ehrenfest paradox 1935: Paul Langevin essentially introduces a moving frame (or frame field in modern language) corresponding to the family of disk-riding observers, now called Langevin observers. (See the figure.) He also shows that distances measured by nearby Langevin observers correspond to a certain Riemannian metric, now called the Langevin-Landau-Lifschitz metric. (See Born coordinates for details.)[9] 1937: Jan Weyssenhoff (now perhaps best known for his work on Cartan connections with zero curvature and nonzero torsion) notices that the Langevin observers are not hypersurface orthogonal. Therefore, the Langevin-Landau-Lifschitz metric is defined, not on some hyperslice of Minkowski spacetime, but on the quotient space obtained by replacing each world line with a point. This gives a three-dimensional smooth manifold which becomes a Riemannian manifold when we add the metric structure. 1946: Nathan Rosen shows that inertial observers instantaneously comoving with Langevin observers also measure small distances given by Langevin-Landau-Lifschitz metric. 1946: E. L. Hill analyzes relativistic stresses in a material in which (roughly speaking) the speed of sound equals the speed of light and shows these just cancel the radial expansion due to centrifugal force (in any physically realistic material, the relativistic effects lessen but do not cancel the radial expansion). Hill explains errors in earlier analyses by Arthur Eddington and others. 1952: C. Mller attempts to study null geodesics from the point of view of rotating observers (but incorrectly tries to use slices rather than the appropriate quotient space) 1968: V. Cantoni provides a straightforward, purely kinematical explanation of the paradox. 1975: yvind Grn writes a classic review paper about solutions of the "paradox" 1977: Grnbaum and Janis introduce a notion of physically realizable "non-rigidity" which can be applied to the spin-up of an initially non-rotating disk (this notion is not physically realistic for real materials from which one might make a disk, but it is useful for thought experiments). 1981: Grn notices that Hooke's law is not consistent with Lorentz transformations and introduces a relativistic generalization. 1997: T. A. Weber explicitly introduces the frame field associated with Langevin observers. 2000: Hrvoje Nikoli points out that the paradox disappears when (in accordance with general theory of relativity) each piece of the rotating disk is treated separately, as living in his own local non-inertial frame. 2002: Rizzi and Ruggiero (and Bel) explicitly introduce the quotient manifold mentioned above.
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Grn states that the resolution of the paradox stems from the impossibility of synchronizing clocks in a rotating reference frame.[10] The modern resolution can be briefly summarized as follows: 1. Small distances measured by disk-riding observers are described by the Langevin-Landau-Lifschitz metric, which is indeed well approximated (for small angular velocity) by the geometry of the hyperbolic plane, just as Kaluza had claimed. 2. For physically reasonable materials, during the spin-up phase a real disk expands radially due to centrifugal forces; relativistic corrections partially counteract (but do not cancel) this Newtonian effect. After a steady-state rotation is achieved and the disk has been allowed to relax, the geometry "in the small" is approximately given by the Langevin-Landau-Lifschitz metric.
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Common misconceptions
Surveying the somewhat dismal history sketched in the paper by Grn (and several recent arXiv preprints which repeat various long-corrected errors originally made by earlier authors), we can identify a number of major conceptual errors which are common to many incorrect claims which have been made over the years concerning "the geometry of a rotating disk": 1. The assumption that there is a unique geometry, even a Riemannian geometry, describing a rotating disk as measured by disk-riding observers. In fact, there are several distinct but operationally significant notions of "distance" which can be employed by accelerating observers (such as the Langevin observers), even in flat spacetime. These are not even symmetric for large distances. However, for small distances they do all agree with a Riemannian metric, the Langevin-Landau-Lifschitz metric. (See Born coordinates for mathematical details.) 2. The assumption that the geometry is defined on some spatial hyperslice. In fact, it is defined on the quotient manifold obtained by collapsing the world lines of the Langevin observers to points. 3. Attempts to compare the geometry of an initially non-rotating disk "before" and "after" a spin-up phase which avoid any consideration of how the material of the disk reacts to being stressed during the spin-up phase are doomed to fail, as Planck already knew in 1910. 4. Ignoring the common-sense expectation that an initially non-rotating disk which is spun-up should exhibit stresses similar to those we would compute in Newtonian physics, but with relativistic corrections which should be small for a slow but steady spin-up. 5. Failure to account for the fact that, because any point of the cylinder not on the axis of rotation experiences centripetal acceleration of v2/r during rotation, some general relativistic corrections are appropriate. (Here r is the perpendicular distance from the point to the axis, and v is the speed at which the point moves.) Although the theory to resolve the paradox was understood by 1937, many subsequent authors have repeated various conceptual errors which had already been cleared up in earlier work, possibly because some of the explanations were not quite explicit.
References
A few papers of historical interest:
[1] Ehrenfest, P. (1909). "Gleichfrmige Rotation starrer Krper und Relativittstheorie". Physikalische Zeitschrift 10: 918. Wikisource translation: Uniform Rotation of Rigid Bodies and the Theory of Relativity [2] yvind Grn: Space Geometry in a Rotating Reference Frame: A Historical Appraisal (http:/ / digilander. libero. it/ solciclos/ ). In: G. Rizzi and M. Ruggiero, eds.: Relativity in Rotating Frames. Kluwer, 2004. [3] Born, M. (1909). "Die Theorie des starren Elektrons in der Kinematik des Relativitts-Prinzipes". Ann. Phys. Lpz. 30 (11): 1. Bibcode1909AnP...335....1B. doi:10.1002/andp.19093351102. Wikisource translation: The Theory of the Rigid Electron in the Kinematics of the Principle of Relativity [4] Herglotz, Gustav (1910). "ber den vom Standpunkt des Relativittsprinzips aus als starr zu bezeichnenden Krper" (http:/ / gallica. bnf. fr/ ark:/ 12148/ bpt6k15335v. image. f403). Annalen der Physik 336 (2): 393415. Bibcode1910AnP...336..393H. doi:10.1002/andp.19103360208. . Wikisource translation: On bodies that are to be designated as "rigid" from the standpoint of the relativity principle [5] Noether, Fritz (1910). "Zur Kinematik des starren Krpers in der Relativtheorie" (http:/ / gallica. bnf. fr/ ark:/ 12148/ bpt6k15335v. image. f932). Annalen der Physik 336 (5): 919944. Bibcode1910AnP...336..919N. doi:10.1002/andp.19103360504. . [6] Planck, M. (1910). "Gleichfrmige Rotation und Lorentz-Kontraktion". Physikalische Zeitschrift 11: 294. Wikisource translation: Uniform Rotation and Lorentz Contraction [7] Kaluza, T. (1910). "Zur Relativittstheorie". Physikalische Zeitschrift 11: 977978. Wikisource translation: On the Theory of Relativity [8] Laue, M.v. (1911). "Zur Diskussion ber den starren Krper in der Relativittstheorie". Physikalische Zeitschrift 12: 8587. Wikisource translation: On the Discussion Concerning Rigid Bodies in the Theory of Relativity [9] Langevin, P. (1935). "Remarques au sujet de la Note de Prunier". C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris 200: 48. [10] Grn, yvind; Sigbjrn Hervik (2007). Einstein's General Theory of Relativity (http:/ / books. google. com/ ?id=IyJhCHAryuUC& pg=PA90). Springer. p.91. ISBN0387692002. .
Ehrenfest paradox A few classic "modern" references: Reichenbach, Hans (1969). Axiomatization of the Theory of Relativity. Berkeley: University of California Press. LCCN68021540. Cantoni, V. (1968). "What is wrong with Relativistic Kinematics?". Il Nuovo Cimento 57 B: 220223. Grn, . (1975). "Relativistic description of a rotating disk". Amer. J. Phys. 43 (10): 869876. Bibcode1975AmJPh..43..869G. doi:10.1119/1.9969. Landau, L. D. & Lifschitz, E. F. (1980). The Classical Theory of Fields (4th ed.). London: Butterworth-Heinemann. ISBN0-7506-2768-9. See Section 84 and the problem at the end of Section 89. Some experimental work and subsequent discussion: Davies, P. A. & Jennison, R. C. (1975). "Experiments involving mirror transponders in rotating frames". J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 8, No.9 (9): 13907. Bibcode1975JPhA....8.1390D. doi:10.1088/0305-4470/8/9/007. Ashworth, D. G. & Jennison, R. C. (1976). "Surveying in rotating systems". J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 9, No.1: 3543. Bibcode1976JPhA....9...35A. doi:10.1088/0305-4470/9/1/008. Davies, P. A. (1976). "Measurements in rotating systems". J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 9, No.6 (6): 9519. Bibcode1976JPhA....9..951D. doi:10.1088/0305-4470/9/6/014. Boone, P. F. (1977). "Relativity of rotation". J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 10, No.5: 72744. Ashworth, D. G. & Davies, P. A. (1979). "Transformations between inertial and rotating frames of reference". J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 12, No.9 (9): 142540. Bibcode1979JPhA...12.1425A. doi:10.1088/0305-4470/12/9/011. Selected recent sources: Rizzi, G.; & Ruggiero, M.L. (2002). "Space geometry of rotating platforms: an operational approach". Found. Phys. 32 (10): 15251556. doi:10.1023/A:1020427318877. They give a precise definition of the "space of the disk" (non-Euclidean), and solve the paradox without extraneous dynamic considerations. See also the eprint version (http://www.arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0207104). Rizzi, G. ; & Ruggiero, M. L. (2004). Relativity in Rotating Frames. Dordrecht: Kluwer. ISBN1-4020-1805-3. This book contains a comprehensive historical survey by yvind Grn, on which the "brief history" in this article is based, and some other papers on the Ehrenfest paradox and related controversies. Hundreds of additional references may be found in this book, particularly the paper by Grn. Pauri, Massimo; & Vallisneri, Michele (2000). "Mrzke-Wheeler coordinates for accelerated observers in special relativity". Found. Phys. Lett. 13 (5): 401425. doi:10.1023/A:1007861914639. Studies a coordinate chart constructed using radar distance "in the large" from a single Langevin observer. See also the eprint version (http://www.arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0006095). Nikolic, Hrvoje (2000). "Relativistic contraction and related effects in noninertial frames". Phys. Rev. A 61 (3): 032109. arXiv:gr-qc/9904078. Bibcode2000PhRvA..61c2109N. doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.61.032109. Studies general non-inertial motion of a point particle and treats rotating disk as a collection of such non-inertial particles. See also the eprint version (http://www.arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9904078).
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External links
The Rigid Rotating Disk in Relativity (http://www2.corepower.com:8080/~relfaq/rigid_disk.html), by Michael Weiss (1995), from the sci.physics FAQ. Einstein's Carousel (section 3.4.4) (http://www.lightandmatter.com/html_books/genrel/ch03/ch03. html#Section3.4), by B. Crowell
Elevator paradox
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Elevator paradox
This article refers to the elevator paradox as it relates to the physics of a hydrometer. For the elevator paradox as it relates to the elevator as a transportation device, see elevator paradox. The elevator paradox relates to a hydrometer placed on an "elevator" or vertical conveyor that, by moving to different elevations, changes the atmospheric pressure. In this classic demonstration, the floating hydrometer remains at an equilibrium position. Essentially, a hydrometer measures specific gravity of liquids independent of barometric pressure. This is because the change in air pressure is applied to the entire hydrometer flask. The submerged portion of the flask receives a transmitted force through the liquid, thus no portion of the apparatus receives a net force resulting from a change in air pressure. This is a paradox if the buoyancy of the hydrometer is said to depend on the weight of the liquid that it displaces. At a higher barometric pressure, the liquid occupies a slightly smaller volume, and thus more dense might be considered to have a higher specific gravity. However, the hydrometer also displaces air, and the weight of the liquid and the air are affected equally by elevation.
Cartesian divers
A Cartesian diver, on the other hand, has an internal space that, unlike a hydrometer, is not rigid, and thus can change its displacement as increasing external air pressure compresses the air in the diver. If the diver, instead of being placed in the classic plastic bottle, were floated in a flask on an elevator, the diver would respond to a change in air pressure. Similarly, a non-rigid container like a toy balloon will be affected, as will the rib cage of a human SCUBA diver, and such systems will vary in buoyancy. A glass hydrometer is rigid under normal pressure, for all practical purposes.
The hydrometer in an accelerating frame of reference

The upward or downward acceleration of the elevator, as long as the net force is directed downward, will not change the equilibrium point of the hydrometer either. The force due to acceleration acts on the hydrometer exactly as it would on an equal mass of water or other liquid.
EPR paradox
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EPR paradox
The EPR paradox is an early and influential critique leveled against quantum mechanics. Albert Einstein and his colleagues Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen (known collectively as EPR) designed a thought experiment intended to reveal what they believed to be inadequacies of quantum mechanics. To that end they pointed to a consequence of quantum mechanics that its supporters had not noticed. According to quantum mechanics, a single system has its own wave function, its own unitary quantum-theoretical description. If such a single system can be transformed into two individual systems, doing so does not create two wave functions. Instead, theory indicates that each system shares a single wave function. It was known from experiments that the outcome of an experiment sometimes cannot be uniquely predicted. An example of such indeterminacy can be seen when a beam of light is incident on a half-silvered mirror. One half of the beam will reflect, the other will pass. But what happens when we keep decreasing the intensity of the beam, so that only one photon is in transit at any time? Half of the photons will pass and another half will be reflected. Even if we 'prepare' the photons by passing them through a polarizer, there will always be an experiment of which the result could not be predicted with certainty. The routine explanation of this effect was, at that time, provided by Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Physical quantities come in pairs which are called Conjugate quantities. Example of such a conjugate pair are position and momentum of a particle, or components of spin measured around different axes. When one quantity was measured, and became determined, the conjugated quantity became indeterminate. Heisenberg explained this as a disturbance caused by measurement. The EPR paper written in 1936 has shown that this explanation is inadequate. It considered two entangled particles, let's call them A and B, and pointed out measuring a quantity of a particle A will cause the conjugated quantity of particle B to become undetermined, even if there was no contact, no classical disturbance. Heisenberg's principle was an attempt to provide a classical explanation of a quantum effect we call non-locality. There were two possible explanations. Either there was some interaction between the particles, even though they were separated, or the information about the outcome of all possible measurements was already present in both particles. The EPR authors preferred the second explanation according to which that information was encoded in some 'hidden parameters'. The first explanation, that an effect propagated instantly, across a distance, was (and is) in conflict with the theory of relativity. However, as later experiments and Bell's theorem demonstrated, their preferred explanation was not viable. They then concluded that quantum mechanics was incomplete since, in its formalism, there was no space for such hidden parameters. They would both be determinate values, not just one of them as indicated by quantum mechanics. If the two values of the remote, undisturbed, system were real, then they must have been real all along and not determined by the act of measurement. The act of measurement might well disturb and change subsequent values of the system measured, but that fact did not deny that there must have been something real there to be measured all along. In short, they gave reason to believe that the second, undisturbed, system had a real and definite position, and a real and definite momentum, and that therefore the first system must also have had a real and definite position, and a real and definite momentum waiting there for the experimenter to disturb and change. However, quantum mechanics could not provide a theoretical description or prediction of these values, and so must be held to be incomplete.
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History of EPR developments

The article that first brought forth these matters, "Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete?" was published in 1935.[1] Einstein struggled to the end of his life for a theory that could better comply with his idea of causality, protesting against the view that there exists no objective physical reality other than that which is revealed through measurement interpreted in terms of quantum mechanical formalism. However, since Einstein's death, experiments analogous to the one described in the EPR paper have been carried out, starting in 1976 by French scientists Lamehi-Rachti and Mittig[2] at the Saclay Nuclear Research Centre. These experiments appear to show that the local realism idea is false,[3] thereby supporting the position of Bohr et al., against the challenge from Einstein and his group.
Quantum mechanics and its interpretation

Since the early twentieth century, quantum theory has proved to be successful in describing accurately the physical reality of the mesoscopic and microscopic world, in multiple reproducible physics experiments. Quantum mechanics was developed with the aim of describing atoms and explaining the observed spectral lines in a measurement apparatus. Although disputed, it has yet to be seriously challenged. Philosophical interpretations of quantum phenomena, however, are another matter: the question of how to interpret the mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics has given rise to a variety of different answers from people of different philosophical persuasions (see Interpretation of quantum mechanics). Quantum theory and quantum mechanics do not provide single measurement outcomes in a deterministic way. According to the understanding of quantum mechanics known as the Copenhagen interpretation, measurement causes an instantaneous collapse of the wave function describing the quantum system into an eigenstate of the observable state that was measured. Einstein characterized this imagined collapse in the 1927 Solvay Conference. He presented a thought experiment in which electrons are introduced through a small hole in a sphere whose inner surface serves as a detection screen. The electrons will contact the spherical detection screen in a widely dispersed manner. Those electrons, however, are all individually described by wave fronts that expand in all directions from the point of entry. A wave as it is understood in everyday life would paint a large area of the detection screen, but the electrons would be found to impact the screen at single points and would eventually form a pattern in keeping with the probabilities described by their identical wave functions. Einstein asks what makes each electron's wave front "collapse" at its respective location. Why do the electrons appear as single bright scintillations rather than as dim washes of energy across the surface? Why does any single electron appear at one point rather than some alternative point? The behavior of the electrons gives the impression of some signal having been sent to all possible points of contact that would have nullified all but one of them, or, in other words, would have preferentially selected a single point to the exclusion of all others.[4] The most prominent opponent of the Copenhagen interpretation is Albert Einstein. In his view, quantum mechanics is incomplete. Commenting on this, other writers (such as John von Neumann[5] and David Bohm[6]) have suggested that consequently there would have to be 'hidden' variables responsible for random measurement results, something which was not expressly claimed in the original paper. That paper, "Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete?"[7], authored by Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen in 1935, condensed the philosophical discussion into a physical argument. They claim that given a specific experiment, in which the outcome of a measurement is known before the measurement takes place, there must exist something in the real world, an "element of reality", that determines the measurement outcome. They postulate that these elements of reality are local, in the sense that each belongs to a certain point in spacetime. Each element may only be influenced by events which are located in the backward light cone of its point in spacetime (i.e. the past). These claims are founded on assumptions about nature that constitute what is now known as local realism.
EPR paradox Though the EPR paper has often been taken as an exact expression of Einstein's views, it was primarily authored by Podolsky, based on discussions at the Institute for Advanced Study with Einstein and Rosen. Einstein later expressed to Erwin Schrdinger that, "it did not come out as well as I had originally wanted; rather, the essential thing was, so to speak, smothered by the formalism."[8] In 1936 Einstein presented an individual account of his local realist ideas.[9]
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The original EPR paradox challenges the prediction of quantum mechanics that it is impossible to know both the position and the momentum of a quantum particle. This challenge can be extended to other pairs of physical properties.
EPR paper
The original paper purports to describe what must happen to "two systems I and II, which we permit to interact ...", and, after some time, "we suppose that there is no longer any interaction between the two parts." In the words of Kumar (2009), the EPR description involves "two particles, A and B, [which] interact briefly and then move off in opposite directions."[10] According to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, it is impossible to measure both the momentum and the position of particle B exactly. However, according to Kumar, it is possible to measure the exact position of particle A. By calculation, therefore, with the exact position of particle A known, the exact position of particle B can be known. Also, the exact momentum of particle A can be measured, so the exact momentum of particle B can be worked out. Kumar writes: "EPR argued that they had proved that ... [particle] B can have simultaneously exact values of position and momentum. ... Particle B has a position that is real and a momentum that is real." EPR appeared to have contrived a means to establish the exact values of either the momentum or the position of B due to measurements made on particle A, without the slightest possibility of particle B being physically disturbed.[11] EPR tried to set up a paradox to question the range of true application of Quantum Mechanics: Quantum theory predicts that both values cannot be known for a particle, and yet the EPR thought experiment purports to show that they must all have determinate values. The EPR paper says: "We are thus forced to conclude that the quantum-mechanical description of physical reality given by wave functions is not complete."[12] The EPR paper ends by saying: While we have thus shown that the wave function does not provide a complete description of the physical reality, we left open the question of whether or not such a description exists. We believe, however, that such a theory is possible.
Measurements on an entangled state

We have a source that emits electron-positron pairs, with the electron sent to destination A, where there is an observer named Alice, and the positron sent to destination B, where there is an observer named Bob. According to quantum mechanics, we can arrange our source so that each emitted pair occupies a quantum state called a spin singlet. The particles are thus said to be entangled. This can be viewed as a quantum superposition of two states, which we call state I and state II. In state I, the electron has spin pointing upward along the z-axis (+z) and the positron has spin pointing downward along the z-axis (-z). In state II, the electron has spin -z and the positron has spin +z. Therefore, it is impossible (without measuring) to know the definite state of spin of either particle in the spin singlet.
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The EPR thought experiment, performed with electron-positron pairs. A source (center) sends particles toward two observers, electrons to Alice (left) and positrons to Bob (right), who can perform spin measurements.
Alice now measures the spin along the z-axis. She can obtain one of two possible outcomes: +z or -z. Suppose she gets +z. According to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, the quantum state of the system collapses into state I. The quantum state determines the probable outcomes of any measurement performed on the system. In this case, if Bob subsequently measures spin along the z-axis, there is 100% probability that he will obtain -z. Similarly, if Alice gets -z, Bob will get +z. There is, of course, nothing special about choosing the z-axis: according to quantum mechanics the spin singlet state may equally well be expressed as a superposition of spin states pointing in the x direction. Suppose that Alice and Bob had decided to measure spin along the x-axis. We'll call these states Ia and IIa. In state Ia, Alice's electron has spin +x and Bob's positron has spin -x. In state IIa, Alice's electron has spin -x and Bob's positron has spin +x. Therefore, if Alice measures +x, the system 'collapses' into state Ia, and Bob will get -x. If Alice measures -x, the system collapses into state IIa, and Bob will get +x. Whatever axis their spins are measured along, they are always found to be opposite. This can only be explained if the particles are linked in some way. Either they were created with a definite (opposite) spin about every axisa "hidden variable" argument or they are linked so that one electron "feels" which axis the other is having its spin measured along, and becomes its opposite about that one axisan "entanglement" argument. Moreover, if the two particles have their spins measured about different axes, once the electron's spin has been measured about the x-axis (and the positron's spin about the x-axis deduced), the positron's spin about the y-axis will no longer be certain, as if (a) it knows that the measurement has taken place, or (b) it has a definite spin already, about a second axisa hidden variable. However, it turns out that the predictions of Quantum Mechanics, which have been confirmed by experiment, cannot be explained by any hidden variable theory. This is demonstrated in Bell's theorem.[13] In quantum mechanics, the x-spin and z-spin are "incompatible observables", meaning there is a Heisenberg uncertainty principle operating between them: a quantum state cannot possess a definite value for both of these variables. Suppose Alice measures the z-spin and obtains +z, so that the quantum state collapses into state I. Now, instead of measuring the z-spin as well, Bob measures the x-spin. According to quantum mechanics, when the system is in state I, Bob's x-spin measurement will have a 50% probability of producing +x and a 50% probability of -x. It is impossible to predict which outcome will appear until Bob actually performs the measurement. Here is the crux of the matter. You might imagine that, when Bob measures the x-spin of his positron, he would get an answer with absolute certainty, since prior to this he hasn't disturbed his particle at all. But Bob's positron has a 50% probability of producing +x and a 50% probability of -xso the outcome is not certain. Bob's positron "knows" that Alice's electron has been measured, and its z-spin detected, and hence B's z-spin calculated, so its x-spin is uncertain.
EPR paradox Put another way, how does Bob's positron know which way to point if Alice decides (based on information unavailable to Bob) to measure x (i.e. to be the opposite of Alice's electron's spin about the x-axis) and also how to point if Alice measures z, since it is only supposed to know one thing at a time? The Copenhagen interpretation rules that say the wave function "collapses" at the time of measurement, so there must be action at a distance (entanglement) or the positron must know more than it's supposed to (hidden variables). Here is the paradox summed up: It is one thing to say that physical measurement of the first particle's momentum affects uncertainty in its own position, but to say that measuring the first particle's momentum affects the uncertainty in the position of the other is another thing altogether. Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen asked how can the second particle "know" to have precisely defined momentum but uncertain position? Since this implies that one particle is communicating with the other instantaneously across space, i.e. faster than light, this is the "paradox". Incidentally, Bell used spin as his example, but many types of physical quantitiesreferred to as "observables" in quantum mechanicscan be used. The EPR paper used momentum for the observable. Experimental realisations of the EPR scenario often use photon polarization, because polarized photons are easy to prepare and measure.
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Locality in the EPR experiment

The principle of locality states that physical processes occurring at one place should have no immediate effect on the elements of reality at another location. At first sight, this appears to be a reasonable assumption to make, as it seems to be a consequence of special relativity, which states that information can never be transmitted faster than the speed of light without violating causality. It is generally believed that any theory which violates causality would also be internally inconsistent, and thus deeply unsatisfactory. It turns out that the usual rules for combining quantum mechanical and classical descriptions violate the principle of locality without violating causality. Causality is preserved because there is no way for Alice to transmit messages (i.e. information) to Bob by manipulating her measurement axis. Whichever axis she uses, she has a 50% probability of obtaining "+" and 50% probability of obtaining "-", completely at random; according to quantum mechanics, it is fundamentally impossible for her to influence what result she gets. Furthermore, Bob is only able to perform his measurement once: there is a fundamental property of quantum mechanics, known as the "no cloning theorem", which makes it impossible for him to make a million copies of the electron he receives, perform a spin measurement on each, and look at the statistical distribution of the results. Therefore, in the one measurement he is allowed to make, there is a 50% probability of getting "+" and 50% of getting "-", regardless of whether or not his axis is aligned with Alice's. However, the principle of locality appeals powerfully to physical intuition, and Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen were unwilling to abandon it. Einstein derided the quantum mechanical predictions as "spooky action at a distance". The conclusion they drew was that quantum mechanics is not a complete theory. In recent years, however, doubt has been cast on EPR's conclusion due to developments in understanding locality and especially quantum decoherence. The word locality has several different meanings in physics. For example, in quantum field theory "locality" means that quantum fields at different points of space do not interact with one another. However, quantum field theories that are "local" in this sense appear to violate the principle of locality as defined by EPR, but they nevertheless do not violate locality in a more general sense. Wavefunction collapse can be viewed as an epiphenomenon of quantum decoherence, which in turn is nothing more than an effect of the underlying local time evolution of the wavefunction of a system and all of its environment. Since the underlying behaviour doesn't violate local causality, it follows that neither does the additional effect of wavefunction collapse, whether real or apparent. Therefore, as outlined in the example above, neither the EPR experiment nor any quantum experiment demonstrates that faster-than-light signaling is possible.
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Resolving the paradox

Hidden variables
There are several ways to resolve the EPR paradox. The one suggested by EPR is that quantum mechanics, despite its success in a wide variety of experimental scenarios, is actually an incomplete theory. In other words, there is some yet undiscovered theory of nature to which quantum mechanics acts as a kind of statistical approximation (albeit an exceedingly successful one). Unlike quantum mechanics, the more complete theory contains variables corresponding to all the "elements of reality". There must be some unknown mechanism acting on these variables to give rise to the observed effects of "non-commuting quantum observables", i.e. the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Such a theory is called a hidden variable theory. To illustrate this idea, we can formulate a very simple hidden variable theory for the above thought experiment. One supposes that the quantum spin-singlet states emitted by the source are actually approximate descriptions for "true" physical states possessing definite values for the z-spin and x-spin. In these "true" states, the electron going to Bob always has spin values opposite to the electron going to Alice, but the values are otherwise completely random. For example, the first pair emitted by the source might be "(+z, -x) to Alice and (-z, +x) to Bob", the next pair "(-z, -x) to Alice and (+z, +x) to Bob", and so forth. Therefore, if Bob's measurement axis is aligned with Alice's, he will necessarily get the opposite of whatever Alice gets; otherwise, he will get "+" and "-" with equal probability. Assuming we restrict our measurements to the z and x axes, such a hidden variable theory is experimentally indistinguishable from quantum mechanics. In reality, there may be an infinite number of axes along which Alice and Bob can perform their measurements, so there would have to be an infinite number of independent hidden variables. However, this is not a serious problem; we have formulated a very simplistic hidden variable theory, and a more sophisticated theory might be able to patch it up. It turns out that there is a much more serious challenge to the idea of hidden variables. Bell's inequality In 1964, John Bell showed that the predictions of quantum mechanics in the EPR thought experiment are significantly different from the predictions of a particular class of hidden variable theories (the local hidden variable theories). Roughly speaking, quantum mechanics has a much stronger statistical correlation with measurement results performed on different axes than do these hidden variable theories. These differences, expressed using inequality relations known as "Bell's inequalities", are in principle experimentally detectable. Later work by Eberhard showed that the key properties of local hidden variable theories which lead to Bell's inequalities are locality and counter-factual definiteness. Any theory in which these principles apply produces the inequalities. Arthur Fine subsequently showed that any theory satisfying the inequalities can be modeled by a local hidden variable theory. After the publication of Bell's paper, a variety of experiments were devised to test Bell's inequalities (experiments which generally rely on photon polarization measurement). All the experiments conducted to date have found behavior in line with the predictions of standard quantum mechanics theory. However, Bell's theorem does not apply to all possible philosophically realist theories. It is a common misconception that quantum mechanics is inconsistent with all notions of philosophical realism, but realist interpretations of quantum mechanics are possible, although, as discussed above, such interpretations must reject either locality or counter-factual definiteness. Mainstream physics prefers to keep locality, while striving also to maintain a notion of realism that nevertheless rejects counter-factual definiteness. Examples of such mainstream realist interpretations are the consistent histories interpretation and the transactional interpretation. Fine's work showed that, taking locality as a given, there exist scenarios in which two statistical variables are correlated in a manner inconsistent with counter-factual definiteness, and that such scenarios are no more mysterious than any other, despite the inconsistency with counter-factual definiteness seeming 'counter-intuitive'.
EPR paradox Violation of locality is difficult to reconcile with special relativity, and is thought to be incompatible with the principle of causality. On the other hand the Bohm interpretation of quantum mechanics keeps counter-factual definiteness while introducing a conjectured non-local mechanism in form of the 'quantum potential', defined as one of the terms of the Schrdinger equation. Some workers in the field have also attempted to formulate hidden variable theories that exploit loopholes in actual experiments, such as the assumptions made in interpreting experimental data, although no theory has been proposed that can reproduce all the results of quantum mechanics. There are also individual EPR-like experiments that have no local hidden variables explanation. Examples have been suggested by David Bohm and by Lucien Hardy.
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Einstein's hope for a purely algebraic theory

The Bohm interpretation of quantum mechanics hypothesizes that the state of the universe evolves smoothly through time with no collapsing of quantum wavefunctions. One problem for the Copenhagen interpretation is to precisely define wavefunction collapse. Einstein maintained that quantum mechanics is physically incomplete and logically unsatisfactory. In "The Meaning of Relativity," Einstein wrote, "One can give good reasons why reality cannot at all be represented by a continuous field. From the quantum phenomena it appears to follow with certainty that a finite system of finite energy can be completely described by a finite set of numbers (quantum numbers). This does not seem to be in accordance with a continuum theory and must lead to an attempt to find a purely algebraic theory for the representation of reality. But nobody knows how to find the basis for such a theory." If time, space, and energy are secondary features derived from a substrate below the Planck scale, then Einstein's hypothetical algebraic system might resolve the EPR paradox (although Bell's theorem would still be valid). Edward Fredkin in the Fredkin Finite Nature Hypothesis has suggested an informational basis for Einstein's hypothetical algebraic system. If physical reality is totally finite, then the Copenhagen interpretation might be an approximation to an information processing system below the Planck scale.
"Acceptable theories" and the experiment

According to the present view of the situation, quantum mechanics flatly contradicts Einstein's philosophical postulate that any acceptable physical theory must fulfill "local realism". In the EPR paper (1935) the authors realised that quantum mechanics was inconsistent with their assumptions, but Einstein nevertheless thought that quantum mechanics might simply be augmented by hidden variables (i.e. variables which were, at that point, still obscure to him), without any other change, to achieve an acceptable theory. He pursued these ideas for over twenty years until the end of his life, in 1955. In contrast, John Bell, in his 1964 paper, showed that quantum mechanics and the class of hidden variable theories Bell investigated[14] would lead to different experimental results: different by a factor of 32 for certain correlations. So the issue of "acceptability", up to that time mainly concerning theory, finally became experimentally decidable. There are many Bell test experiments, e.g. those of Alain Aspect and others. They support the predictions of quantum mechanics rather than the class of hidden variable theories Bell investigated.[15] According to Karl Popper these experiments showed that the class of "hidden variables" Bell investigated is erroneous.
Implications for quantum mechanics

Most physicists today believe that quantum mechanics is correct, and that the EPR paradox is a "paradox" only because classical intuitions do not correspond to physical reality. How EPR is interpreted regarding locality depends on the interpretation of quantum mechanics one uses. In the Copenhagen interpretation, it is usually understood that instantaneous wavefunction collapse does occur. However, the view that there is no causal instantaneous effect has also been proposed within the Copenhagen interpretation: in this alternate view, measurement affects our ability to define (and measure) quantities in the physical system, not the system itself. In the many-worlds interpretation locality is strictly preserved, since the effects of operations such as measurement affect only the state of the particle
EPR paradox that is measured. However, the results of the measurement are not uniqueevery possible result is obtained. The EPR paradox has deepened our understanding of quantum mechanics by exposing the fundamentally non-classical characteristics of the measurement process. Prior to the publication of the EPR paper, a measurement was often visualized as a physical disturbance inflicted directly upon the measured system. For instance, when measuring the position of an electron, one imagines shining a light on it, thus disturbing the electron and producing the quantum mechanical uncertainties in its position. Such explanations, which are still encountered in popular expositions of quantum mechanics, are debunked by the EPR paradox, which shows that a "measurement" can be performed on a particle without disturbing it directly, by performing a measurement on a distant entangled particle. In fact, Yakir Aharonov and his collaborators have developed a whole theory of so-called Weak measurement. Technologies relying on quantum entanglement are now being developed. In quantum cryptography, entangled particles are used to transmit signals that cannot be eavesdropped upon without leaving a trace. In quantum computation, entangled quantum states are used to perform computations in parallel, which may allow certain calculations to be performed much more quickly than they ever could be with classical computers.
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Mathematical formulation
The above discussion can be expressed mathematically using the quantum mechanical formulation of spin. The spin degree of freedom for an electron is associated with a two-dimensional complex Hilbert space H, with each quantum state corresponding to a vector in that space. The operators corresponding to the spin along the x, y, and z direction, denoted Sx, Sy, and Sz respectively, can be represented using the Pauli matrices:
where
stands for Planck's constant divided by 2.
The eigenstates of Sz are represented as
and the eigenstates of Sx are represented as
The Hilbert space of the electron pair is singlet state is
, the tensor product of the two electrons' Hilbert spaces. The spin
where the two terms on the right hand side are what we have referred to as state I and state II above. From the above equations, it can be shown that the spin singlet can also be written as
where the terms on the right hand side are what we have referred to as state Ia and state IIa. To illustrate how this leads to the violation of local realism, we need to show that after Alice's measurement of Sz (or Sx), Bob's value of Sz (or Sx) is uniquely determined, and therefore corresponds to an "element of physical reality". This follows from the principles of measurement in quantum mechanics. When Sz is measured, the system state collapses into an eigenvector of Sz. If the measurement result is +z, this means that immediately after measurement the system state undergoes an orthogonal projection of onto the space of states of the form
EPR paradox For the spin singlet, the new state is
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Similarly, if Alice's measurement result is -z, the system undergoes an orthogonal projection onto
which means that the new state is
This implies that the measurement for Sz for Bob's electron is now determined. It will be -z in the first case or +z in the second case. It remains only to show that Sx and Sz cannot simultaneously possess definite values in quantum mechanics. One may show in a straightforward manner that no possible vector can be an eigenvector of both matrices. More generally, one may use the fact that the operators do not commute,
along with the Heisenberg uncertainty relation
References
Selected papers
A. Aspect, Bell's inequality test: more ideal than ever, Nature 398 189 (1999). [16] J.S. Bell, On the Einstein-Poldolsky-Rosen paradox [17], Physics 1 195bbcv://prola.aps.org/abstract/PR/v48/i8/p696_1] P.H. Eberhard, Bell's theorem without hidden variables. Nuovo Cimento 38B1 75 (1977). P.H. Eberhard, Bell's theorem and the different concepts of locality. Nuovo Cimento 46B 392 (1978). A. Einstein, B. Podolsky, and N. Rosen, Can quantum-mechanical description of physical reality be considered complete? [18] Phys. Rev. 47 777 (1935). [7] A. Fine, Hidden Variables, Joint Probability, and the Bell Inequalities. Phys. Rev. Lett. 48, 291 (1982).[19] A. Fine, Do Correlations need to be explained?, in Philosophical Consequences of Quantum Theory: Reflections on Bell's Theorem, edited by Cushing & McMullin (University of Notre Dame Press, 1986). L. Hardy, Nonlocality for two particles without inequalities for almost all entangled states. Phys. Rev. Lett. 71 1665 (1993).[20] M. Mizuki, A classical interpretation of Bell's inequality. Annales de la Fondation Louis de Broglie 26 683 (2001). P. Pluch, "Theory for Quantum Probability", PhD Thesis University of Klagenfurt (2006) M. A. Rowe, D. Kielpinski, V. Meyer, C. A. Sackett, W. M. Itano, C. Monroe and D. J. Wineland, Experimental violation of a Bell's inequality with efficient detection, Nature 409, 791-794 (15 February 2001). [21] M. Smerlak, C. Rovelli, Relational EPR [22]
EPR paradox Notes

[1] Einstein, A; B Podolsky, N Rosen (1935-05-15). "Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality be Considered Complete?". Physical Review 47 (10): 777780. Bibcode1935PhRv...47..777E. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.47.777. [2] Advances in atomic and molecular physics, Volume 14 By David Robert Bates (http:/ / books. google. com. au/ books?id=dkaCKHKLo3gC& pg=PA330& lpg=PA330& dq="Saclay"+ "Bell's+ inequality"& source=bl& ots=u-b4s3klA0& sig=1P7sX78b-I9TKtT15KvRSADgLlo& hl=en& ei=VJ7aTpn-FMW8iAeJs-jsDQ& sa=X& oi=book_result& ct=result& resnum=2& ved=0CCEQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage& q="Saclay" "Bell's inequality"& f=false) [3] Gribbin, J (1984). In Search of Schrdinger's cat. Black Swan. ISBN0704530716. [4] http:/ / plato. stanford. edu/ entries/ qt-epr/ [5] von Neumann, J. (1932/1955). In Mathematische Grundlagen der Quantenmechanik, Springer, Berlin, translated into English by Beyer, R.T., Princeton University Press, Princeton, cited by Baggott, J. (2004) Beyond Measure: Modern physics, philosophy, and the meaning of quantum theory, Oxford University Press, Oxford, ISBN 0-19-852927-9, pages 144-145. [6] Bohm, D. (1951). Quantum Theory (http:/ / books. google. com. au/ books?id=9DWim3RhymsC& printsec=frontcover& dq=david+ bohm+ quantum+ theory& source=bl& ots=6G-2u1wtav& sig=Q1GcoVDLFRmKOmDYFAJte6LzrZU& hl=en& ei=Pv45TNSnLYffcfnS6foO& sa=X& oi=book_result& ct=result& resnum=7& ved=0CEEQ6AEwBg#v=onepage& q& f=false), Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, page 29, and Chapter 5 section 3, and Chapter 22 Section 19. [7] http:/ / prola. aps. org/ abstract/ PR/ v47/ i10/ p777_1 [8] Quoted in Kaiser, David. "Bringing the human actors back on stage: the personal context of the Einstein-Bohr debate," British Journal for the History of Science 27 (1994): 129-152, on page 147. [9] See "Physics and Reality," originally published in vol. 221, No. 132327 of Journal of the Franklin Institute, pp. 313347, with the Jean Piccard translation starting p.380. The English translation can be downloaded, with different pagination, from: www.kostic.niu.edu/Physics and Reality-Albert Einstein.pdf. The relevant section appears on pp. 371-379. [10] Kumar, M., Quantum, Icon Books, 2009, p. 305. [11] Kumar, M., Quantum, Icon Books, 2009, p. 305-6. [12] Kumar, M., Quantum, Icon Books, 2009, p. 306. [13] George Greenstein and Arthur G. Zajonc, The Quantum Challenge, p. "[Experiments in the early 1980s] have conclusively shown that quantum mechanics is indeed orrect, and that the EPR argument had relied upon incorrect assumptions." [14] Clearing up mysteries: the original goal (http:/ / bayes. wustl. edu/ etj/ articles/ cmystery. pdf). . [15] Aspect A (1999-03-18). "Bells inequality test: more ideal than ever" (http:/ / www-ece. rice. edu/ ~kono/ ELEC565/ Aspect_Nature. pdf). Nature 398 (6724): 18990. Bibcode1999Natur.398..189A. doi:10.1038/18296. . Retrieved 2010-09-08. [16] http:/ / www-ece. rice. edu/ ~kono/ ELEC565/ Aspect_Nature. pdf [17] http:/ / www. drchinese. com/ David/ Bell_Compact. pdf [18] http:/ / www. drchinese. com/ David/ EPR. pdf [19] http:/ / prola. aps. org/ abstract/ PRL/ v48/ i5/ p291_1 [20] http:/ / prola. aps. org/ abstract/ PRL/ v71/ i11/ p1665_1 [21] http:/ / www. nature. com/ nature/ journal/ v409/ n6822/ full/ 409791a0. html [22] http:/ / arxiv. org/ abs/ quant-ph/ 0604064
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Books
John S. Bell (1987) Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-36869-3. Arthur Fine (1996) The Shaky Game: Einstein, Realism and the Quantum Theory, 2nd ed. Univ. of Chicago Press. J.J. Sakurai, J. J. (1994) Modern Quantum Mechanics. Addison-Wesley: 174187, 223-232. ISBN 0-201-53929-2. Selleri, F. (1988) Quantum Mechanics Versus Local Realism: The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox. New York: Plenum Press. ISBN 0-306-42739-7 Leon Lederman, L., Teresi, D. (1993). The God Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, What is the Question? Houghton Mifflin Company, pages 21, 187 to 189. John Gribbin (1984) In Search of Schrdinger's Cat. Black Swan. ISBN 9780552125550 .
EPR paradox
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External links
The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Argument in Quantum Theory; 1.2 The argument in the text; http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-epr/#1.2 The original EPR paper. (http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PR/v47/i10/p777_1) Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: " The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Argument in Quantum Theory (http:// plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-epr/)" by Arthur Fine. Abner Shimony (2004) " Bells Theorem. (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bell-theorem/)" EPR, Bell & Aspect: The Original References. (http://www.drchinese.com/David/EPR_Bell_Aspect.htm) Does Bell's Inequality Principle rule out local theories of quantum mechanics? (http://math.ucr.edu/home/ baez/physics/Quantum/bells_inequality.html) From the Usenet Physics FAQ. Theoretical use of EPR in teleportation. (http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/rd/481/brassard.html) Effective use of EPR in cryptography. (http://www.dhushara.com/book/quantcos/aq/qcrypt.htm) EPR experiment with single photons interactive. (http://www.QuantumLab.de) Spooky Actions At A Distance?: Oppenheimer Lecture by Prof. Mermin. (http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=ta09WXiUqcQ)
Faint young Sun paradox

The faint young Sun paradox or problem describes the apparent contradiction between observations of liquid water early in the Earth's history and the astrophysical expectation that the Sun's output would be only 70% as intense during that epoch as it is during the modern epoch. The issue was raised by astronomers Carl Sagan and George Mullen in 1972.[1] Explanations of this paradox have taken into account greenhouse effects, astrophysical influences, or a combination of the two.
Early solar output

Early in the Earth's history, the Sun's output would have been only 70% as intense during that epoch as it is during the modern epoch. In the then current environmental conditions, this solar output would have been insufficient to maintain a liquid ocean. Astronomers Carl Sagan and George Mullen pointed out in 1972 that this is contrary to the geological and paleontological evidence.[1] According to the Standard Solar Model, stars similar to the Sun should gradually brighten over their main sequence lifetime.[2] However, with the predicted solar luminosity 4 billion (4 109) years ago and with greenhouse gas concentrations the same as are current for the modern Earth, any liquid water exposed to the surface would freeze. However, the geological record shows a continually relatively warm surface in the full early temperature record of the Earth, with the exception of a cold phase, the Huronian glaciation, about 2.4 to 2.1 billion years ago. Water-related sediments have been found that date to as early as 3.8 billion years ago.[3] Hints of early life forms have been dated from as early as 3.5 billion years,[4] and the basic carbon isotopy is very much in line with what is found today.[5] A regular alternation between ice ages and warm periods is only to be found occurring in the period since one billion years ago.
Faint young Sun paradox
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Greenhouse hypothesis
When it first formed, Earth's atmosphere may have contained more greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide concentrations may have been higher, with estimated partial pressure as large as 1000kPa (unknown operator: u'strong'bar), because there was no bacterial photosynthesis to reduce the gas to carbon and oxygen. Methane, a very active greenhouse gas which reacts with oxygen to produce carbon dioxide and water vapor, may have been more prevalent as well, with a mixing ratio of 104 parts per million by volume.[6][7] Based on a study of geological sulfur isotopes, in 2009 a group of scientists including Yuichiro Ueno from the University of Tokyo proposed that carbonyl sulfide (OCS) was present in the Archean atmosphere. Carbonyl sulfide is an efficient greenhouse gas and the scientists estimate that the additional greenhouse effect would have been sufficient to prevent the Earth from freezing over.[8] Following the initial accretion of the continents after about 1 billion years,[9] geo-botanist Heinrich Walter and others believe that a non-biological version of the carbon cycle provided a negative temperature feedback. The carbon dioxide in the atmosphere dissolved in liquid water and combined with metal ions derived from silicate weathering to produce carbonates. During ice age periods, this part of the cycle would shut down. Volcanic carbon emissions would then restart a warming cycle due to the greenhouse effect.[10][11] According to the Snowball Earth hypothesis, there may have been a number of periods when the Earth's oceans froze over completely. The most recent such period may have been about 630 million years ago.[12] Afterwards, the Cambrian explosion of new multicellular life forms started.
Alternatives
A minority view, propounded by the Israeli-American physicist Nir Shaviv, uses climatological influences of solar wind, combined with a hypothesis of Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark for a cooling effect of cosmic rays, to explain the paradox.[13] According to Shaviv, the early Sun had emitted a stronger solar wind that produced a protective effect against cosmic rays. In that early age, a moderate greenhouse effect comparable to today's would have been sufficient to explain an ice-free Earth. Evidence for a more active early Sun has been found in meteorites.[14]
Phanerozoic Climate Change
The temperature minimum around 2.4 billion years goes along with a cosmic ray flux modulation by a variable star formation rate in the Milky Way Galaxy. The reduced solar impact later results into a stronger impact of cosmic ray flux (CRF), which is hypothesized to lead to a relationship with climatological variations. An alternative model of solar evolution may explain the faint young sun paradox. In this model, the early Sun underwent an extended period of higher solar wind output. This caused a mass loss from the Sun on the order of 510% over its lifetime, resulting in a more consistent level of solar luminosity (as the early Sun had more mass, resulting in more energy output than was predicted). In order to explain the warm conditions in the Archean era, this mass loss must have occurred over an interval of about one billion years. However, records of ion implantation from meteorites and lunar samples show that the elevated rate of solar wind flux only lasted for a period of 0.1 billion years. Observations of the young Sun-like star 1 Ursae Majoris matches this rate of decline in the stellar wind
Faint young Sun paradox output, suggesting that a higher mass loss rate can not by itself resolve the paradox.[15] Examination of Archaean sediments appears inconsistent with the hypothesis of high greenhouse concentrations. Instead, the moderate temperature range may be explained by a lower surface albedo brought about by less continental area and the "lack of biologically induced cloud condensation nuclei". This would have led to increased absorption of solar energy, thereby compensating for the lower solar output.[16]
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References
[1] Sagan, C.; Mullen, G. (1972). "Earth and Mars: Evolution of Atmospheres and Surface Temperatures" (http:/ / www. sciencemag. org/ cgi/ content/ abstract/ 177/ 4043/ 52?ck=nck). Science 177 (4043): 5256. Bibcode1972Sci...177...52S. doi:10.1126/science.177.4043.52. PMID17756316. . [2] Gough, D. O. (1981). "Solar Interior Structure and Luminosity Variations". Solar Physics 74 (1): 2134. Bibcode1981SoPh...74...21G. doi:10.1007/BF00151270. [3] Windley, B. (1984). The Evolving Continents. New York: Wiley Press. ISBN0471903760. [4] Schopf, J. (1983). Earths Earliest Biosphere: Its Origin and Evolution. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ISBN0691083231. [5] Veizer, Jan (March 2005). "Celestial climate driver: a perspective from four billion years of the carbon cycle". Geoscience Canada 32 (1). [6] Walker, James C. G. (June 1985). "Carbon dioxide on the early earth" (http:/ / deepblue. lib. umich. edu/ bitstream/ 2027. 42/ 43349/ 1/ 11084_2005_Article_BF01809466. pdf). Origins of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere 16 (2): 117127. Bibcode1985OLEB...16..117W. doi:10.1007/BF01809466. . Retrieved 2010-01-30. [7] Pavlov, Alexander A.; Kasting, James F.; Brown, Lisa L.; Rages, Kathy A.; Freedman, Richard (May 2000). "Greenhouse warming by CH4 in the atmosphere of early Earth". Journal of Geophysical Research 105 (E5): 1198111990. Bibcode2000JGR...10511981P. doi:10.1029/1999JE001134. [8] Ueno, Y.; Johnson, M. S.; Danielache, S. O.; Eskebjerg, C.; Pandey, A.; Yoshida, N. (August 2009). "Geological sulfur isotopes indicate elevated OCS in the Archean atmosphere, solving faint young sun paradox Ueno, Y.; Johnson, M. S.; Danielache, S. O.; Eskebjerg, C.; Pandey, A.; Yoshida, N.". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106 (35): 1478414789. Bibcode2009PNAS..10614784U. doi:10.1073/pnas.0903518106. [9] Veizer, J. (1976). B. F. Windley. ed. The Early History of the Earth. London: John Wiley and Sons. p.569. ISBN0471014885. [10] Zeebe, Richard (April 28, 2008). "Before fossil fuels, Earths minerals kept CO2 in check" (http:/ / www. hawaii. edu/ cgi-bin/ uhnews?20080428100407). University of Hawaii at Mnoa. . Retrieved 2010-01-30. [11] Walker, J. C. G.; Hays, P. B.; Kasting, J. F. (October 20, 1981). "A negative feedback mechanism for the long-term stabilization of the earth's surface temperature" (http:/ / geosci. uchicago. edu/ ~archer/ JournalClub/ walker. 1981. WHAK. pdf) (PDF). Journal of Geophysical Research 86 (C10): 97769782. Bibcode1981JGR....86.9776W. doi:10.1029/JC086iC10p09776. . Retrieved 2010-01-30. [12] Hoffman, Paul F.; Kaufman, Alan J.; Halverson, Galen P.; Schrag, Daniel P. (August 28, 1998). "A Neoproterozoic Snowball Earth". Science 281 (5381): 13421346. Bibcode1998Sci...281.1342H. doi:10.1126/science.281.5381.1342. PMID9721097. [13] Shaviv, N. J. (2003). Toward a solution to the early faint Sun paradox: A lower cosmic ray flux from a stronger solar wind. 108. p. 1437. arXiv:astro-ph/0306477. Bibcode2003JGRA..108.1437S. doi:10.1029/2003JA009997. [14] Caffe, M. W.; Hohenberg, C. M.; Swindle, T. D.; Goswami, J. N. (February 1, 1987). "Evidence in meteorites for an active early sun". Astrophysical Journal Letters 313: L31L35. Bibcode1987ApJ...313L..31C. doi:10.1086/184826. [15] Gaidos, Eric J.; Gdel, Manuel; Blake, Geoffrey A. (2000). "The faint young Sun paradox: An observational test of an alternative solar model". Geophysical Research Letters 27 (4): 501504. Bibcode2000GeoRL..27..501G. doi:10.1029/1999GL010740. [16] Rosing, Minik T.; Bird, Dennis K.; Sleep, Norman H.; Bjerrum, Christian J. (April 1, 2010). "No climate paradox under the faint early Sun". Nature 464 (7289): 744747. Bibcode2010Natur.464..744R. doi:10.1038/nature08955. PMID20360739.
Further reading
Bengtsson, Lennart; Hammer, Claus U. (2004). Geosphere-Biosphere Interactions and Climate. Cambridge University Press. ISBN0521782384. Solar Evolutionary Models and Precambrian Temperatures (http://fr.calameo.com/books/ 000145333950bccc33fb9)
Fermi paradox
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Fermi paradox
The Fermi paradox (Fermi's paradox or Fermi-paradox) is the apparent contradiction between high estimates of the probability of the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations and the lack of evidence for, or contact with, such civilizations.[1]
Overview
The age of the universe and its vast number of stars suggest that unless the Earth is very atypical, extraterrestrial life should be common.[2] In an informal discussion in 1950, the physicist Enrico Fermi questioned why, if a multitude of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations exists in the Milky Way galaxy, evidence such as spacecraft or probes is not seen. A more detailed examination of the implications of the topic began with a paper by Michael H. Hart in 1975, and it is sometimes referred to as the FermiHart paradox.[3] Other common names for the same phenomenon are Fermi's question ("Where are they?"), the Fermi Problem, the Great Silence,[4][5][6][7][8] and silentium universi[8][9] (Latin for "the silence of the universe"; the misspelling silencium universi is also common). There have been attempts to resolve the Fermi paradox by locating evidence of extraterrestrial civilizations, along with proposals that such life could exist without human knowledge. Counterarguments suggest that intelligent extraterrestrial life does not exist or occurs so rarely or briefly that humans will never make contact with it.
A graphical representation of the Starting with Hart, a great deal of effort has gone into developing scientific theories Arecibo message Humanity's about, and possible models of, extraterrestrial life, and the Fermi paradox has first attempt to use radio waves to become a theoretical reference point in much of this work. The problem has actively communicate its spawned numerous scholarly works addressing it directly, while questions that existence to alien civilizations relate to it have been addressed in fields as diverse as astronomy, biology, ecology, and philosophy. The emerging field of astrobiology has brought an interdisciplinary approach to the Fermi paradox and the question of extraterrestrial life.
Basis
The Fermi paradox is a conflict between an argument of scale and probability and a lack of evidence. A more complete definition could be stated thus: The apparent size and age of the universe suggest that many technologically advanced extraterrestrial civilizations ought to exist. However, this hypothesis seems inconsistent with the lack of observational evidence to support it. The first aspect of the paradox, "the argument by scale", is a function of the raw numbers involved: there are an estimated 200400 billion[10] (24 1011) stars in the Milky Way and 70 sextillion (71022) in the visible universe.[11] Even if intelligent life occurs on only a minuscule percentage of planets around these stars, there might still be a great number of civilizations extant in the Milky Way galaxy alone. This argument also assumes the mediocrity principle, which states that Earth is not special, but merely a typical planet, subject to the same laws, effects, and likely outcomes as any other world.
Fermi paradox The second cornerstone of the Fermi paradox is a rejoinder to the argument by scale: given intelligent life's ability to overcome scarcity, and its tendency to colonize new habitats, it seems likely that at least some civilizations would be technologically advanced, seek out new resources in space and then colonize first their own star system and subsequently the surrounding star systems. Since there is no conclusive or certifiable evidence on Earth or elsewhere in the known universe of other intelligent life after 13.7 billion years of the universe's history, we have the conflict requiring a resolution. Some examples of possible resolutions are that intelligent life is rarer than we think, or that our assumptions about the general behavior of intelligent species are flawed. The Fermi paradox can be asked in two ways. The first is, "Why are no aliens or their artifacts physically here?" If interstellar travel is possible, even the "slow" kind nearly within the reach of Earth technology, then it would only take from 5 million to 50 million years to colonize the galaxy.[12] This is a relatively small amount of time on a geological scale, let alone a cosmological one. Since there are many stars older than the Sun, or since intelligent life might have evolved earlier elsewhere, the question then becomes why the galaxy has not been colonized already. Even if colonization is impractical or undesirable to all alien civilizations, large-scale exploration of the galaxy is still possible; the means of exploration and theoretical probes involved are discussed extensively below. However, no signs of either colonization or exploration have been generally acknowledged. The argument above may not hold for the universe as a whole, since travel times may well explain the lack of physical presence on Earth of alien inhabitants of far away galaxies. However, the question then becomes "Why do we see no signs of intelligent life?" since a sufficiently advanced civilization[13] could potentially be observable over a significant fraction of the size of the observable universe.[14] Even if such civilizations are rare, the scale argument indicates they should exist somewhere at some point during the history of the universe, and since they could be detected from far away over a considerable period of time, many more potential sites for their origin are within range of our observation. However, no incontrovertible signs of such civilizations have been detected. It is unclear which version of the paradox is stronger.[15]
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Name
In 1950, while working at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Fermi had a casual conversation while walking to lunch with colleagues Emil Konopinski, Edward Teller and Herbert York. The men discussed a recent spate of UFO reports and an Alan Dunn cartoon[16] facetiously blaming the disappearance of municipal trashcans on marauding aliens. They then had a more serious discussion regarding the chances of humans observing faster-than-light travel by some material object within the next ten years, which Teller put at one in a million, but Fermi put closer to one in ten. The conversation shifted to other subjects, until during lunch Fermi suddenly exclaimed, "Where are they?" (alternatively, "Where is everybody?")[17] One participant recollects that Fermi then made a series of rapid calculations using estimated figures. (Fermi was known for his ability to make good estimates from first principles and minimal data, see Fermi problem.) According to this account, he then concluded that Earth should have been visited long ago and many times over.[17][18]
Drake equation
While numerous theories and principles are related to the Fermi paradox, the most closely related is the Drake equation. The equation was formulated by Dr. Frank Drake in 1961, a decade after the objections raised by Enrico Fermi, in an attempt to find a systematic means to evaluate the numerous probabilities involved in alien life. The speculative equation factors in: the rate of star formation in the galaxy; the fraction of stars with planets and the number per star that are habitable; the fraction of those planets which develop life, the fraction of intelligent life, and the further fraction of detectable technological intelligent life; and finally the length of time such civilizations are detectable. The fundamental problem is that the last four terms (fraction of planets with life, odds life becomes intelligent, odds
Fermi paradox intelligent life becomes detectable, and detectable lifetime of civilizations) are completely unknown. We have only one example, rendering statistical estimates impossible, and even the example we have is subject to a strong anthropic bias. A deeper objection is that the very form of the Drake equation assumes that civilizations arise and then die out within their original solar systems. If interstellar colonization is possible, then this assumption is invalid, and the equations of population dynamics would apply instead.[19] The Drake equation has been used by both optimists and pessimists with wildly differing results. Dr. Carl Sagan, using optimistic numbers, suggested as many as one million communicating civilizations in the Milky Way in 1966, though he later suggested that the actual number could be far smaller. Frank Tipler and John D Barrow used pessimistic numbers and concluded that the average number of civilizations in a galaxy is much less than one.[20][21] Frank Drake himself has commented that the Drake equation is unlikely to settle the Fermi paradox; instead it is just a way of "organizing our ignorance" on the subject.[22]
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Empirical resolution attempts

One obvious way to resolve the Fermi paradox would be to find conclusive evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence. Efforts to find such evidence have been made since 1960, and several are ongoing as of 2012.[23] As human beings do not possess interstellar travel capability, such searches are being remotely carried out at great distances and rely on analysis of very subtle evidence. This limits possible discoveries to civilizations which alter their environment in a detectable way, or produce effects that are observable at a distance, such as radio emissions. It is very unlikely that non-technological civilizations will be detectable from Earth in the near future. One difficulty in searching is avoiding an overly anthropocentric viewpoint. Conjecture on the type of evidence likely to be found often focuses on the types of activities that humans have performed, or likely would perform given more advanced technology. Intelligent aliens might avoid these "expected" activities, or perform activities totally novel to humans.
Mainstream astronomy and SETI

There are two ways that astronomy might find evidence of an extraterrestrial civilization. One is that conventional astronomers, studying stars, planets, and galaxies, might serendipitously observe some phenomenon that cannot be explained without positing an intelligent civilization as the source. This has been suspected several times. Pulsars, when first discovered, were called LGMs (Little Green Men), because of the precise repetition of their pulses (they rival the best atomic clocks). Likewise Seyfert galaxies were suspected to be industrial accidents[24] because their enormous and directed energy output had no initial explanation. Eventually, natural explanations not involving intelligent life have been found for all such observations to date. Specifically, pulsars are now attributed to neutron stars, and Seyfert galaxies to an end-on view of the accretion onto the black holes, but the possibility of discovery remains.[25] Proposed examples include asteroid mining that would change the appearance of debris disks around stars[26] or large-scale use of solar power changing the light curve of planets measured near eclipse.[27] The other way astronomy might settle the Fermi paradox is through a search specifically dedicated to finding evidence of life.
Fermi paradox
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Radio emissions
Further information: SETI,Project Ozma,Project Cyclops,Project Phoenix (SETI),SERENDIP,andAllen Telescope Array Radio technology and the ability to construct a radio telescope are presumed to be a natural advance for technological species,[28] theoretically creating effects that might be detected over interstellar distances. Sensitive observers of the solar system, for example, would note unusually intense radio waves for a G2 star due to Earth's television and telecommunication broadcasts. In the absence of an apparent natural cause, alien observers might infer the existence of terrestrial civilization. Therefore, the careful searching of radio emissions from space for non-natural signals may lead to the detection of alien civilizations. Such signals could be either "accidental" by-products of a civilization, or deliberate attempts to communicate, such as the Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence's Arecibo message. A number of astronomers and observatories have attempted and are attempting to detect such evidence, mostly through the SETI organization, although other approaches, such as optical SETI, also exist. Several decades of SETI analysis have not revealed any main sequence stars with unusually bright or meaningfully repetitive radio emissions, although there have been several candidate signals. On August 15, 1977 the "Wow! signal" was picked up by The Big Ear radio telescope. However, the Big Ear only looks at each point on the sky for 72 seconds, and re-examinations of the same spot have found nothing. In 2003, Radio source SHGb02+14a was isolated by SETI@home analysis, although it has largely been discounted by further study. There are numerous technical assumptions underlying SETI that may cause human beings to miss radio emissions with present search techniques; these are discussed below.
Radio telescopes are often used by SETI projects
Direct planetary observation

Detection and classification of exoplanets has come out of recent refinements in mainstream astronomical instruments and analysis. While this is a new field in astronomythe first published paper claiming to have discovered an exoplanet was released in 1989it is possible that planets which are likely able to support life will be found in the near future.
Direct evidence for the existence of life may eventually be observable, such as the detection of biotic signature gases (such as methane and oxygen)or even the industrial air pollution of a technologically advanced civilizationin an exoplanet's atmosphere by means of spectrographic analysis.[30] With improvements in our observational capabilities, it may eventually even be possible to detect direct evidence such as that which humanity produces (see right).
A composite picture of Earth at night, created with data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) Operational Linescan System (OLS). Large-scale artificial [29] lighting as produced by the human civilization is detectable from space.
Fermi paradox However, exoplanets are rarely directly observed (the first claim to have done so was made in 2004[31]); rather, their existence is usually inferred from the effects they have on the star(s) they orbit. This means that usually only the mass and orbit of an exoplanet can be deduced. This information, along with the stellar classification of its sun, and educated guesses as to its composition (usually based on the mass of the planet, and its distance from its sun), allows only for rough approximations of the planetary environment. Prior to 2009, methods for exoplanet detection were not likely to detect life-bearing Earth-like worlds. Methods such as gravitational microlensing can detect the presence of "small" worlds, potentially even smaller than the Earth, but can only detect such worlds for very brief moments of time, and no follow-up is possible. Other methods such as radial velocity, astrometry, and the transit method allow prolonged observations of exoplanet effects, but only work with worlds that are many times the mass of Earth, at least when performed while looking through the atmosphere. These seem unlikely candidates to harbor Earth-like life. However, exoplanet detection and classification is a very active sub-discipline in astronomy, with 424 such planets being detected between 1988 and 2010,[32] and the first possibly terrestrial planet discovered within a star's habitable zone being found in 2007.[33] New refinements in exoplanet detection methods, and use of existing methods from space, (such as the Kepler Mission, launched in 2009) are expected to detect and characterize terrestrial-size planets, and determine if they are within the habitable zones of their stars. Such observational refinements may allow us to better gauge how common potentially habitable worlds are. Using methods like the Drake equation with this data would therefore allow a much better idea of how common life in the universe might be; this would have a profound influence over the expectations behind the Fermi paradox itself.
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Alien constructs
Probes, colonies, and other artifacts Further information: Von Neumann probeandBracewell probe As noted, given the size and age of the universe, and the relative rapidity at which dispersion of intelligent life can in principle occur, evidence of alien colonization attempts might plausibly be discovered. Evidence of exploration not containing extraterrestrial life, such as probes and information gathering devices, may also await discovery. Some theoretical exploration techniques such as the Von Neumann probe (a self-replicating device) could exhaustively explore a galaxy the size of the Milky Way in as little as half a million years, with comparatively little investment in materials and energy relative to the results. If even a single civilization in the Milky Way attempted this, such probes could spread throughout the entire galaxy. Evidence of such probes might be found in the solar systemperhaps in the asteroid belt where raw materials would be plentiful and easily accessed.[34] Another possibility for contact with an alien probeone that would be trying to find human beingsis an alien Bracewell probe. Such a device would be an autonomous space probe whose purpose is to seek out and communicate with alien civilizations (as opposed to Von Neumann probes, which are usually described as purely exploratory). These were proposed as an alternative to carrying a slow speed-of-light dialogue between vastly distant neighbours. Rather than contending with the long delays a radio dialogue would suffer, a probe housing an artificial intelligence would seek out an alien civilization to carry on a close range communication with the discovered civilization. The findings of such a probe would still have to be transmitted to the home civilization at light speed, but an information-gathering dialogue could be conducted in real time.[35] Since the 1950s, direct exploration has been carried out on a small fraction of the solar system and no evidence that it has ever been visited by alien colonists, or probes, has been uncovered. Detailed exploration of areas of the solar system where resources would be plentifulsuch as the asteroids, the Kuiper belt, the Oort cloud and the planetary ring systemsmay yet produce evidence of alien exploration, though these regions are vast and difficult to investigate. There have been preliminary efforts in this direction in the form of the SETA and SETV projects to search for extraterrestrial artifacts or other evidence of extraterrestrial visitation within the solar system.[36] There
Fermi paradox have also been attempts to signal, attract, or activate Bracewell probes in Earth's local vicinity, including by scientists Robert Freitas and Francisco Valdes.[37] Many of the projects that fall under this umbrella are considered "fringe" science by astronomers and none of the projects has located any artifacts. Should alien artifacts be discovered, even here on Earth, they may not be recognizable as such. The products of an alien mind and an advanced alien technology might not be perceptible or recognizable as artificial constructs. Exploratory devices in the form of bio-engineered life forms created through synthetic biology would presumably disintegrate after a point, leaving no evidence; an alien information gathering system based on molecular nanotechnology could be all around us at this very moment, completely undetected. The same might be true of civilizations that actively hide their investigations from us, for possible reasons described further in this article. Also, Clarke's third law suggests that an alien civilization well in advance of humanity's might have means of investigation that are not yet conceivable to human beings. Advanced stellar-scale artifacts Further information: Dyson sphere, Kardashev scale, Alderson disk, Matrioshka brain, Stellar engine In 1959, Freeman Dyson observed that every developing human civilization constantly increases its energy consumption, and theoretically, a civilization of sufficient age would require all the energy produced by its star. The Dyson Sphere was the thought experiment that he derived as a solution: a shell or cloud of objects enclosing a star to harness as much radiant energy as possible. Such a feat of astroengineering would drastically alter the observed spectrum of the star involved, changing it at least partly from the normal emission lines of a natural stellar atmosphere, to that of a black body radiation, probably with a peak in the infrared. Dyson himself speculated that advanced alien civilizations might be detected by examining the spectra of stars, searching for such an altered spectrum.[38]
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A variant of the speculative Dyson sphere. Such large scale artifacts would drastically alter the spectrum of a star.
Since then, several other theoretical stellar-scale megastructures have been proposed, but the central idea remains that a highly advanced civilizationType II or greater on the Kardashev scalecould alter its environment enough as to be detectable from interstellar distances. However, such constructs may be more difficult to detect than originally thought. Dyson spheres might have different emission spectra depending on the desired internal environment; life based on high-temperature reactions may require a high temperature environment, with resulting "waste radiation" in the visible spectrum, not the infrared.[39] Additionally, a variant of the Dyson sphere has been proposed which would be difficult to observe from any great distance; a Matrioshka brain is a series of concentric spheres, each radiating less energy per area than its inner neighbour. The outermost sphere of such a structure could be close to the temperature of the interstellar background radiation, and thus be all but invisible.
Fermi paradox There have been some preliminary attempts to find evidence of the existence of Dyson spheres or other large Type-II or Type-III Kardashev scale artifacts that would alter the spectra of their core stars.[40][41] These surveys have not located anything yet, though they are still incomplete. Similarly, direct observation of thousands of galaxies has shown no explicit evidence of artificial construction or modifications.
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Explaining the paradox theoretically

Certain theoreticians accept that the apparent absence of evidence implies the absence of extraterrestrials and attempt to explain why. Others offer possible frameworks in which the silence may be explained without ruling out the possibility of such life, including assumptions about extraterrestrial behaviour and technology. Each of these hypothesized explanations is essentially an argument for decreasing the value of one or more of the terms in the Drake equation. The arguments are not, in general, mutually exclusive. For example, it could be both that life is rare, and technical civilizations are short lived, or many other combinations of the explanations below.[42]
Few, if any, other civilizations currently exist

One explanation is that the human civilization is alone (or very nearly so) in the galaxy. Several theories along these lines have been proposed, explaining why intelligent life might be either very rare, or very short lived. Implications of these hypotheses are examined as the Great Filter.[6] No other civilizations have arisen Those who believe that extraterrestrial intelligent life does not exist argue that the conditions needed for lifeor at least complex lifeto evolve are rare or even unique to Earth. This is known as the Rare Earth hypothesis, which attempts to resolve the Fermi paradox by rejecting the mediocrity principle, and asserting that Earth is not typical, but unusual or even unique. While a unique Earth has historically been assumed on philosophical or religious grounds, the Rare Earth Hypothesis uses quantifiable and statistical arguments to argue that multicellular life is exceedingly rare in the universe because Earth-like planets are themselves exceedingly rare and/or many improbable coincidences have converged to make complex life on Earth possible.[43] It is possible that complex life may evolve through other mechanisms than those found specifically here on Earth,[43] but the fact that in the history of life on the Earth only one species has developed a civilization to the point of being capable of space flight and radio technology; or, more basically, abstract ideas such as music, art, or religion lends more credence to the idea of technologically advanced civilizations being rare in the universe. For example, the emergence of intelligence may have been an evolutionary accident. Geoffrey Miller proposes that human intelligence is the result of runaway sexual selection, which takes unpredictable directions. Steven Pinker, in his book How the Mind Works, cautions that the idea that evolution of life (once it has reached a certain minimum complexity) is bound to produce intelligent beings, relies on the fallacy of the "ladder of evolution": As evolution does not strive for a goal but just happens, it uses the adaptation most useful for a given ecological niche, and the fact that, on Earth, this led to technological intelligence only once so far may suggest that this outcome of natural selection is rare and hence by no means a certain development of the evolution of a tree of life. Another theory along these lines is that even if the conditions needed for life might be common in the universe, that the formation of life itself, a complex array of molecules that are capable simultaneously of reproduction, of extraction of base components from the environment, and of obtaining energy in a form that life can use to maintain the reaction (or the initial abiogenesis on a potential life-bearing planet), might ultimately be very rare. Additionally, in the nondirectional meandering from initial life to humans, other low-probability happenings may have been the transition from prokaryotic cells to eukaryotic cells (with separate nucleus, organelles, specialization, and a cytoskeleton allowing the cell to take on different shapes) and the transition from single-cellular life to multicellular life, which was recorded in the Cambrian Explosion of 530 mya when significant numbers of organisms had evolved hard body parts, although multicellular life perhaps first started to evolve a couple of hundred
Fermi paradox million years before that. Single celled life emerged c. 3.5 billion years BCE, and for most of Earth's history and for reasons not fully understood there have only been single-celled creatures. And there are many other potential branching points. For example, perhaps the transition from ocean creatures to land-dwelling creatures crucially depends on an unusually large moon and significant tides. Many astronomers refer to our Earth Moon pairing as a double planet. This ratio between parent planet and satellite is rare in our solar system. There is no observational data on the numbers of 'double planets' in other planetary systems. And even fundamental conditions such as the chemical composition of the nursery nebula from which a planetary system forms could have unusual or detrimental consequences for the emergence and survival of life. It is also possible that intelligence is common, but industrial civilization is not. For example, the rise of industrialism on Earth was driven by the presence of convenient energy sources such as fossil fuels. If such energy sources are rare or nonexistent elsewhere, then it may be far more difficult for an intelligent race to advance technologically to the point where we could communicate with them. There may also be other unique factors on which our civilization is dependent. Or, on a water world, where the intelligent creatures are something like dolphins, it may be difficult to build fire and forge metals. Another possibility is that Earth is the first planet in the Milky Way on which industrial civilization has arisen.[44] However, critics note that according to current understanding, many Earth-like planets were created many billions of years prior to Earth, so this explanation requires repudiation of the mediocrity principle.[45] Insofar as the Rare Earth Hypothesis privileges life on Earth and its process of formation, it is a variant of the anthropic principle. The variant of the anthropic principle states the universe seems uniquely suited towards developing human intelligence. This philosophical stance opposes not only the mediocrity principle, but also the wider Copernican principle, which suggests there is no privileged location in the universe. Opponents dismiss both Rare Earth and the anthropic principle as tautologicalif a condition must exist in the universe for human life to arise, then the universe must already meet that condition, as human life existsand as an argument from incredulity or lack of imagination. According to this analysis, the Rare Earth hypothesis confuses a description of how life on Earth arose with a uniform conclusion of how life must arise.[46] While the probability of the specific conditions on Earth being widely replicated is low, we do not know what complex life may require in order to evolve.[47][48] It is the nature of intelligent life to destroy itself This is the argument that technological civilizations may usually or invariably destroy themselves before or shortly after developing radio or space flight technology. Possible means of annihilation include nuclear war, biological warfare or accidental contamination, nanotechnological catastrophe, ill-advised physics experiments,[49] a badly programmed super-intelligence, or a Malthusian catastrophe after the deterioration of a planet's ecosphere. This general theme is explored both in fiction and in mainstream scientific theorizing.[50] Indeed, there are probabilistic arguments which suggest that human extinction may occur sooner rather than later. In 1966 Sagan and Shklovskii suggested that technological civilizations will either tend to destroy themselves within a century of developing interstellar communicative capability or master their self-destructive tendencies and survive for billion-year timescales.[51] Self-annihilation may also be viewed in terms of thermodynamics: insofar as life is an ordered system that can sustain itself against the tendency to disorder, the "external transmission" or interstellar communicative phase may be the point at which the system becomes unstable and self-destructs.[52] From a Darwinian perspective, self-destruction would be an ironic outcome of evolutionary success. The evolutionary psychology that developed during the competition for scarce resources over the course of human evolution has left the species subject to aggressive, instinctual drives. These compel humanity to consume resources, extend longevity, and to reproducein part, the very motives that led to the development of technological society. It seems likely that intelligent extraterrestrial life would evolve in a similar fashion and thus face the same possibility of self-destruction. And yet, to provide a good answer to Fermi's Question, self-destruction by technological species
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Fermi paradox would have to be a near universal occurrence. This argument does not require the civilization to entirely self-destruct, only to become once again non-technological. In other ways it could persist and even thrive according to evolutionary standards, which postulate producing offspring as the sole goal of lifenot "progress", be it in terms of technology or even intelligence. It is the nature of intelligent life to destroy others Another possibility is that an intelligent species beyond a certain point of technological capability will destroy other intelligence as it appears, as is exemplified by the theorised extermination of Neanderthals by early man. The idea that something, or someone, is destroying intelligent life in the universe has been well explored in science fiction[53] and scientific literature.[4] A species might undertake such extermination out of expansionist motives, paranoia, or simple aggression. In 1981, cosmologist Edward Harrison argued that such behavior would be an act of prudence: an intelligent species that has overcome its own self-destructive tendencies might view any other species bent on galactic expansion as a kind of virus.[54] It has also been suggested that a successful alien species would be a superpredator, as is Homo sapiens.[55] This hypothesis requires at least one civilization to have arisen in the past, and the first civilization would not have faced this problem.[56] However, it could still be that Earth is alone now. Like exploration, the extermination of other civilizations might be carried out with self-replicating spacecraft. Under such a scenario,[53] even if a civilization that created such machines were to disappear, the probes could outlive their creators, destroying civilizations far into the future. If true, this argument reduces the number of visible civilizations in two waysby destroying some civilizations, and forcing others to remain quiet, under fear of discovery (see They choose not to interact with us) so we would see no signs of them. Life is periodically destroyed by naturally occurring events On Earth, there have been numerous major extinction events that destroyed the majority of complex species alive at the time. The extinction of the dinosaurs is the best known example. These are believed to be caused by events such as impact from a large meteorite, massive volcanic eruptions, or astronomical events such as gamma ray bursts.[57] It may be the case that such extinction events are common throughout the universe and periodically destroy intelligent life (or at least destroy their civilizations) before the species is able to develop the technology to communicate with other species.[58] Human beings were created alone Religious and philosophical speculation about extraterrestrial intelligent life long predates modern scientific inquiry into the subject. Greek philosophers Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus (5th and 4th century BC) suggested that there may be other inhabited worlds. Some religious thinkers, including the Jewish philosopher Rabbi Hasdai Crescas (c. 13401410/1411) and the Christian philosopher Nicholas of Cusa (14011464), also put forward their views of the possibility of such extraterrestrial intelligence. On the other hand, philosophers such as Aristotle and religious thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas claim that human beings are unique in the divine plan and counsel against belief in intelligent life on other worlds.[59] Aristotle believed the element of the heavens was Fire, as opposed to Earth, and so the heavens could not support life.[60] Thomas Aquinas additionally believed the uniqueness of God implied the uniqueness of Earth, and also notes the Bible refers to the world in the singular.[61] Religious reasons for doubting the existence of extraterrestrial intelligent life resemble some forms of the Rare Earth Hypothesis. The argument here would be a teleological form of the strong anthropic principle: the universe was designed for the express purpose of creating human (and only human) intelligence.[62] This argument presupposes
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Fermi paradox that a prior advanced intelligence existed in order to create human life, which might pose the question whether that intelligence was the only one to exist before it created us, but the perspective is a philosophical and abstract one. Inflation theory and the Youngness Argument Cosmologist Alan Guth proposed a multi-verse solution to the Fermi Paradox. In this theory, using the synchronous gauge probability distribution, young universes exceedingly outnumber older ones (by a factor of e1037 for every second of age). Therefore, averaged over all universes, universes with civilizations will almost always have just one, the first to develop. However, Guth notes "Perhaps this argument explains why SETI has not found any signals from alien civilizations, but I nd it more plausible that it is merely a symptom that the synchronous gauge probability distribution is not the right one."[63] Notably, however, in the interest of this topic, SETI received at least one questionably intelligent signal known as the Wow! signal in 1977.
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They do exist, but we see no evidence

It may be that technological extraterrestrial civilizations exist, but that human beings cannot communicate with them because of constraints: problems of scale or of technology; because they do not wish to communicate or their nature is simply too alien for meaningful communication, or perhaps even be recognized as technology. Communication is impossible due to problems of scale Intelligent civilizations are too far apart in space or time It may be that non-colonizing technologically capable alien civilizations exist, but that they are simply too far apart for meaningful two-way communication.[64] If two civilizations are separated by several thousand light years, it is very possible that one or both cultures may become extinct before meaningful dialogue can be established. Human searches may be able to detect their existence, but communication will remain impossible because of distance. This problem might be ameliorated somewhat if contact/communication is made through a Bracewell probe. In this case at least one partner in the NASA's conception of the Terrestrial Planet exchange may obtain meaningful information. Alternatively, a Finder civilization may simply broadcast its knowledge, and leave it to the receiver to make what they may of it. This is similar to the transmission of information from ancient civilizations to the present,[65] and humanity has undertaken similar activities like the Arecibo message, which could transfer information about Earth's intelligent species, even if it never yields a response (or does not yield a response in time for humanity to receive it). It is also possible that archaeological evidence of past civilizations may be detected through deep space observationsespecially if they left behind large artifacts such as Dyson spheres. The problem of distance is compounded by the fact that timescales affording a "window of opportunity" for detection or contact might be quite small. Advanced civilizations may periodically arise and fall throughout our galaxy, but this may be such a rare event, relatively speaking, that the odds of two or more such civilizations existing at the same time are low. There may have been intelligent civilizations in the galaxy before the emergence of intelligence on Earth, and there may be intelligent civilizations after its extinction, but it is possible that human beings are the only intelligent civilization in existence now. The term "now" is somewhat complicated by the finite speed of light and the nature of spacetime under relativity. Assuming that an extraterrestrial intelligence is not able to travel to our vicinity at faster-than-light speeds, in order to detect an intelligence 1,000 light-years distant, that intelligence will need to have been active 1,000 years ago. Strictly speaking, only the portions of the universe lying within the past light cone of Earth need be considered, since any civilizations outside it could not be detected.
Fermi paradox Another issue is the possibly very small length of time (even in historical timescales) that a civilization might be 'loudly' broadcasting material that could be reasonably detected (see below). A related argument holds that other civilizations exist, and are transmitting and exploring, but their signals and probes simply have not arrived yet.[66] However, critics have noted that this is unlikely, since it requires that humanity's advancement has occurred at a very special point in time, while the Milky Way is in transition from empty to full. This is a tiny fraction of the life of a galaxy under ordinary assumptions and calculations resulting from them, so the likelihood that we're in the midst of this transition is considered low in the paradox.[67] Work on the theory of Neocatastrophism, wherein galactic and even super-galactic dynamics are seen as possibly frequently injurious to extant biospheres in a way that is roughly analogous to the way geological and climatological catastrophes have occasionally set back biological developments on Earth, might be given as a partial, if not full, resolution to the paradox, as advanced species might well be fragile to major events at a pace that would argue against a short transition. It is too expensive to spread physically throughout the galaxy Many assumptions about the ability of an alien culture to colonize other stars are based on the idea that interstellar travel is technologically feasible. While the current understanding of physics rules out the possibility of faster than light travel, it appears that there are no major theoretical barriers to the construction of "slow" interstellar ships. This idea underlies the concept of the Von Neumann probe and the Bracewell probe as evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence. It is possible, however, that present scientific knowledge cannot properly gauge the feasibility and costs of such interstellar colonization. Theoretical barriers may not yet be understood and the cost of materials and energy for such ventures may be so high as to make it unlikely that any civilization could afford to attempt it. Even if interstellar travel and colonization are possible, they may be difficult, leading to a colonization model based on percolation theory.[68] Colonization efforts may not occur as an unstoppable rush, but rather as an uneven tendency to "percolate" outwards, within an eventual slowing and termination of the effort given the enormous costs involved and the fact that colonies will inevitably develop a culture and civilization of their own. Colonization may thus occur in "clusters," with large areas remaining uncolonized at any one time. A similar argument holds that interstellar physical travel may be possible, but is much more expensive than interstellar communication. Furthermore, to an advanced civilization, travel itself may be replaced by communication, through mind uploading and similar technologies.[69] Therefore the first civilization may have physically explored or colonized the galaxy, but subsequent civilizations find it cheaper, faster, and easier to travel and get information through contacting existing civilizations rather than physically exploring or traveling themselves. In this scenario, since there is little or no physical travel, and directed communications are hard to see except to the intended receiver, there could be many technical and interacting civilizations with few signs visible across interstellar distances. Human beings have not been searching long enough Humanity's ability to detect and comprehend intelligent extraterrestrial life has existed for only a very brief periodfrom 1937 onwards, if the invention of the radio telescope is taken as the dividing lineand Homo sapiens is a geologically recent species. The whole period of modern human existence to date (about 200,000 years) is a very brief period on a cosmological scale, while radio transmissions have only been propagated since 1895. Thus it remains possible that human beings have neither been searching long enough to find other intelligences, nor been in existence long enough to be found. One million years ago there would have been no humans for any extraterrestrial emissaries to meet. For each further step back in time, there would have been increasingly fewer indications to such emissaries that intelligent life would develop on Earth. In a large and already ancient universe, a space-faring alien species may well have had many other
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Fermi paradox more promising worlds to visit and revisit. Even if alien emissaries visited in more recent times, they may have been interpreted by early human cultures as supernatural entities. This hypothesis is more plausible if alien civilizations tend to stagnate or die out, rather than expand. In addition, "the probability of a site never being visited, even [with an] infinite time limit, is a non-zero value."[70] Thus, even if intelligent life expands elsewhere, it remains statistically possible that such extraterrestrial life might never discover Earth. Communication is impossible for technical reasons Humans are not listening properly There are some assumptions that underlie the SETI search programs that may cause searchers to miss signals that are present. For example, the radio searches to date would completely miss highly compressed data streams (which would be almost indistinguishable from "white noise" to anyone who did not understand the compression algorithm). Extraterrestrials might also use frequencies that scientists have decided are unlikely to carry signals, or do not penetrate our atmosphere, or use modulation strategies that are not being looked for. The signals might be at a datarate that is too fast for our electronics to handle, or too slow to be recognised as attempts at communication. "Simple" broadcast techniques might be employed, but sent from non-main sequence stars which are searched with lower priority; current programs assume that most alien life will be orbiting Sun-like stars.[71] The greatest problem is the sheer size of the radio search needed to look for signals (effectively spanning the entire visible universe), the limited amount of resources committed to SETI, and the sensitivity of modern instruments. SETI estimates, for instance, that with a radio telescope as sensitive as the Arecibo Observatory, Earth's television and radio broadcasts would only be detectable at distances up to 0.3 light years.[72] Clearly detecting an Earth type civilization at great distances is difficult. A signal is much easier to detect if the signal energy is limited to either a narrow range of frequencies (Narrowband transmissions), and/or directed at a specific part of the sky. Such signals can be detected at ranges of hundreds to tens of thousands of light-years distance.[73] However this means that detectors must be listening to an appropriate range of frequencies, and be in that region of space to which the beam is being sent. Many SETI searches, starting with the venerable Project Cyclops, go so far as to assume that extraterrestrial civilizations will be broadcasting a deliberate signal (like the Arecibo message), in order to be found. Thus to detect alien civilizations through their radio emissions, Earth observers either need more sensitive instruments or must hope for fortuitous circumstances: that the broadband radio emissions of alien radio technology are much stronger than our own; that one of SETI's programs is listening to the correct frequencies from the right regions of space; or that aliens are sending focused transmissions such as the Arecibo message in our general direction. Civilizations only broadcast detectable radio signals for a brief period of time It may be that alien civilizations are detectable through their radio emissions for only a short time, reducing the likelihood of spotting them. There are two possibilities in this regard: civilizations outgrow radio through technological advance or, conversely, resource depletion cuts short the time in which a species broadcasts. The first idea, that civilizations advance beyond radio, is based in part on the "fiber optic objection": the use of high power radio with low-to-medium gain (i.e., non-directional) antennas for long-distance transmission is wasteful of spectrum, yet this "waste" is precisely what makes these systems conspicuous at interstellar distances. Humans are moving to directional or guided transmission channels such as electrical cables, optical fibers, narrow-beam microwave and lasers, and conventional radio with non-directional antennas is increasingly reserved for low-power, short-range applications such as cell phones and Wi-Fi networks. These signals are far less detectable from space. Analog television, developed in the mid-twentieth century, contains strong carriers to aid reception and demodulation. Carriers are spectral lines that are very easily detected yet do not convey any information beyond their highly artificial nature. Nearly every SETI project is looking for carriers for just this reason, and UHF TV carriers
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Fermi paradox are the most conspicuous and artificial signals from Earth that could be detected at interstellar distances. But advances in technology are replacing analog TV with digital television which uses spectrum more efficiently precisely by eliminating or reducing components such as carriers that make them so conspicuous. Using our own experience as an example, we could set the date of radio-visibility for Earth as December 12, 1901, when Guglielmo Marconi sent radio signals from Cornwall, England, to Newfoundland, Canada.[74] Visibility is now ending, or at least becoming orders of magnitude more difficult, as analog TV is being phased out. And so, if our experience is typical, a civilization remains radio-visible for approximately a hundred years. So a civilization may have been very visible from 1325 to 1483, but we were just not listening at that time. This is essentially the solution, "Everyone is listening, no one is sending." More hypothetically, advanced alien civilizations evolve beyond broadcasting at all in the electromagnetic spectrum and communicate by principles of physics we don't yet understand. Some scientists have hypothesized that advanced civilizations may send neutrino signals.[75] If such signals exist they could be detectable by neutrino detectors that are now under construction.[76] If stable wormholes could be created and used for communications then interstellar broadcasts would become largely redundant. Thus it may be that other civilizations would only be detectable for a relatively short period of time between the discovery of radio and then switch to more efficient technologies. One counter to this argument is that although broadcast communication may become difficult to detect, other uses for radio such as radar and power transmission cannot be replaced by low power technologies or fiber optics. These will potentially remain visible even after broadcast emission are replaced by less observable technology.[77] A different argument is that resource depletion will soon result in a decline in technological capability. Human civilization has been capable of interstellar radio communication for only a few decades and is already rapidly depleting fossil fuels and confronting possible problems such as peak oil. It may only be a few more decades before energy becomes too expensive, and the necessary electronics and computers too difficult to manufacture, for us to continue the search. If the same conditions regarding energy supplies hold true for other civilizations, then radio technology may be a short-lived phenomenon. Unless two civilizations happen to be near each other and develop the ability to communicate at the same time it would be virtually impossible for any one civilization to "talk" to another. Critics of the resource depletion argument point out that alternate energy sources exist, such as solar power, which are renewable and have enormous potential relative to technical barriers.[78] For depletion of fossil fuels to end the "technological phase" of a civilization, some form of technological regression would have to invariably occur, preventing the exploitation of renewable energy sources. They tend to experience a technological singularity Another possibility is that technological civilizations invariably experience a technological singularity and attain a posthuman (or more properly, post-biological) character. Theoretical civilizations of this sort may have altered drastically enough to render communication impossible. The intelligences of a post-singularity civilization might require more information exchange than is possible through interstellar communication, for example. Or perhaps any information humanity might provide would appear elementary, and thus they do not try to communicate, any more than human beings attempt to talk to antseven though we do ascribe a form of intelligence to them. Even more extreme forms of post-singularity have been suggested, particularly in fiction: beings that divest themselves of physical form, create massive artificial virtual environments, transfer themselves into these environments through mind uploading, and exist totally within virtual worlds, ignoring the external physical universe. Surprisingly early treatments, such as Lewis Padgett's short story Mimsy were the Borogoves (1943), suggest a migration of advanced beings out of the presently known physical universe into a different and presumably more agreeable alternative one. A further argument, suggested by Charles Stross in Accelerando, is that although advanced virtual civilizations possibly en route developmentally to a Matrioshka Brain - could engage in travel to other star systems, they choose not to. This is not due to a lack of curiosity, but more through a set of energy-information economic choices,
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Fermi paradox whereby in an information market predicated on available solar energy and planetary matter for building more computing capacity, the most successful virtual intelligences have to remain central to the star. Energy and proximity (and therefore wireless communication bandwidth and speed) are much greater closer to the matter and energy sources of the star, and larger planets, and so to be successful requires intra-solar-system focus. In this scenario, economic incentives to travel out of the solar system are inhibited. One version of this perspective, which makes predictions for future SETI findings of transcension "fossils" and includes a variation of the Zoo hypothesis below, has been proposed by singularity scholar John Smart.[79] They are too alien Another possibility is that human theoreticians have underestimated how much alien life might differ from that on Earth. Aliens may be psychologically unwilling to attempt to communicate with human beings. Perhaps human mathematics is parochial to Earth and not shared by other life,[80] though others argue this can only apply to abstract math since the math associated with physics must be similar (in results, if not in methods.)[81] Physiology might also cause a communication barrier. In Contact, Carl Sagan briefly speculated that an alien species might have a thought process orders of magnitude slower (or faster) than humans. Such a species could conceivably speak so slowly that it requires years to say even a simple phrase like "Hello". A message broadcast by that species might well seem like random background noise to humans, and therefore go undetected. They are non-technological It may be that at least some civilizations of intelligent beings are not technological, perhaps because it is difficult in their environment, or because they choose not to, or for other reasons yet unknown. Such civilizations would be very hard for humans to detect.[82] While there are remote sensing techniques which could perhaps detect life-bearing planets without relying on the signs of technology, none of them has any ability to tell if any detected life is intelligent. Not even any theoretical methods for doing so have been proposed, short of an actual physical visit by an astronaut or probe. This is sometimes referred to as the "algae vs. alumnae" problem.[82] The evidence is being suppressed It is theoretically possible that SETI groups are not reporting positive detections, or governments have been blocking extraterrestrial signals or suppressing publication of detections, perhaps in response to National Security and Trade Interests from the potential use of advanced extraterrestrial technology or weapons. It has been suggested that the detection of an extraterrestrial radio signal or technology could well be the most highly classified military information that exists.[83] Claims that this has already happened are common in the popular press,[84][85] but the scientists involved report the opposite experience the press becomes informed and interested in a potential detection even before a signal can be confirmed.[86] Another issue is the diverse number of organisations and governments involved in science activities that might chance upon detections, of which SETI forms only a small part.
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Fermi paradox They choose not to interact with us In these scenarios, alien civilizations exist that are technically capable of contacting Earth, but explicitly choose not to do so. This is the official position of the Earth today; we listen (SETI), but except for a few small efforts, do not explicitly transmit. Of course if all, or even most, civilizations act the same way, the galaxy could be full of civilizations eager for contact, but everyone is listening and no-one is transmitting. This is the so-called SETI Paradox.[87] They don't agree among themselves The official earth policy among the SETI community [88] is "No response to a signal or other evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence should be sent until appropriate international consultations have taken place.". However, given the possible impact of any reply[89] it may be very difficult to obtain any consensus on "Who speaks for Earth?" and "What should we say?". Other civilizations might suffer from this same lack of consensus, and therefore send no messages at all. Earth is purposely not contacted (The zoo hypothesis) The zoo hypothesis states that superintelligent extraterrestrial life exists and does not contact life on Earth to allow for its natural evolution and development.[90] These ideas are perhaps most plausible if there is a relatively universal cultural or legal policy among a plurality of extraterrestrial civilizations necessitating isolation with respect to alien life. In a Universe without a hegemonic power, random civilizations with independent principals would, in all likelihood, make contact. This makes a crowded Universe with clearly defined rules seem more plausible. This theory may break down under the uniformity of motive flaw: all it takes is a single culture or civilization to decide to act contrary to the imperative within our range of detection for it to be abrogated, and the probability of such a violation increases with the number of civilizations.[12] However, perhaps a sufficiently technologically and socially advanced civilization would be capable of enforcing rules.
Schematic representation of a planetarium simulating the universe to humans. The "real" universe is outside the black sphere, the simulated one projected on/filtered through it.
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T. W. Hair [91] has done Monte Carlo analysis of the inter-arrival times between civilizations in the galaxy based on common astrobiological assumptions that suggest that since the initial civilization would have such a commanding lead over the later arrivals, it may have established what we call ZH as a galactic/universal norm and the resultant "paradox" by a cultural founder effect with or without the continued activity of the founder. (Compare the Star Trek Prime Directive.) Earth is purposely isolated (planetarium hypothesis) A related idea is that the perceived universe is a simulated reality. The planetarium hypothesis[92] holds that beings may have simulated a universe for us that appears to be empty of other life, by design. The simulation argument[93] by Bostrom holds that although such a simulation may contain other life, such life cannot be much in advance of us since a far more advanced civilization may also be far harder to simulate. If we treat this matter literally, then the truth is entirely inaccessible, there being an infinite regress problem (see simulated reality).
Fermi paradox It is dangerous to communicate An alien civilization might feel it is too dangerous to communicate, either for us or for them. After all, when very different civilizations have met on Earth, the results have often been disastrous for one side or the other, and the same may well apply to interstellar contact.[94] Even contact at a safe distance could lead to infection by computer code[95] or even ideas themselves[96] (see meme). Perhaps prudent civilizations actively hide not only from us but from everyone, out of fear of other civilizations. The Fermi paradox itself is what prevents communication Perhaps the Fermi paradox itselfor the alien equivalent of itis the ultimate reason for any civilization to avoid contact with other civilizations, even if no other obstacles existed. From any one civilization's point of view, it would be unlikely for them to be the first ones to make first contact. Therefore it is likely that previous civilizations faced fatal problems with first contact. So perhaps every civilization keeps quiet because of the possibility that there is a real reason for others to do so.[4] They are here unobserved It may be that intelligent alien life forms not only exist, but are already present here on Earth. They are not detected because they do not wish it, human beings are technically unable to, or because societies refuse to admit to the evidence.[97] Several variations of this idea have been proposed: Carl Sagan and Iosif Shklovsky[98] argued for serious consideration of "paleocontact" with extraterrestrials in the early historical era, and for examination of myths and religious lore for evidence of such contact. Sagan and Shklovsky noted that many or most religions were founded by men who claimed contact with supernatural entities who bestowed wisdom, guidance and technology, citing the fish-god Oannes as a particularly salient example. On this hypothesis, there is in fact ample evidence of alien visitation it is simply not recognized as such. It is possible that a life form technologically advanced enough to travel to Earth might also be sufficiently advanced to exist here undetected. In this view, the aliens have arrived on Earth, or in our solar system, and are observing the planet, while concealing their presence. Observation could conceivably be conducted in a number of ways that would be very difficult to detect. For example, a complex system of microscopic monitoring devices constructed via molecular nanotechnology could be deployed on Earth and remain undetected, or sophisticated instruments could conduct passive monitoring from elsewhere while concealing themselves with stealth technologies that need not be much more advanced than current terrestrial ones. UFO researchers note that the Fermi Paradox arose within the context of a wave of UFO reports, yet Fermi, Teller, York and Konopinski apparently dismissed the possibility that flying saucers might be extraterrestrial despite contemporary US Air Force investigations that judged a small portion of UFO reports as inexplicable by contemporary technology. (Mainstream scientific publications have occasionally addressed the possibility of extraterrestrial contact,[99] but the scientific community in general has given little serious attention to claims of unidentified flying objects.) Given that UFO investigators argue compelling evidence supports the reality of UFOs as anomalies, but that extant UFO evidence does not support an extraterrestrial origin, it is suggested that closer examination of UFO data may confirm or falsify the Fermi paradox and/or the extraterrestrial hypothesis of UFO origins: Any refusal of interest [by mainstream scientists] in investigating the UFO phenomenon, using an ETI [extraterrestrial intelligence] concept as one working hypothesis, should surely be astonishing.[100] This extraterrestrial hypothesis was jokingly suggested in response to Fermi's paradox by his fellow physicist, Le Szilrd, who suggested to Fermi that extraterrestrials "are already among usbut they call themselves Hungarians",[101][102] a humorous reference to the peculiar Hungarian language, unrelated to most other languages spoken in Europe.[101][103]
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Notes
[1] The Washington Post (http:/ / www. washingtonpost. com/ opinions/ are-we-alone-in-the-universe/ 2011/ 12/ 29/ gIQA2wSOPP_story. html) [2] Sagan, Carl Cosmos, Random House 2002 ISBN 0375508325 [3] Wesson, Paul (1990). "Cosmology, extraterrestrial intelligence, and a resolution of the Fermi-Hart paradox". Royal Astronomical Society, Quarterly Journal 31: 161170. Bibcode1990QJRAS..31..161W. [4] Brin, Glen David (1983). "The 'Great Silence': The Controversy Concerning Extraterrestrial Intelligent Life". Quarterly Journal of Royal Astronomical Society 24: 283309. Bibcode1983QJRAS..24..283B. [5] James Annis (1999). "An Astrophysical Explanation for the Great Silence". arXiv:astro-ph/9901322[astro-ph]. [6] Hanson, Robin (1998). "The Great Filter Are We Almost Past It?" (http:/ / hanson. gmu. edu/ greatfilter. html). . [7] Bostrom, Nick (2007). In Great Silence there is Great Hope (http:/ / www. nickbostrom. com/ papers/ fermi. pdf). . Retrieved 2010-09-06. [8] Milan M. irkovi (2009). "Fermi's Paradox The Last Challenge for Copernicanism?". Serbian Astronomical Journal 178 (178): 120. arXiv:0907.3432. Bibcode2009SerAJ.178....1C. doi:10.2298/SAJ0978001C. [9] Lem, Stanisaw (1983). His Master's Voice (http:/ / books. google. com/ ?id=I5gYWtcfMioC& lpg=PA73& dq="silentium universi" lem& pg=PA73). Harvest Books. ISBN0-15-640300-5. . [10] "NASA Galaxy" (http:/ / www. nasa. gov/ worldbook/ galaxy_worldbook. html). Nasa.gov. November 29, 2007. . Retrieved August 19, 2010. [11] Craig, Andrew (July 22, 2003). "Astronomers count the stars" (http:/ / news. bbc. co. uk/ 1/ hi/ sci/ tech/ 3085885. stm). BBC News (BBC). . Retrieved April 8, 2010. [12] Crawford, I.A., "Where are They? Maybe we are alone in the galaxy after all" (http:/ / www. cc. nctu. edu. tw/ ~tseng327/ nctu-origin/ article/ sc200007a. pdf), Scientific American, July 2000, 3843, (2000). [13] The Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev has stated that an alien civilization on Kardashev scale of 3 could send signals up to 10 billion light years. [14] Shklovskii, I. S.; Sagan, Carl (1966). Intelligent Life in the Universe. San Francisco: HoldenDay. p.394. ISBN0330251252. [15] Let be the number of civilizations (per unit volume) that can be seen at a radius . Let be the radius of the galaxy. So the
number of civilizations we see is:
where the first integral are those in the galaxy, and the second those outside. Which integral is bigger depends on how fast N(r) decreases, which is completely unknown. This observation is due to Kardashev. [16] Dunne, Alan (1950). "Uncaptioned cartoon" (http:/ / home. fnal. gov/ ~carrigan/ pillars/ New_Yorker_aliens. png). New Yorker, 20 May 1950. . Retrieved August 19, 2010. [17] Jones, Eric "Where is everybody?", An account of Fermi's question" (http:/ / www. fas. org/ sgp/ othergov/ doe/ lanl/ la-10311-ms. pdf), Los Alamos Technical report LA-10311-MS, March, 1985. [18] Shostak, Seth (October 25, 2001). "Our Galaxy Should Be Teeming With Civilizations, But Where Are They?" (http:/ / www. space. com/ searchforlife/ shostak_paradox_011024. html). Space.com. Space.com (http:/ / www. space. com/ ). . Retrieved April 8, 2006. [19] Cohen, Jack and Stewart, Ian (2002). Evolving the Alien. John Wiley and Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ. ISBN0091879272. Chapter 6, What does a Martian look like?. [20] [ Editthisreference (http:/ / en. wikipedia. org/ w/ index. php?title=Template:BarrowTipler1986& action=edit)]
Barrow, John D.; Tipler, Frank J. (19 May 1988). The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (http:/ / books. google. com/ books?id=uSykSbXklWEC& printsec=frontcover). foreword by John A. Wheeler. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p.588. ISBN9780192821478. LC 87-28148 (http:/ / lccn. loc. gov/ 87028148). . Retrieved 31 December 2009.
[21] Note that, even though there is at least one civilization in our galaxy (namely our own), the average or "most likely" number of civilizations in our galaxy as described by this equation may still be smaller than one. In other words, the fact that there is at least one civilization in our galaxy does not mean that this was a likely outcome. This is an example of anthropic bias. No civilization can use itself to estimate the average number of civilizations in a galaxy, since if there was not at least one civilization the question could not arise. The Drake equation computes only the long-term average number of civilizations; even if the average number of civilizations per galaxy is less than one, there could be more than one in any given galaxy at any given time. [22] Gowdy, Robert H., VCU Department of Physics SETI: Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence. The Interstellar Distance Problem (http:/ / www. courses. vcu. edu/ PHY-rhg/ astron/ html/ mod/ 019/ s5. html), 2008 [23] See, for example, the SETI Institute, The Harvard SETI Home Page (http:/ / seti. harvard. edu/ seti/ ), or The Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence at Berkeley (http:/ / seti. berkeley. edu/ ) [24] Schmidt, Stanley (1976). Sins of Our Fathers. Berkeley. [25] "NASA/CP2007-214567: Workshop Report on the Future of Intelligence In The Cosmos" (http:/ / event. arc. nasa. gov/ main/ home/ reports/ CP2007-214567_Langhoff. pdf). NASA. .
Fermi paradox
[26] Duncan Forgan, Martin Elvis (28 March 2011). "Extrasolar Asteroid Mining as Forensic Evidence for Extraterrestrial Intelligence". International Journal of Astrobiology. arXiv:1103.5369. Bibcode2011IJAsB..10..307F. doi:10.1017/S1473550411000127. [27] L. K. Scheffer (2010). "Large Scale Use of Solar Power May be Visible Across Interstellar Distances" (http:/ / www. lpi. usra. edu/ meetings/ abscicon2010/ pdf/ 5207. pdf). Astrobiology Science Conference 2010. . [28] Mullen, Leslie (2002). "Alien Intelligence Depends on Time Needed to Grow Brains" (http:/ / www. space. com/ scienceastronomy/ alien_intelligence_021202. html). Astrobiology Magazine. Space.com (http:/ / www. space. com/ ). . Retrieved April 21, 2006. [29] http:/ / www. centauri-dreams. org/ ?p=20482 [30] Matsos, Helen (June 16, 2009). "Habitable Planet Signposts" (http:/ / www. astrobio. net/ news/ modules. php?op=modload& name=News& file=article& sid=2085& mode=thread& order=0& thold=0). Astrobiology magazine. . Retrieved August 19, 2010. [31] Chauvin, G. et al. (2004). "A giant planet candidate near a young brown dwarf". Astronomy & Astrophysics 425 (2): L29L32. arXiv:astro-ph/0409323. Bibcode2004A&A...425L..29C. doi:10.1051/0004-6361:200400056. [32] Schneider, Jean (January 20, 2010). "Interactive Extra-solar Planets Catalog" (http:/ / exoplanet. eu/ ). The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia. . Retrieved August 19, 2010. [33] Udry, S.; Bonfils, X.; Delfosse, X.; Forveille, T.; Mayor, M.; Perrier, C.; Bouchy, F.; Lovis, C. et al (2007). "The HARPS search for southern extra-solar planets" (http:/ / exoplanet. eu/ papers/ udry_terre_HARPS-1. pdf). Astronomy and Astrophysics 469 (3): L43. Bibcode2007A&A...469L..43U. doi:10.1051/0004-6361:20077612. . [34] Papagiannis, M. D. (1978). "Are We all Alone, or could They be in the Asteroid Belt?". Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society 19: 277281. Bibcode1978QJRAS..19..277P. [35] Bracewell, R. N. (1960). "Communications from Superior Galactic Communities". Nature 186 (4726): 670. Bibcode1960Natur.186..670B. doi:10.1038/186670a0. [36] "SETV projects" (http:/ / www. setv. org/ ). Setv.org. February 21, 2009. . Retrieved August 19, 2010. [37] Freitas, Robert A, Jr; Valdes, F (1985). "The search for extraterrestrial artifacts (SETA)" (http:/ / www. setv. org/ online_mss/ seta83. html). Acta Astronautica 12 (12): 1027. doi:10.1016/0094-5765(85)90031-1. . Retrieved August 19, 2010. [38] Dyson, Freeman J. (1960). "Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infra-Red Radiation" (http:/ / www. islandone. org/ LEOBiblio/ SETI1. HTM). Science 131 (3414): 16671668. Bibcode1960Sci...131.1667D. doi:10.1126/science.131.3414.1667. PMID17780673. . [39] Niven, Larry, "Bigger than Worlds", Analog, March 1974. [40] Amir Alexander (23 March 2004). "Can a Star's Glow Reveal an Advanced Civilization?" (http:/ / www. planetary. org/ news/ 2004/ 0323_Can_a_Stars_Glow_Reveal_an_Advanced. html). Planetary Society. . [41] "Fermilab Dyson Sphere search program" (http:/ / home. fnal. gov/ ~carrigan/ infrared_astronomy/ Fermilab_search. htm). Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (http:/ / www. fnal. gov/ ). . Retrieved February 10, 2008. [42] Burchell, M.J. (2006). "W (h) ither the Drake equation?". International Journal of Astrobiology 5 (3): 243250. Bibcode2006IJAsB...5..243B. doi:10.1017/S1473550406003107. [43] Ward, Peter D.; Brownlee, Donald (January 14, 2000). Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe (1st ed.). Springer. p.368. ISBN978-0387987019. [44] Webb, p. 153. [45] Webb, pp. 153156 [46] Andreadis, Athena "E. T., Call Springer-Verlag!" (http:/ / www. setileague. org/ reviews/ rarearth. htm) SETI League Publications, 2000. [47] Nealson, K.H. and Conrad, P.G. (1999). "Life: past, present and future". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (The Royal Society) 354 (1392): 192339. doi:10.1098/rstb.1999.0532. PMC1692713. PMID10670014. [48] Bounama, C. and von Bloh, W. and Franck, S. (2007). "How Rare Is Complex Life in the Milky Way?". Astrobiology (Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.) 7 (5): 745756. Bibcode2007AsBio...7..745B. doi:10.1089/ast.2006.0084. PMID17963474. [49] An example of fears of civilization-destroying physics experiments. This particular fear (particle colliders creating black holes, destroying the false vacuum, etc.) is discounted among scientists, since cosmic rays of much higher energy have been striking the Earth and moon for eons. ( NYT article (http:/ / www. nytimes. com/ 2008/ 06/ 21/ science/ 21blackhole. html), Technical report (http:/ / lsag. web. cern. ch/ lsag/ LSAG-Report. pdf)). [50] Bostrom, Nick. "Existential Risks Analyzing Human Extinction Scenarios and Related Hazards" (http:/ / www. nickbostrom. com/ existential/ risks. html). . Retrieved October 4, 2009. [51] Darling, David. "Extraterrestrial intelligence, hazards to" (http:/ / www. daviddarling. info/ encyclopedia/ E/ etcivhaz. html). The Encyclopedia of Astrobiology, Astronomy, and Spaceflight (http:/ / www. daviddarling. info/ encyclopedia/ ETEmain. html). Worlds of David Darling. . Retrieved May 11, 2006. [52] Hawking, Stephen. "Life in the Universe" (http:/ / web. archive. org/ web/ 20060421051343/ http:/ / www. hawking. org. uk/ lectures/ life. html). Public Lectures. University of Cambridge. Archived from the original (http:/ / www. hawking. org. uk/ lectures/ life. html) on April 21, 2006. . Retrieved May 11, 2006. [53] See, for example, Berserker (Saberhagen), The Heechee Saga (Pohl), Revelation Space (Reynolds) [54] Soter, Steven (2005). "SETI and the Cosmic Quarantine Hypothesis" (http:/ / www. astrobio. net/ news/ modules. php?op=modload& name=News& file=article& sid=1745). Astrobiology Magazine. Space.com (http:/ / www. space. com/ ). . Retrieved May 3, 2006. [55] Archer, Michael (1989). "Slime Monsters Will Be Human Too". Aust. Nat. Hist 22: 546547. [56] Webb, p. 112
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[57] Melott, A.L. and Lieberman, BS and Laird, CM and Martin, LD and Medvedev, MV and Thomas, BC and Cannizzo, JK and Gehrels, N. and Jackman, CH (2004). "Did a gamma-ray burst initiate the late Ordovician mass extinction?" (http:/ / acdb-ext. gsfc. nasa. gov/ People/ Jackman/ Melott_2004. pdf). International Journal of Astrobiology (Cambridge Univ Press) 3 (1): 5561. arXiv:astro-ph/0309415. Bibcode2004IJAsB...3...55M. doi:10.1017/S1473550404001910. . [58] Nick Bostrom, Milan M. irkovi. Global catastrophic risks. Section 12.5 The Fermi Paradox and Mass Extinctions. [59] Wiker, Benjamin D. (2002). "Christianity and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life" (http:/ / catholiceducation. org/ articles/ religion/ re0591. html). crisismagazine.com. . [60] Michael J. Crowe (2008). The Extraterrestrial Life Debate, Antiquity to 1915. University of Notre Dame Press. ISBN978-0-268-02368-3.p. 9 [61] Crowe, p. 19 [62] Gonzalez, Guillermo and Richards, Jay W. (2004). The Privileged Planet (http:/ / books. google. com/ books?id=KFdu4CyQ1k0C& pg=PA306). Regnery Publishing. p.306. ISBN0895260654. . [63] Guth, Alan (2007). "Eternal Inflation and its Implications" (http:/ / arxiv. org/ PS_cache/ hep-th/ pdf/ 0702/ 0702178v1. pdf). Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical 40 (25): 6811. arXiv:hep-th/0702178. Bibcode2007JPhA...40.6811G. doi:10.1088/1751-8113/40/25/S25. . [64] Webb, pp. 6271 [65] Vakoch, Douglas (November 15, 2001). "Decoding E.T.: Ancient Tongues Point Way To Learning Alien Languages" (http:/ / www. space. com/ searchforlife/ seti_decode_011115. html). SETI Institute. . Retrieved August 19, 2010. [66] Newman, W.T. and Sagan, C. (1981). "Galactic civilizations: Population. dynamics and interstellar diffusion". Icarus 46 (3): 293327. Bibcode1981Icar...46..293N. doi:10.1016/0019-1035(81)90135-4. [67] Brin, Glen David (1983). "The 'Great Silence': The Controversy Concerning Extraterrestrial Intelligent Life". Quarterly Journal of Royal Astronomical Society 24: 287, 298. Bibcode1983QJRAS..24..283B. [68] Landis, Geoffrey (1998). "The Fermi Paradox: An Approach Based on Percolation Theory" (http:/ / www. sff. net/ people/ Geoffrey. Landis/ percolation. htp). Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 51: 163166. Bibcode1998JBIS...51..163L. . [69] Scheffer, L.K. (1994). "Machine Intelligence, the Cost of Interstellar Travel and Fermi's Paradox". Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society 35: 157. Bibcode1994QJRAS..35..157S. [70] Kinouchi, Osame (December 2001). "Persistence solves Fermi Paradox but challenges SETI projects". arXiv:cond-mat/0112137. [71] Turnbull, Margaret C.; Tarter, Jill C. (2003). "Target Selection for SETI. I. A Catalog of Nearby Habitable Stellar Systems" (http:/ / www. projectrho. com/ HabCat. pdf). The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series 145 (1): 181. arXiv:astro-ph/0210675. Bibcode2003ApJS..145..181T. doi:10.1086/345779. . Retrieved August 19, 2010. [72] "SETI's FAQ, Sec 1.2.3" (http:/ / setifaq. org/ faq. html#1. 2. 3). Setifaq.org. November 2003. . Retrieved July 3, 2010. [73] "SETI's FAQ, Sec 1.6" (http:/ / setifaq. org/ faq. html#1. 6). Setifaq.org. November 2003. . Retrieved July 3, 2010. [74] Anonymous (December, 2001). "BBC Cornwall Marconi 100" (http:/ / www. bbc. co. uk/ cornwall/ marconi/ marconibg. shtml). Bbc.co.uk. . Retrieved July 3, 2010. [75] "Cosmic Search Vol. 1 No. 3" (http:/ / www. bigear. org/ vol1no3/ neutrino. htm). Bigear.org. September 21, 2004. . Retrieved July 3, 2010. [76] Learned, J; Pakvasa, S; Zee, A (2009). "Galactic neutrino communication". Physics Letters B 671 (1): 15. arXiv:0805.2429. Bibcode2009PhLB..671...15L. doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2008.11.057. [77] Stephenson, D. G (1984). "Solar Power Satellites as Interstellar Beacons". Royal Astron. Soc. Quart. Jrn. (Royal Astronomical Society) 25 (1): 80. Bibcode1984QJRAS..25...80S. [78] Smith, Charles (July 1995). "History of Solar Energy" (http:/ / web. archive. org/ web/ 20080225114548/ http:/ / www. solarenergy. com/ info_history. html). Technology Review: Solar Power. Archived from the original (http:/ / www. solarenergy. com/ info_history. html) on 2008-02-25. . [79] Smart, John, "Answering the Fermi Paradox: Exploring the Mechanisms of Universal Transcension" (http:/ / www. accelerating. org/ articles/ answeringfermiparadox. html), Journal of Evolution and Technology, June 2002. [80] Schombert, James. "Fermi's paradox (i.e. Where are they?)" (http:/ / abyss. uoregon. edu/ ~js/ cosmo/ lectures/ lec28. html) Cosmology Lectures, University of Oregon. [81] Hamming, RW (1998). "Mathematics on a distant planet". The American mathematical monthly 105 (7): pp.640--650. JSTOR2589247. [82] Tarter, Jill (2006). "What is SETI?a". Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 950 (1): 26975. Bibcode2001NYASA.950..269T. doi:10.1111/j.1749-6632.2001.tb02144.x. PMID11797755. [83] A. Tough (1990). "A critical examination of factors that might encourage secrecy.". Acta Astronautica (21,): pp.97102. doi:10.1016/0094-5765(90)90134-7. [84] http:/ / www. theregister. co. uk/ 2006/ 07/ 31/ signals_seti/ [85] http:/ / www. aolnews. com/ weird-news/ article/ stanton-friedman-a-scientist-searches-for-the-truth-of-ufos/ 19503350 [86] G. Seth Shostak (2009). Confessions of an Alien Hunter: A Scientist's Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. National Geographic. ISBN978-1426203923. Page 17. [87] Alexander Zaitsen (2006). "The SETI paradox". arXiv:physics/0611283[physics.gen-ph]. [88] "Declaration of Principles Concerning Activities Following the Detection of Extraterrestrial Intelligence" (http:/ / www. seti. org/ post-detection. html). . [89] Michaud, M. (2003). "Ten decisions that could shake the world". Space Policy 19 (2): 131950. doi:10.1016/S0265-9646(03)00019-5.
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[90] Ball, J (1973). "The zoo hypothesis". Icarus 19 (3): 347. Bibcode1973Icar...19..347B. doi:10.1016/0019-1035(73)90111-5. [91] Hair, Thomas W. (2011). "Temporal Dispersion of the Emergence of Intelligence: An Inter-arrival Time Analysis", International Journal of Astrobiology 10(2): 131135 (2011), doi:10.1017/S1473550411000024 (http:/ / journals. cambridge. org/ action/ displayAbstract?fromPage=online& aid=8143571) [92] Baxter, Stephen (2001). "The Planetarium Hypothesis: A Resolution of the Fermi Paradox" (http:/ / www. bis-spaceflight. com/ sitesia. aspx/ page/ 358/ id/ 890/ l/ en). Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 54 (5/6): 210216. . [93] Bostrom, Nick (2003). "Are You Living In a Computer Simulation?" (http:/ / www. simulation-argument. com/ simulation. html). Philosophical Quarterly 53 (211): 243255. doi:10.1111/1467-9213.00309. .; See also this web site about the simulation argument (http:/ / www. simulation-argument. com/ ). [94] Brin, David. "A contrarian perspective on altruism: the dangers of first contact" (http:/ / www. setileague. org/ iaaseti/ brin. pdf). . Retrieved August 19, 2010. [95] Carrigan, Richard A. (2006). "Do potential SETI signals need to be decontaminated?". Acta Astronautica 58 (2): 112117. Bibcode2006AcAau..58..112C. doi:10.1016/j.actaastro.2005.05.004. [96] Marsden, P. (1998). "Memetics and social contagion: Two sides of the same coin" (http:/ / cfpm. org/ jom-emit/ 1998/ vol2/ marsden_p. html). Journal of Memetics-Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission ({Journal of Memetics) 2 (2): 171--185. . [97] Webb, pp. 2760 [98] Shklovskii, I. S.; Sagan, Carl (1966). Intelligent Life in the Universe. San Francisco: HoldenDay. ISBN189280302X. [99] Steel, D. (1995). "SETA and 1991 VG" (http:/ / www. setv. org/ online_mss/ 1991vg. pdf). The Observatory 115: 7883. Bibcode1995Obs...115...78S. . Retrieved August 19, 2010. [100] Swords, Michael D. (1989) Science and the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis, Journal of UFO Studies, New Series 1, 1989, 67102, p. 88; reprinted in pp. 368373 in Jerome Clark's The UFO Encyclopedia: The Phenomenon from the Beginning. 2nd edition. 1998. Omingraphics. ISBN 0-7808-0097-4 [101] Webb, p. 28 [102] Crick, Francis (1981). Life Itself. Simon and Schuster. ISBN0671255622. [103] See, for example, George Marx's 1995 lecture, " Conflicts and Creativity The Hungarian Lesson (http:/ / epa. oszk. hu/ 00300/ 00342/ 00113/ marx1. html)", which was based on his 1994 book, The Voice of the Martians, Roland Etvs Physical Society ISBN 9630574276, and his article Marx, George (1996). "The myth of the martians and the golden age of Hungarian science". Science & Education 5 (3): 225. Bibcode1996Sc&Ed...5..225M. doi:10.1007/BF00414313.
381
References Bibliography
Webb, Stephen (2002). If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens... Where Is Everybody? (http://books.google. com/books?id=-vZ0BVSHix4C&printsec=frontcover). Copernicus Books. ISBN0-387-95501-1.
Further reading
Ben Zuckerman and Michael H. Hart, Extraterrestrials: Where Are They? ISBN 0-521-44803-4 Amazon (http:// www.amazon.com/dp/0521448034) Savage, Marshall T. (1992). The Millennial Project: Colonizing the Galaxy in 8 Easy Steps. Denver: Empyrean Publishing. ISBN0-9633914-8-8. Michaud, Michael (2006). Contact with Alien Civilizations: Our Hopes and Fears about Encountering Extraterrestrials. Copernicus Books. ISBN978-0387-28598-6. Gold, Thomas (1998). The Deep Hot Biosphere. Springer. ISBN978-0387952536. Evolving the Alien: The Science of Extraterrestrial Life Documentary "Overcome the Great Silence!" (http://www.setileague.org/press/silence.htm)
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External links
SMBC (http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2004) Interstellar Radio Messages (http://www.cplire.ru/html/ra&sr/irm/index.html) Exotic Civilizations: Possible Answer to Fermi's Paradox (http://www.enthea.org/writing/ exotic-civilizations-a-possible-answer-to-fermis-paradox/) by Paul Hughes Introduction and Drake equations for the Fermi paradox (http://www.fermisparadox.com/) So much space, so little time: why aliens haven't found us yet (http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/ 0,,1993006,00.html) by Ian Sample,The Guardian January 18, 2007 The Possibilities of FTL: Or Fermi's Paradox Reconsidered (http://www-personal.engin.umich.edu/~fritx/ Ftlessay/essay.html) by F.E. Freiheit IV Fermi's Paradox (i.e. Where are They?) (http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~js/cosmo/lectures/lec28.html) by James Schombert (http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~js/) Life in the Universe (http://members.verizon.net/~vze3fs8i/astro/litu.pdf), by Eric Schulman, Mercury Magazine (May/June to November/December 2000) Answering the Fermi Paradox: Exploring the Mechanisms of Universal Transcension (http://www.accelerating. org/articles/answeringfermiparadox.html) by John Smart Extraterrestrial Intelligence in the Solar System: Resolving the Fermi Paradox (http://www.rfreitas.com/ Astro/ResolvingFermi1983.htm), which argues that our observations are incomplete, and There Is No Fermi Paradox (http://www.rfreitas.com/Astro/ThereIsNoFermiParadox1985.htm), arguing that the paradox is based on a logical flaw, both by Robert Freitas Fermi Paradox debate (http://www.astrobio.net/news/article242.html) Astrobiology Magazine July 2002. Michael Meyer, Frank Drake, Christopher McKay, Donald Brownlee, & David Grinspoon. The Fermi Paradox: Back With a Vengeance (http://www.sentientdevelopments.com/2007/08/ fermi-paradox-back-with-vengeance.html) by George Dvorsky. Virtual Reality Could Explain the Fermi Paradox (http://michaelgr.com/2008/05/09/ virtual-reality-could-explain-the-fermi-paradox/) by Michael Graham Richard A list of possible answers to the Fermi paradox (http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/2010/10/ finding_fermi.html) (with references to published works discussing some of these options) by Anders Sandberg
Feynman sprinkler
383
Feynman sprinkler
A Feynman sprinkler, also referred to as a Feynman inverse sprinkler or as a reverse sprinkler, is a sprinkler-like device which is submerged in a tank and made to suck in the surrounding fluid. The question of how such a device would turn was the subject of an intense and remarkably long-lived debate. A regular sprinkler has nozzles arranged at angles on a freely rotating wheel such that when water is pumped out of them, the resulting jets cause the wheel to rotate; both a Catherine wheel and the aeolipile ("Hero engine") work on the same principle. A "reverse" or "inverse" sprinkler would operate by aspirating the surrounding fluid instead. The problem is now commonly associated with theoretical physicist Richard Feynman, who mentions it in his popular autobiographical book Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!. The problem did not originate with Feynman, nor did he publish a solution to it.
History
The first documented treatment of the problem is in Ch. III, sec. III of Ernst Mach's textbook The Science of Mechanics, first published in 1883.[1] There, Mach argued that the device shows "no distinct rotation."[2] In the early 1940s (and apparently without awareness of the earlier discussion by Mach), the problem began to circulate among members of the physics department at Princeton University, generating a lively debate. Richard Feynman, at the time a young graduate student at Princeton, became intrigued by the problem and eventually built a makeshift experiment within the facilities of the university's cyclotron laboratory. The experiment ended with the explosion of the glass container (a "carboy") that he was using as part of his setup. In 1966, Feynman turned down an offer from the editor of Physics Teacher to discuss the problem in print and Illustration 153a from Ernst Mach's Mechanik (1883). When the hollow rubber ball is squeezed, air flows in the direction of the short objected to it being called "Feynman's problem," arrows and the wheel turns in the direction of the long arrow. When pointing instead to the discussion of it in Mach's the rubber ball is released, the direction of the flow of the air is textbook.[3] The sprinkler problem attracted a great reversed but Mach observed "no distinct rotation" of the device. deal of attention after the incident was mentioned in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, a book of autobiographical reminiscences published in 1985.[4] Feynman neither explained his understanding of the relevant physics, nor did he describe the results of the experiment. In an article written shortly after Feynman's death in 1988, John Wheeler, who had been his doctoral advisor at Princeton, revealed that the experiment at the cyclotron had shown a little tremor as the pressure was first applied [...] but as the flow continued there was no reaction.[5] The sprinkler incident is also discussed in James Gleick's biography of Feynman, Genius, published in 1992, where Gleick claims that a sprinkler will not turn at all if made to suck in fluid.[6] In 2005, physicist Edward C. Creutz (who was in charge of the Princeton cyclotron at the time of the incident) revealed in print that he had assisted Feynman in setting up his experiment and that, when pressure was applied to force water out of the carboy through the sprinkler head,
Feynman sprinkler There was a little tremor, as [Feynman] called it, and the sprinkler head rapidly moved back to its original position and stayed there. The water flow continued with the sprinkler stationary. We adjusted the pressure to increase the water flow, about five separate times, and the sprinkler did not move, although water was flowing freely through it in the backwards direction [...] The carboy then exploded, due to the internal pressure. A janitor then appeared and helped me clean up the shattered glass and mop up the water. I don't know what [Feynman] had expected to happen, but my vague thoughts of a time reversal phenomenon were as shattered as the carboy.[7]
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Solution
The behavior of the reverse sprinkler is qualitatively quite distinct from that of the ordinary sprinkler, and one does not behave like the other "played backwards." Most of the published theoretical and experimental treatments of this problem have claimed (as did Mach and Gleick) that a sprinkler will not turn when made to suck in the surrounding fluid. It is now understood, however, that an ideal reverse sprinkler (i.e., one which can turn without friction and is surrounded by an ideal fluid) will accelerate towards the incoming fluid as the suction is being switched on, and come to a stop as the suction is switched off.[8][9] The ideal reverse sprinkler will not experience any torque in its steady state. This behavior may be understood in terms of conservation of angular momentum: in its steady state, the amount of angular momentum carried by the incoming fluid is constant, which implies that there is no torque on the sprinkler itself.[8] Most experimental setups fail to detect any turning of the reverse sprinkler because the transient torque is not large enough to overcome the friction of the sprinkler's bearing. On the other hand, experiments with very low-friction bearings find a small torque on the reverse sprinkler even in its steady state.[10] This is now understood to be a consequence of the viscosity of the fluid being sucked into the sprinkler, which leads to the dissipation of some of the energy of the incoming fluid and diffuses some of its angular momentum to the surrounding tank. This torque, induced by the viscosity, causes the reverse sprinkler to turn weakly towards the incoming fluid (i.e., in the direction contrary to the motion of a regular sprinkler expelling water).[8][11] The smallness of the torque on a reverse sprinkler is closely analogous to the propulsion of the so-called "pop pop boat," a toy boat that moves forward as it alternately expels and then sucks in water through a pipe connected to a small internal tank heated by a candle.[11]
References
[1] Ernst Mach, Die Mechanik in Ihrer Entwicklung Historisch-Kritisch Dargerstellt (http:/ / echo. mpiwg-berlin. mpg. de/ ECHOdocuViewfull?mode=imagepath& url=/ mpiwg/ online/ permanent/ einstein_exhibition/ sources/ Q179XRYG/ pageimg& viewMode=images), (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1883). Available in English as The Science of Mechanics: A Critical and Historical Account of its Development (http:/ / books. google. com/ books?id=IgYADjGcJcAC& pg=PA299), (Chicago: Open Court, 1919), 4th ed., pp. 299-301. [2] Ersnt Mach, The Science of Mechanics: A Critical and Historical Account of its Development (http:/ / books. google. com/ books?id=IgYADjGcJcAC& pg=PA301), (Chicago: Open Court, 1919), 4th ed., p. 301. [3] Richard P. Feynman, Perfectly Reasonable Deviations From the Beaten Track: The Letters of Richard P. Feynman, ed. Michelle Feynman, (New York: Basic Books, 2006), pp. 209-211. ISBN 0465023711 [4] Richard P. Feynman, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, (Norton, New York, NY, 1985), pp. 63-65. [5] John A. Wheeler (1989). "The young Feynman". Physics Today 42 (2): 2428. Bibcode1989PhT....42b..24W. doi:10.1063/1.881189. [6] James Gleick, Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman (New York: Pantheon, 1992), pp. 106-108. [7] Edward C. Creutz (2005). "Feynmans reverse sprinkler". American Journal of Physics 73 (3): 198. Bibcode2005AmJPh..73..198C. doi:10.1119/1.1842733. [8] Alejandro Jenkins (2004). "An elementary treatment of the reverse sprinkler". American Journal of Physics 72 (10): 12761282. arXiv:physics/0312087. Bibcode2004AmJPh..72.1276J. doi:10.1119/1.1761063. [9] James B. Calvert, " Turbines (http:/ / www. du. edu/ ~jcalvert/ tech/ fluids/ turbine. htm)," University of Denver. Retrieved April 5, 2006. [10] D3-22: Inverse Sprinkler - Metal Model (http:/ / www. physics. umd. edu/ lecdem/ services/ demos/ demosd3/ d3-22. htm), The University of Maryland Department of Physics, retrieved June 29, 2011 [11] Alejandro Jenkins (2011). "Sprinkler head revisited: momentum, forces, and flows in Machian propulsion". European Journal of Physics 32 (5): 12131226. arXiv:0908.3190. Bibcode2011EJPh...32.1213J. doi:10.1088/0143-0807/32/5/009.
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External links
D3-22: Inverse Sprinkler - Metal Model (http://www.physics.umd.edu/lecdem/services/demos/demosd3/ d3-22.htm), University of Maryland Physics Lecture-Demonstration Facility The Edgerton Center Corridor Lab: Feynman Sprinkler (http://web.mit.edu/Edgerton/www/ FeynmanSprinkler.html) Physics dissertation by A. Jenkins, Caltech (http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0607239) (see chapter 6)
Gibbs paradox
In statistical mechanics, a semi-classical derivation of the entropy that doesn't take into account the indistinguishability of particles, yields an expression for the entropy which is not extensive (is not proportional to the amount of substance in question). This leads to an apparent paradox known as the Gibbs paradox, after Josiah Willard Gibbs. The paradox allows for the entropy of closed systems to decrease, violating the second law of thermodynamics. It is possible, however, to take the perspective that it is merely the definition of entropy that is changed to ignore particle permutation (and thereby avert the paradox).
Illustration of the problem

Gibbs himself considered the following problem that arises if the ideal gas entropy is not extensive.[1] Two identical containers of an ideal gas sit side-by-side. There is a certain amount of entropy ("S") associated with each container of gas, and this depends on the volume of each container. Now a door in the container walls is opened to allow the gas particles to mix between the containers. No macroscopic changes occur, as the system is in equilibrium. The entropy of the gas in the two-container system could be immediately calculated, but if the equation is not extensive, the entropy would not be 2*S. In fact, Gibbs' non-extensive entropy equation would predict additional entropy. Closing the door then reduces the entropy again to 2*S, in supposed violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. As understood by Gibbs,[2] and reemphasized more recently,[3][4] this is a misuse of the entropy equation. If the gas particles are distinguishable, closing the doors will not return the system to its original state - many of the particles will have switched containers. There is a freedom in what is defined as ordered, and it would be a mistake to conclude the entropy had not increased. In particular, Gibbs' non-extensive entropy equation of an ideal gas was not intended for varying numbers of particles. The paradox is averted by concluding the indistinguishability (at least effective indistinguishability) of the particles in the volume. This results in the extensive Sackur-Tetrode equation for entropy, as derived next.
Calculating the entropy of ideal gas, and making it extensive

In classical mechanics, the state of an ideal gas of energy U, volume V and with N particles, each particle having mass m, is represented by specifying the momentum vector p and the position vector x for each particle. This can be thought of as specifying a point in a 6N-dimensional phase space, where each of the axes corresponds to one of the momentum or position coordinates of one of the particles. The set of points in phase space that the gas could occupy is specified by the constraint that the gas will have a particular energy:
and be contained inside of the volume V (let's say V is a box of side X so that V=X3):
Gibbs paradox for : and
386
The first constraint defines the surface of a 3N-dimensional hypersphere of radius (2mU)1/2 and the second is a 3N-dimensional hypercube of volume VN. These combine to form a 6N-dimensional hypercylinder. Just as the area of the wall of a cylinder is the circumference of the base times the height, so the area of the wall of this hypercylinder is:
The entropy is proportional to the logarithm of the number of states that the gas could have while satisfying these constraints. In classical physics, the number of states is infinitely large, but according to quantum mechanics it is finite. Before the advent of quantum mechanics, this infinity was regularized by making phase space discrete. Phase space was divided up in blocks of volume . The constant h thus appeared as a result of a mathematical trick and thought to have no physical significance. However, using quantum mechanics one recovers the same formalism in the semi classical limit, but now with h being Planck's constant. One can qualitatively see this from Heisenberg's uncertainty principle; a volume in N phase space smaller than h3N (h is Planck's constant) cannot be specified. To compute the number of states we must compute the volume in phase space where the system can be found in and divide that by . This leads us to another problem, the volume seems to zero as the region in phase space the system can be in, is an area of zero thickness. This problem is an artifact of having specified the energy U with infinite accuracy. In a generic system without symmetries, a full quantum treatment would yield a discrete non-degenerate set of energy eigenstates. An exact specification of the energy would then fix the precise state the system is in, so the number of states available to the system would be one, the entropy would thus be zero. When we specify the internal energy to be U, what we really mean is that the total energy of the gas lies somewhere in an interval of length around U. Here is taken to be very small, it turns out that the entropy doesn't depend strongly on the choice of for large N. This means that the above "area" must be extended to a shell , so the entropy is given by: of a thickness equal to an uncertainty in momentum
where the constant of proportionality is k, Boltzmann's constant. Using Stirling's approximation for the Gamma function which omits terms of less than order N, the entropy for large N becomes:
This quantity is not extensive as can be seen by considering two identical volumes with the same particle number and the same energy. Suppose the two volumes are separated by a barrier in the beginning. Removing or reinserting the wall is reversible, but the entropy difference after removing the barrier is
which is in contradiction to thermodynamics. This is the Gibbs paradox. The paradox is resolved by postulating that the gas particles are in fact indistinguishable. This means that all states that differ only by a permutation of particles should be considered as the same state. For example, if we have a 2-particle gas and we specify AB as a state of the gas where the first particle (A) has momentum p1 and the second particle (B) has momentum p2, then this state as well as the BA state where the B particle has momentum p1 and the A particle has momentum p2 should be counted as the same state. For an N-particle gas, there are N! states which are identical in this sense, if one assumes that each particle is in a different single particle state. One can safely make this assumption provided the gas isn't at an extremely high density. Under normal conditions, one can thus calculate the volume of phase space occupied by the gas, by dividing Equation 1 by N!. Using the Stirling approximation again for large N, ln(N!) N ln(N) - N, the entropy for large N is:
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which can be easily shown to be extensive. This is the Sackur-Tetrode equation.
The mixing paradox

A closely related paradox is the mixing paradox. Again take a box with a partition in it, with gas A on one side, gas B on the other side, and both gases are at the same temperature and pressure. If gas A and B are different gases, there is an entropy that arises due to the mixing. If the gases are the same, no additional entropy is calculated. The additional entropy from mixing does not depend on the character of the gases. The paradox is that the two gases can be arbitrarily similar, but the entropy from mixing does not disappear unless they are the same gas. The resolution is provided by a careful understanding of entropy. In particular, as explained concisely by Jaynes,[2] there is an arbitrariness in the definition of entropy. A central example in Jaynes' paper relies on the fact that, if one develops a theory based on the idea that the two different types of gas are indistinguishable, and one never carries out any measurement which detects this fact, then the theory will have no internal inconsistencies. In other words, if there are two gases A and B and we have not yet discovered that they are different, then assuming they are the same will cause no theoretical problems. If ever an experiment is performed with these gases that yields incorrect results, we will certainly have discovered a method of detecting their difference and recalculating the entropy increase when the partition is removed. This insight suggests that the idea of thermodynamic state and entropy are somewhat subjective. The differential increase in entropy (dS), as a result of mixing dissimilar element sets (the gases), multiplied by the temperature (T) is equal to the minimum amount of work we must do to restore the gases to their original separated state. Suppose that the two different gases are separated by a partition, but that we cannot detect the difference between them. We remove the partition. How much work does it take to restore the original thermodynamic state? None simply reinsert the partition. The fact that the different gases have mixed does not yield a detectable change in the state of the gas, if by state we mean a unique set of values for all parameters that we have available to us to distinguish states. The minute we become able to distinguish the difference, at that moment the amount of work necessary to recover the original macroscopic configuration becomes non-zero, and the amount of work does not depend on the magnitude of that difference. This line of reasoning is particularly informative when considering the concepts of indistinguishable particles and correct Boltzmann counting. Boltzmann's original expression for the number of states available to a gas assumed that a state could be expressed in terms of a number of energy "sublevels" each of which contain a particular number of particles. While the particles in a given sublevel were considered indistinguishable from each other, particles in different sublevels were considered distinguishable from particles in any other sublevel. This amounts to saying that the exchange of two particles in two different sublevels will result in a detectably different "exchange macrostate" of the gas. For example, if we consider a simple gas with N particles, at sufficiently low density that it is practically certain that each sublevel contains either one particle or none (i.e. a Maxwell-Boltzmann gas), this means that a simple container of gas will be in one of N! detectably different "exchange macrostates", one for each possible particle exchange. Just as the mixing paradox begins with two detectably different containers, and the extra entropy that results upon mixing is proportional to the average amount of work needed to restore that initial state after mixing, so the extra entropy in Boltzmann's original derivation is proportional to the average amount of work required to restore the simple gas from some "exchange macrostate" to its original "exchange macrostate". If we assume that there is in fact no experimentally detectable difference in these "exchange macrostates" available, then using the entropy which results from assuming the particles are indistinguishable will yield a consistent theory. This is "correct Boltzmann counting". It is often said that the resolution to the Gibbs paradox derives from the fact that, according to the quantum theory, like particles are indistinguishable in principle. By Jaynes' reasoning, if the
Gibbs paradox particles are experimentally indistinguishable for whatever reason, Gibbs paradox is resolved, and quantum mechanics only provides an assurance that in the quantum realm, this indistinguishability will be true as a matter of principle, rather than being due to an insufficiently refined experimental capability.
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References
[1] Gibbs, J. Willard (1875-1878). On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances. Connecticut Acad. Sci.. ISBN0-8493-9685-9. Reprinted in Gibbs, J. Willard (October 1993). The Scientific Papers of J. Willard Gibbs (Vol. 1). Ox Bow Press. ISBN0-918024-77-3. Gibbs, J. Willard (February 1994). The Scientific Papers of J. Willard Gibbs (Vol. 2). Ox Bow Press. ISBN1-881987-06-X. [2] Jaynes, E.T. (1996). "The Gibbs Paradox" (http:/ / bayes. wustl. edu/ etj/ articles/ gibbs. paradox. pdf) (PDF). . Retrieved November 8, 2005. [3] The Many Face of Entropy, Harold Grad, 1961 [4] N. G. van Kampen, The Gibbs Paradox in Essays in Theoretical Physics in Honor of Dirk ter Haar, ed. by W. E. Parry (Pergamon, Oxford, 1984).
Tseng, Caticha (2001). Yet another resolution of the Gibbs paradox: an information theory approach. "AIP Conference Proceedings". P. In "Bayesian Inference and Maximum Entropy Methods in Science and Engineering" ed. By R. L. Fry (A.I.P. Vol. 617 (617): 331. arXiv:cond-mat/0109324. doi:10.1063/1.1477057. Dieks, Dennis (2010). "The Gibbs Paradox Revisited". arXiv:1003.0179[quant-ph]. Grad (1964). "The Many Faces of Entropy". N. G. van Kampen (1984?). "The Gibbs Paradox" in Essays in Theoretical Physics: In Honour of Dirk Ter Haar.
External links
Gibbs paradox and its resolutions (http://www.mdpi.org/lin/entropy/gibbs-paradox.htm) - varied collected papers
Hardy's paradox
Hardy's paradox is a thought experiment in quantum mechanics devised by Lucien Hardy[1][2] in which a particle and its antiparticle may interact without annihilating each other. The paradox arises in that this may only occur if the interaction is not observed and so it seemed that one might never be able to confirm this.[3] Experiments[4][5] using the technique of weak measurement[3] have studied an interaction of polarized photons and these have demonstrated that the phenomenon does occur. However, the consequence of these experiments maintain only that past events can be inferred about after their occurrence as a probabilistic wave collapse. These weak measurements are considered by some to be an observation themselves, and therefore part of the causation of wave collapse, making the objective results only a probabilistic function rather than a fixed reality.
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Setup description and the results

The basic building block of Hardys thought experiment are two MachZehnder interferometers for quantum particles. Each interferometer is tuned so that when operating individually particles only ever exit to the same particle detector. For example, for the right hand side interferometer, when operating alone, particles entering in arm would always exit in arm :
In the actual experiment the interferometers are arranged so that part of their arms overlap as shown in the diagram. If the amplitude for the particle in one arm, say , were to be obstructed by a second particle in that collides with it, only the detection of a particle in
Setup for Hardy's thought experiment
amplitude would reach the second beam splitter, and would split into arms affected. For this reason, this scheme was named interaction-free measurement.
and
with equal amplitude. The
would thus indicate the presence of the obstructing particle without the latter being
If both the electron and the positron take arms w in their respective interferometers, they will annihilate with certainty to produce gamma radiation: . Therefore the presence of either particle in its arm will affect the others interferometer output:
The situation can be analyzed in terms of two simultaneous interaction-free measurements: from the point of view of the interferometer on the left, a click at implies the presence of the obstructing electron in . Similarly, for the interferometer on the right, a click at is recordered at implies the presence of the positron in . Indeed, every time a click and and . This would imply (with probability the other particle is found in . If we assume the particles are independent (described by
local hidden variables), we conclude that they can never emerge simultaneously in that they were in and , which cannot occur because of the annihilation process. A paradox then arises because sometimes the particles do emerge simultaneously at p=1/16). Quantum mechanically, the state just before the final beam splitters.
term arises, in fact, from the nonmaximally entangled nature of the
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References
[1] Hardy, Lucien (1992). "Quantum mechanics, local realistic theories, and Lorentz-invariant realistic theories". Physical Review Letters 68 (20): 29812984. Bibcode1992PhRvL..68.2981H. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.68.2981. PMID10045577. [2] Hardy, Lucien (1993). "Nonlocality for two particles without inequalities for almost all entangled states". Physical Review Letters 71 (11): 16651668. Bibcode1993PhRvL..71.1665H. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.71.1665. PMID10054467. [3] Mae-Wan Ho (2008). "Quantum Entanglement and Coherence" (http:/ / books. google. com/ ?id=zPH2L5sN1hsC& pg=PA294& dq="Hardy's+ paradox"). The Rainbow and the Worm. p.294. ISBN9789812832597. . Retrieved 2009-03-19. [4] Lundeen, J. S.; Steinberg, A. M. (2009). "Experimental Joint Weak Measurement on a Photon Pair as a Probe of Hardys Paradox". Physical Review Letters 102 (2): 020404000001. Bibcode2009PhRvL.102b0404L. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.102.020404. [5] Yokota, K.; Yamamoto, T.; Koashi, M.; Imoto, N. (2009). "Direct observation of Hardy's paradox by joint weak measurement with an entangled photon pair". New Journal of Physics 11 (3): 033011. Bibcode2009NJPh...11c3011Y. doi:10.1088/1367-2630/11/3/033011.
Heat death paradox

The heat death paradox, also known as Clausius paradox and thermodynamic paradox,[1] is an argument attempting to use thermodynamics to make deductions about the nature of the universe. Specifically, it attempts to argue against an infinitely old, static model of the universe using reductio ad absurdum. The argument holds that: If the universe were infinite in extent it would also have to be infinitely old. Any hot object transfers heat to its cooler surroundings, until everything is at the same temperature. For two objects at the same temperature as much heat flows from one body as flows from the other, and the net effect is no change. If the universe were infinitely old there must have been enough time for the stars to cool and warm their surroundings. Everywhere should therefore be at the same temperature and there should either be no stars, or everything should be as hot as stars. Since there are stars and the universe is not in thermal equilibrium it can not be infinitely old; since it is not infinitely old it cannot be infinite in extent. The paradox does not arise in steady state or chaotic inflationary cosmologies. They escape the paradox because they are expanding. Radiation is continually being red-shifted by the expansion, causing background cooling.
References
[1] Cucic (2009). "Paradoxes of Thermodynamics and Statistical Physics". arXiv:0912.1756[physics.gen-ph].
Irresistible force paradox
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Irresistible force paradox

The Irresistible force paradox, also the unstoppable force paradox, is a classic paradox formulated as "What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?" This paradox is a form of the omnipotence paradox[1], which is a simple demonstration that challenges omnipotence: ("Can God create a stone so heavy it cannot be lifted, not even by God Himself?"). The immovable object and the irresistible force are both implicitly assumed to be indestructible, or else the question would have a trivial resolution ("it destroys it"). Furthermore, it is assumed that they are two separate entities, since an irresistible force is implicitly an immovable object, and vice versa. Another common answer is: "The former is consumed by the latter, with an immeasurable release of heat" The apparent paradox arises because it rests on two premisesthat there exist such things as irresistible forces and immovable objectswhich cannot both be true at once. If there exists an irresistible force, it follows logically that there cannot be any such thing as an immovable object, and vice versa.[2] [3] [4] In the physical realm the infinite force will not move out quarks from Quark confinement. In philosophical realm there is no force to move everything since the force by definition belongs also to everything.
Origins
An example of this paradox in non-western thought can be found in the origin of the Chinese word for paradox (Chinese: ; pinyin: modn; literally "Spear-Shield"). This term originates from a story (see the Kanbun example) in the 3rd century BC philosophical book Han Feizi.[5] In the story, a man was trying to sell a spear and a shield. When asked how good his spear was, he said that his spear could pierce any shield. Then, when asked how good his shield was, he said that it could defend from all spear attacks. Then one person asked him what would happen if he were to take his spear to strike his shield; the seller could not answer. This led to the idiom of "zxang modn" ( ), or "self-contradictory".[6] Another ancient and mythological example illustrating this theme can be found in the story of the Teumessian fox, who can never be caught, and the hound Laelaps, who never misses what it hunts. Realizing the paradox, Zeus turns both creatures into static stars.
References
[1] [2] [3] [4] http:/ / askville. amazon. com/ unstoppable-force-meets-immovable-object/ AnswerViewer. do?requestId=178007 http:/ / islamicsunrays. com/ when-the-unstoppable-force-meets-the-immovable-object/ http:/ / www. jimloy. com/ logic/ force. html/ http:/ / realitysciencenow. blogspot. co. uk/ 2012/ 01/ what-happens-when-unstoppable-force. html
[5] Han Feizi ( ), chapter 36, Nanyi ( "Collection of Difficulties, No. 1")'. [6] http:/ / islamicsunrays. com/ when-the-unstoppable-force-meets-the-immovable-object/
Ladder paradox
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Ladder paradox
The ladder paradox (or barn-pole paradox) is a thought experiment in special relativity. It involves a ladder travelling horizontally and undergoing a length contraction, the result of which being that it can fit into a much smaller garage. On the other hand, from the point of view of an observer moving with the ladder, it is the garage that is moving and the garage will be contracted to an even smaller size, therefore being unable to contain the ladder at all. This apparent paradox results from the assumption of absolute simultaneity. In relativity, simultaneity is relative to each observer and thus the ladder can fit into the garage in both instances.
Paradox
The problem starts with a ladder and an accompanying garage that is too small to contain the ladder. Through the relativistic effect of length contraction, the ladder can be made to fit into the garage by running it into the garage at a high enough speed.
Figure 1: An overview of the garage and the ladder at rest
However, both the ladder and garage occupy their own inertial reference frames, and thus both frames are equally valid frames to view the problem. From the reference frame of the garage, it is the ladder that moves with a relative velocity and so it is the ladder that undergoes length contraction. Conversely, through symmetry, from the reference frame of the ladder it is the garage that is moving with a relative velocity and so it is the garage that undergoes a length contraction. From this perspective, the garage is made even smaller and it is impossible to fit the ladder into the garage.
Figure 2: In the garage frame, the ladder undergoes length contraction and will therefore fit into the garage.
Figure 3: In the ladder frame, the garage undergoes length contraction and seems too small to contain the ladder.
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Relative simultaneity
The solution to the apparent paradox lies in the fact that what one observer (e.g. the garage) considers as simultaneous does not correspond to what the other observer (e.g. the ladder) considers as simultaneous (relative simultaneity). A clear way of seeing this is to consider a garage with two doors that swing shut to contain the ladder and then open again to let the ladder out the other side. From the perspective of the garage, the length-contracted ladder is short enough to fit entirely inside. The instant the ladder is fully inside the garage, the front and back doors close simultaneously. Then, since the ladder is still moving at considerable speed, the front and back doors simultaneously open again to allow the ladder to exit. From the perspective of the ladder, the back door (right) closes and opens, then after the garage passes over the ladder, the front door (left) closes and opens. The situation is illustrated in the Minkowski diagram below. The diagram is in the rest frame of the garage. The vertical light-blue-shaded band shows the garage in space-time, the light-red band shows the ladder in space-time. The x and t axes are the garage space and time axes, respectively, and x and t are the ladder space and time axes, respectively. The ladder is moving at a velocity of in the positive x direction, therefore . (From the ladder's point of
Figure 4: Scenario in the garage frame: a length contracted ladder entering and exiting the garage
view, its speed in the x direction is the same.) Since light travels at very close to one foot per nanosecond, lets work in these units, so that the front of the ladder will hit the back of the garage at time (if . The is chosen
garage is a small one, G=10 feet long, while in the ladder frame, the ladder is L=12 feet long. In the garage frame, as the reference point). This is shown as event A on the diagram. All lines parallel to the garage x axis will be simultaneous according to the garage observer, so the dark blue line AB will be what the garage observer sees as the ladder at the time of event A. The ladder is contained inside the garage. However, from the point of view of the observer on the ladder, the dark red line AC is what the ladder observer sees as the ladder. The back of the ladder is outside the garage.
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Figure 5: Scenario in the ladder frame: a length contracted garage passing over the ladder
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Figure 6: A Minkowski diagram of ladder paradox. The garage is shown in light blue, the ladder in light red. The diagram is in the rest frame of the garage, with x and t being the garage space and time axes, respectively. The ladder frame is for a person sitting on the front of the ladder, with x and t being the ladder space and time axes respectively. The x and x axes are each 5 feet (unknown operator: u'strong'm) long in their respective frames, and the t and t axes are each 5ns in duration.
Resolution
In the context of the paradox, when the ladder enters the garage and is contained within it, it must either continue out the back or come to a complete stop. When the ladder comes to a complete stop, it accelerates into the reference frame of the garage. From the reference frame of the garage, all parts of the ladder come to a complete stop simultaneously, and thus all parts must accelerate simultaneously. From the reference frame of the ladder, it is the garage that is moving, and so in order to be stopped with respect to the garage, the ladder must accelerate into the reference frame of the garage. All parts of the ladder cannot accelerate simultaneously because of relative simultaneity. What happens is that each part of the ladder accelerates sequentially, front to back, until finally the back end of the ladder accelerates when it is within the garage, the result of which is that, from the reference frame of the ladder, the front parts undergo length contraction sequentially until the entire ladder fits into the garage.
Figure 7: A ladder contracting under acceleration to fit into a length contracted garage
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Figure 8: A Minkowski diagram of the case where the ladder is stopped all along its length, simultaneously in the garage frame. When this occurs, the garage frame sees the ladder as AB, but the ladder frame sees the ladder as AC. When the back of the ladder enters the garage at point D, it has not yet felt the effects of the acceleration of its front end. At this time, according to someone at rest with respect to the back of the ladder, the front of the ladder will be at point E and will see the ladder as DE. It is seen that this length in the ladder frame is not the same as CA, the rest length of the ladder before the deceleration.
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Ladder paradox and transmission of force

What if the back door (the door the ladder exits out of) is closed permanently and does not open? Suppose that the door is so solid that the ladder will not penetrate it when it collides, so it must stop. Then, as in the scenario described above, in the frame of reference of the garage, there is a moment when the ladder is completely within the garage (i.e. the back of the ladder is inside the front door), before it collides with the back door and stops. However, from the frame of reference of the ladder, the ladder is too big to fit in the garage, so by the time it collides with the back door and stops, the back of the ladder still has not reached the front door. This seems to be a paradox. The question is, does the back of the ladder cross the front door or not? The difficulty arises mostly from the assumption that the ladder is rigid (i.e. maintains the same shape). Ladders seem pretty rigid in everyday life. But being rigid requires that it can transfer force at infinite speed (i.e. when you push one end the other end must react immediately, otherwise the ladder will deform). This contradicts special relativity, which states that information can only travel at most the speed of light (which is pretty fast for us to notice in real life, but is significant in the ladder scenario). So objects cannot be perfectly rigid under special relativity.
Figure 1: A Minkowski diagram of the case where the ladder is stopped by impact with the back wall of the garage. The impact is event A. At impact, the garage frame sees the ladder as AB, but the ladder frame sees the ladder as AC. The ladder does not move out of the garage, so its front end now goes directly upward, through point E. The back of the ladder will not change its trajectory in space-time until it feels the effects of the impact. The effect of the impact can propagate outward from A no faster than the speed of light, so the back of the ladder will never feel the effects of the impact until point F or later, at which time the ladder is well within the garage in both frames. Note that when the diagram is drawn in the frame of the ladder, the speed of light is the same, but the ladder is longer, so it takes more time for the force to reach the back end; this gives enough time for the back of the ladder to move inside the garage.
In this case, by the time the front of the ladder collides with the back door, the back of the ladder does not know it yet, so it keeps moving forwards (and the ladder kind of "compresses"). In both the frame of the garage and the inertial frame of the ladder, the back end keeps moving at the time of the collision, until at least the point where the back of the ladder comes into the light cone of the collision (i.e. a point where force moving backwards at the speed of light from the point of the collision will reach it). At this point the ladder is actually shorter than the original contracted length, so the back end is well inside the garage. Calculations in both frames of reference will show this to be the case. What happens after the force reaches the back of the ladder (the "green" zone in the diagram) is not specified. Depending on the physics, the ladder could break into a million pieces; or, if it were sufficiently elastic, it could re-expand to its original length and push the back end out of the garage.
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Man falling into grate variation

This paradox was originally proposed and solved by Wolfgang Rindler[1] and involved a fast walking man, represented by a rod, falling into a grate.[2] It is assumed that the rod is entirely over the grate in the grate frame of reference before the downward acceleration begins simultaneously and equally applied to each point in the rod. From the perspective of the grate, the rod undergoes a length contraction and fits into the grate. However, from the perspective of the rod, it is the grate undergoing a length contraction, through which it seems the rod is then too long to fall. In fact, the downward acceleration of the rod, which is simultaneous in the grate's frame of reference, is not simultaneous in the rod's frame of reference. In the rod's frame of reference, the bottom of the front of the rod is first accelerated downward (not shown in drawing), and as time goes by, more and more of the rod is subjected to the downward acceleration, until finally the back of the rod is accelerated downward. This results in A man (represented by a segmented rod) falling into a grate a bending of the rod in the rod's frame of reference. It should be stressed that, since this bending occurs in the rod's rest frame, it is a true physical distortion of the rod which will cause stresses to occur in the rod.
Bar and ring paradox

The above paradox is complicated: It involves non-inertial frames of reference since at one moment the man is walking horizontally, and a moment later he is falling downward. It involves a physical deformation of the man (or segmented rod), since the rod is bent in one frame of reference and straight in another. These aspects of the problem introduce complications involving the stiffness of the bar which tends to obscure the real nature of the "paradox". A very similar but simpler problem involving only inertial frames
The diagram on the left illustrates a bar and a ring in the rest frame of the ring at the instant that their centers coincide. The bar is Lorentz-contracted and moving upward and to the right while the ring is stationary and uncontracted. The diagram on the right illustrates the situation at the same instant, but in the rest frame of the bar. The ring is now Lorentz-contracted and rotated with respect to the bar, and the bar is uncontracted. Again, the ring passes over the bar without touching it.
Ladder paradox is the "bar and ring" paradox (Ferraro 2007) in which a bar which is slightly larger in length than the diameter of a ring is moving upward and to the right with its long axis horizontal, while the ring is stationary and the plane of the ring is also horizontal. If the motion of the bar is such that the center of the bar coincides with the center of the ring at some point in time, then the bar will be Lorentz-contracted due to the forward component of its motion, and it will pass through the ring. The paradox occurs when the problem is considered in the rest frame of the bar. The ring is now moving downward and to the left, and will be Lorentz-contracted along its horizontal length, while the bar will not be contracted at all. How can the bar pass through the ring? The resolution of the paradox again lies in the relativity of simultaneity (Ferraro 2007). The length of a physical object is defined as the distance between two simultaneous events occurring at each end of the body, and since simultaneity is relative, so is this length. This variability in length is just the Lorentz contraction. Similarly, a physical angle is defined as the angle formed by three simultaneous events, and this angle will also be a relative quantity. In the above paradox, although the rod and the plane of the ring are parallel in the rest frame of the ring, they are not parallel in the rest frame of the rod. The uncontracted rod passes through the Lorentz-contracted ring because the plane of the ring is rotated relative to the rod by an amount sufficient to let the rod pass through. In mathematical terms, a Lorentz transformation can be separated into the product of a spatial rotation and a "proper" Lorentz transformation which involves no spatial rotation. The mathematical resolution of the bar and ring paradox is based on the fact that the product of two proper Lorentz transformations may produce a Lorentz transformation which is not proper, but rather includes a spatial rotation component.
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References
[1] Rindler, Wolfgang (1961). "Length Contraction Paradox". American Journal of Physics 29 (6): 365366. Bibcode1961AmJPh..29..365R. doi:10.1119/1.1937789. [2] Edwin F. Taylor, John Archibald Wheeler (1992). Spacetime Physics: Introduction to Special Relativity. New York: W. H. Freeman. pp.116. ISBN0-7167-2327-1.
Wells, Willard H. (1961). "Length paradox in relativity". American Journal of Physics 29 (12): 858-858. Bibcode1961AmJPh..29..858W. doi:10.1119/1.1937641. Shaw, R. (1962). "Length contraction paradox". American Journal of Physics 30 (1): 72-72. Bibcode1962AmJPh..30...72S. doi:10.1119/1.1941907. Martins, Roberto De A. (1978). "Length paradox in relativity". American Journal of Physics 46 (6): 667670. Bibcode1978AmJPh..46..667M. doi:10.1119/1.11227. Sastry, G. P. (1987). "Is length contraction really paradoxical?". American Journal of Physics 55 (10): 943946. Bibcode1987AmJPh..55..943S. doi:10.1119/1.14911. Grn, yvind; Johannesen, Steinar (1993). "Computer simulation of Rindler's length contraction paradox". European Journal of Physics 14 (3): 97100. Bibcode1993EJPh...14...97G. doi:10.1088/0143-0807/14/3/001. van Lintel, Harald; Gruber, Christian (2005). "The rod and hole paradox re-examined". European Journal of Physics 26 (1): 1923. Bibcode2005EJPh...26...19V. doi:10.1088/0143-0807/26/1/003. Iyer, Chandru; Prabhu, G. M. (2008). "Reversal in the time order of interactive events: the collision of inclined rods". European Journal of Physics 27 (4): 819824. arXiv:0809.1721. Bibcode2006EJPh...27..819I. doi:10.1088/0143-0807/27/4/013. Pierce, Evan (2007). "The lock and key paradox and the limits of rigidity in special relativity". American Journal of Physics 75 (7): 610614. Bibcode2007AmJPh..75..610P. doi:10.1119/1.2711827. Iyer, Chandru; Prabhu, G. M. (2008). "Differing observations on the landing of the rod into the slot". American Journal of Physics 74 (11): 9981001. arXiv:0809.1740. Bibcode2006AmJPh..74..998I. doi:10.1119/1.2346686. McGlynn, Enda; van Kampen, Paul (2008). "A note on linking electrical current, magnetic fields, charges and the pole in a barn paradox in special relativity". European Journal of Physics 29 (6): N63-N67.
Ladder paradox Bibcode2008EJPh...29...63M. doi:10.1088/0143-0807/29/6/N03.
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Further reading
Edwin F. Taylor and John Archibald Wheeler, Spacetime Physics (2nd ed) (Freeman, NY, 1992) - discusses various apparent SR paradoxes and their solutions Rindler, Wolfgang (2001). Relativity: Special, General and Cosmological. Oxford University Press. ISBN0-19-850836-0. Ferraro, Rafael (2007). Einstein's space-time: an introduction to special and general relativity (http://books. google.com/books?id=wa3CskhHaIgC&dq=relativity+bar+and+ring). Springer. ISBN9780387699462.
External links
Special Relativity Animations (http://math.ucr.edu/~jdp/Relativity/SpecialRelativity.html) from John de Pillis.This inter-active animated train-and-tunnel paradox is an analog of the pole (train) and barn (tunnel) paradox.
Loschmidt's paradox
Loschmidt's paradox, also known as the reversibility paradox, is the objection that it should not be possible to deduce an irreversible process from time-symmetric dynamics. This puts the time reversal symmetry of (almost) all known low-level fundamental physical processes at odds with any attempt to infer from them the second law of thermodynamics which describes the behaviour of macroscopic systems. Both of these are well-accepted principles in physics, with sound observational and theoretical support, yet they seem to be in conflict; hence the paradox. Johann Loschmidt's criticism was provoked by the H-theorem of Boltzmann, which was an attempt to explain using kinetic theory the increase of entropy in an ideal gas from a non-equilibrium state, when the molecules of the gas are allowed to collide. In 1876, Loschmidt pointed out that if there is a motion of a system from time t0 to time t1 to time t2 that leads to a steady decrease of H (increase of entropy) with time, then there is another allowed state of motion of the system at t1, found by reversing all the velocities, in which H must increase. This revealed that one of the key assumptions in Boltzmann's theorem was flawed, namely that of molecular chaos, that all the particle velocities were completely uncorrelated. One can assert that the correlations are uninteresting, and therefore decide to ignore them; but if one does so, one has changed the conceptual system, injecting an element of time-asymmetry by that very action. Reversible laws of motion cannot explain why we experience our world to be in such a comparatively low state of entropy at the moment (compared to the equilibrium entropy of universal heat death); and to have been at even lower entropy in the past.
Arrow of time
Any process that happens regularly in the forward direction of time but rarely or never in the opposite direction, such as entropy increasing in an isolated system, defines what physicists call an arrow of time in nature. This term only refers to an observation of an asymmetry in time, it is not meant to suggest an explanation for such asymmetries. Loschmidt's paradox is equivalent to the question of how it is possible that there could be a thermodynamic arrow of time given time-symmetric fundamental laws, since time-symmetry implies that for any process compatible with these fundamental laws, a reversed version that looked exactly like a film of the first process played backwards would be equally compatible with the same fundamental laws, and would even be equally probable if one were to pick the system's initial state randomly from the phase space of all possible states for that system.
Loschmidt's paradox Although most of the arrows of time described by physicists are thought to be special cases of the thermodynamic arrow, there are a few that are believed to be unconnected, like the cosmological arrow of time based on the fact that the universe is expanding rather than contracting, and the fact that a few processes in particle physics actually violate time-symmetry, while they respect a related symmetry known as CPT symmetry. In the case of the cosmological arrow, most physicists believe that entropy would continue to increase even if the universe began to contract (although the physicist Thomas Gold once proposed a model in which the thermodynamic arrow would reverse in this phase). In the case of the violations of time-symmetry in particle physics, the situations in which they occur are rare and are only known to involve a few types of meson particles. Furthermore, due to CPT symmetry reversal of time direction is equivalent to renaming particles as antiparticles and vice versa. Therefore this cannot explain Loschmidt's paradox.
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Dynamical systems
Current research in dynamical systems offers one possible mechanism for obtaining irreversibility from reversible systems. The central argument is based on the claim that the correct way to study the dynamics of macroscopic systems is to study the transfer operator corresponding to the microscopic equations of motion. It is then argued that the transfer operator is not unitary (i.e. is not reversible) but has eigenvalues whose magnitude is strictly less than one; these eigenvalues corresponding to decaying physical states. This approach is fraught with various difficulties; it works well for only a handful of exactly solvable models.[1] Abstract mathematical tools used in the study of dissipative systems include definitions of mixing, wandering sets, and ergodic theory in general.
Fluctuation theorem
One approach to handling Loschmidt's paradox is the fluctuation theorem, proved by Denis Evans and Debra Searles, which gives a numerical estimate of the probability that a system away from equilibrium will have a certain change in entropy over a certain amount of time. The theorem is proved with the exact time reversible dynamical equations of motion and the Axiom of Causality. The fluctuation theorem is proved utilizing the fact that dynamics is time reversible. Quantitative predictions of this theorem have been confirmed in laboratory experiments at the Australian National University conducted by Edith M. Sevick et al. using optical tweezers apparatus. However, the fluctuation theorem assumes that the system is initially in a non-equilibrium state, so it can be argued that the theorem only verifies the time-asymmetry of the second law of thermodynamics based on an a priori assumption of time-asymmetric boundary conditions. If no low-entropy boundary conditions in the past are assumed, the fluctuation theorem should give exactly the same predictions in the reverse time direction as it does in the forward direction, meaning that if you observe a system in a nonequilibrium state, you should predict that its entropy was more likely to have been higher at earlier times as well as later times. This prediction would be at odds with everyday experience, since if you film a typical nonequilibrium system and play the film in reverse, you typically see the entropy steadily decreasing rather than increasing. Thus we still have no explanation for the arrow of time that is defined by the observation that the fluctuation theorem gives correct predictions in the forward direction but not the backward direction, so the fundamental paradox remains unsolved. Note, however, that if you were looking at an isolated system which had reached equilibrium long in the past, so that any departures from equilibrium were the result of random fluctuations, then the backwards prediction would be just as accurate as the forward one, because if you happen to see the system in a nonequilibrium state it is overwhelmingly likely that you are looking at the minimum-entropy point of the random fluctuation (if it were truly random, there's no reason to expect it to continue to drop to even lower values of entropy, or to expect it had dropped to even lower levels earlier), meaning that entropy was probably higher in both the past and the future of that state. So, the fact that the time-reversed version of the fluctuation theorem does not ordinarily give accurate predictions in the real world is reason to think that the nonequilibrium state of the universe at the present moment is not simply a
Loschmidt's paradox result of a random fluctuation, and that there must be some other explanation such as the Big Bang starting the universe off in a low-entropy state (see below).
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The Big Bang

Another way of dealing with Loschmidt's paradox is to see the second law as an expression of a set of boundary conditions, in which our universe's time coordinate has a low-entropy starting point: the Big Bang. From this point of view, the arrow of time is determined entirely by the direction that leads away from the Big Bang, and a hypothetical universe with a maximum-entropy Big Bang would have no arrow of time. The theory of cosmic inflation tries to give reason why the early universe had such a low entropy.
References
[1] Dean J. Driebe, Fully Chaotic Maps and Broken Time Symmetry, (1999) Kluwer Academic ISBN 0-7923-5564-4
J. Loschmidt, Sitzungsber. Kais. Akad. Wiss. Wien, Math. Naturwiss. Classe 73, 128142 (1876)
External links
Reversible laws of motion and the arrow of time (http://www.nyu.edu/classes/tuckerman/stat.mech/lectures/ lecture_3/node2.html) by Mark Tuckerman A toy system with time-reversible discrete dynamics showing entropy increase (http://www.scientificblogging. com/hammock_physicist/fibonacci_chaos_and_times_arrow)
Mpemba effect
The Mpemba effect is the observation that warmer water can sometimes freeze faster than colder water. Although the observation has been verified, there is no single scientific explanation for the effect.
Historical observations
Similar behavior was observed by ancient scientists such as Aristotle,[1] and early modern scientists such as Francis Bacon[2] and Ren Descartes.[3] Aristotle's explanation involved an erroneous property he called antiperistasis, defined as "the supposed increase in the intensity of a quality as a result of being surrounded by its contrary quality".
Origin
The effect is named after Tanzanian Erasto Mpemba. He first encountered the phenomenon in 1963 in Form 3 of Magamba Secondary School, Tanganyika when freezing ice cream mix that was hot in cookery classes and noticing that they froze before cold mixes. After passing his O-level examinations, he became a student at Mkwawa Secondary (formerly High) School, Iringa, Tanzania. The headmaster invited Dr. Denis G. Osborne from the University College in Dar Es Salaam to give a lecture on physics. After the lecture, Erasto Mpemba asked him the question "If you take two similar containers with equal volumes of water, one at 35 C (unknown operator: u'strong'F) and the other at 100 C (unknown operator: u'strong'F), and put them into a freezer, the one that started at 100 C (unknown operator: u'strong'F) freezes first. Why?" only to be ridiculed by his classmates and teacher. After initial consternation, Dr. Osborne experimented on the issue back at his workplace and confirmed Mpemba's finding. They published the results together in 1968.[4]
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Causes
Osborne observed that the top is warmer than the bottom in a beaker of water being cooled, the difference being sustained by convection. Blocking heat transfer from the top with a film of oil drastically slowed cooling. Also, the effect of dissolved air was accounted for by using boiled water. The beakers were also insulated from the bottom. At first sight, the behaviour seems contrary to thermodynamics. Many standard physical theory effects contribute to the phenomenon, although no single explanation is conclusive. Several effects may contribute to the observation, depending on the experimental set-up: Definition of frozen: Is it the physical definition of the point at which water forms a visible surface layer of ice, or the point at which the entire volume of water becomes a solid block of ice? Some experiments have instead measured the time until the water reached 0C.[5] Evaporation: The evaporation of the warmer water reduces the mass of the water to be frozen.[6] Evaporation is endothermic, meaning that the water mass is cooled by vapor carrying away the heat, but this alone probably does not account for the entirety of the effect.[7] Convection: Accelerating heat transfers. Reduction of water density below 4 C (unknown operator: u'strong'F) tends to suppress the convection currents that cool the lower part of the liquid mass; the lower density of hot water would reduce this effect, perhaps sustaining the more rapid initial cooling. Higher convection in the warmer water may also spread ice crystals around faster.[8] Frost: Has insulating effects. The lower temperature water will tend to freeze from the top, reducing further heat loss by radiation and air convection, while the warmer water will tend to freeze from the bottom and sides because of water convection. This is disputed as there are experiments that account for this factor. Supercooling: It is hypothesized that cold water, when placed in a freezing environment, supercools more than hot water in the same environment, thus solidifying slower than hot water.[9] However, supercooling tends to be less significant where there are particles that act as nuclei for ice crystals, thus precipitating rapid freezing. Solutes: The effects of calcium, magnesium carbonate among others.[10] The effect of heating on dissolved gases; however, this was accounted for in the original article by using boiled water.
Scalar functionality
According to an article by Monwhea Jeng: "Analysis of the situation is now quite complex, since we are no longer considering a single parameter, but a scalar function, and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is notoriously difficult."[7] This effect is a heat transfer problem,[11][12][13][14] and therefore well suited to be studied from a transport phenomena viewpoint, based on continuum mechanics. When heat transfer is analyzed in terms of partial differential equations, whose solutions depend on a number of conditions, it becomes clear that measuring only a few lumped parameters, such as the water average temperature is generally insufficient to define the system behaviour, since conditions such as geometry, fluid properties and temperature and flow fields play an important role. The counterintuitiveness of the effect, if analyzed only in terms of simplified thermodynamics illustrates the need to include all the relevant variables and use the best available theoretical tools when approaching a physical problem.[11][12][13][14]
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Recent view of the Mpemba effect

A reviewer for Physics World writes, "Even if the Mpemba effect is real if hot water can sometimes freeze more quickly than cold it is not clear whether the explanation would be trivial or illuminating." He pointed out that investigations of the phenomenon need to control a large number of initial parameters (including type and initial temperature of the water, dissolved gas and other impurities, and size, shape and material of the container, and temperature of the refrigerator) and need to settle on a particular method of establishing the time of freezing, all of which might affect the presence or absence of the Mpemba effect. The required vast multidimensional array of experiments might explain why the effect is not yet understood.[5] New Scientist recommends starting the experiment with containers at 35 C (unknown operator: u'strong'F) and 5 C (unknown operator: u'strong'F) to maximize the effect.[15]
References
[1] Aristotle, Meteorology (http:/ / classics. mit. edu/ Aristotle/ meteorology. 1. i. html) I.12 348b31349a4: "The fact that the water has previously been warmed contributes to its freezing quickly: for so it cools sooner. Hence many people, when they want to cool hot water quickly, begin by putting it in the sun. So the inhabitants of Pontus when they encamp on the ice to fish (they cut a hole in the ice and then fish) pour warm water round their reeds that it may freeze the quicker, for they use the ice like lead to fix the reeds". Trans. by E. W. Webster. [2] Francis Bacon Novum Organum, Lib. II (http:/ / www. thelatinlibrary. com/ bacon/ bacon. liber2. shtml), L, "slightly tepid water freezes more easily than that which is utterly cold". In the original Latin "aqua parum tepida facilius conglacietur quam omnino frigida" [3] Descartes, Les Meteores (http:/ / posner. library. cmu. edu/ Posner/ books/ pages. cgi?call=423_D44D_1637& layout=vol0/ part0/ copy0& file=0247), Discours Premier "One can see by experience that water that has been kept on a fire for a long time freezes faster than other, the reason being that those of its particles that are least able to stop bending evaporate while the water is being heated". In the original French "Et on peut voir aussy par experience que l'eau qu'on a tenue longuement sur le feu se gele plutot que d'autre, dont la raison est que celles de ses parties, qui peuvent le moins cesser de se plier, s'evaporent pendant qu'on la chauffe." Descartes' explanation here relates to his theory of vortices. [4] Mpemba, Erasto B.; Osborne, Denis G. (1969). "Cool?". Physics Education (Institute of Physics) 4 (3): 172175. Bibcode1969PhyEd...4..172M. doi:10.1088/0031-9120/4/3/312. [5] Ball, P. (April 2006). "Does hot water freeze first?" (http:/ / physicsweb. org/ articles/ world/ 19/ 4/ 4) ( Scholar search (http:/ / scholar. google. co. uk/ scholar?hl=en& lr=& q=author:Ball+ intitle:Does+ hot+ water+ freeze+ first?& as_publication=Physics+ World& as_ylo=2006& as_yhi=2006& btnG=Search)). Physics World 19 (4): 1921. . [6] Kell, G. S. (1969). "The freezing of hot and cold water". Am. J. Phys. 37 (5): 564565. Bibcode1969AmJPh..37..564K. doi:10.1119/1.1975687. [7] Jeng, Monwhea (2006). "Hot water can freeze faster than cold?!?". American Journal of Physics 74 (6): 514. arXiv:physics/0512262. doi:10.1119/1.2186331. arXiv:physics/0512262v1. [8] CITV Prove It! Series 1 Programme 13 (http:/ / www. proveit. tv/ series-1/ fs. html?p=13& s=3) [9] S. Esposito, R. De Risi and L. Somma (2008). "Mpemba effect and phase transitions in the adiabatic cooling of water before freezing". Physica A 387 (4): 757763. arXiv:0704.1381. Bibcode2008PhyA..387..757E. doi:10.1016/j.physa.2007.10.029. [10] Katz, Jonathan (April 2006). "When hot water freezes before cold". arXiv:physics/0604224[physics.chem-ph]. [11] Knight, Charles A. (1996-05). "The Mpemba effect: the freezing times of hot and cold water". American Journal of Physics 64 (5): 524. Bibcode1996AmJPh..64..524K. doi:10.1119/1.18275. [12] Auerbach, David (1995). "Supercooling and the Mpemba effect: when hot water freezes faster than cold". American Journal of Physics 63 (10): 882885. Bibcode1995AmJPh..63..882A. doi:10.1119/1.18059. [13] Dorsey, N. Ernest (1948-11). "The Freezing of Supercoold Water". Transactions of the American Philosophical Society (American Philosophical Society) 38 (3): 247328. doi:10.2307/1005602. JSTOR1005602. [14] Dorsey, N. Ernest (1940). Properties of ordinary water-substance in all its phases: water vapor, water, and all the ices. New York: Reinhold Publishing Corporation. [15] How to Fossilise Your Hamster: And Other Amazing Experiments For The Armchair Scientist, ISBN 1846680441
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Bibliography
Dorsey, N. Ernest (1948). "The freezing of supercooled water". Trans. Am. Phil. Soc. (American Philosophical Society) 38 (3): 247326. doi:10.2307/1005602. JSTOR1005602. An extensive study of freezing experiments. Auerbach, David (1995). "Supercooling and the Mpemba effect: when hot water freezes quicker than cold" (http:/ /robot-tag.com/evan/ajp-mpemba.pdf). American Journal of Physics 63 (10): 882885. Bibcode1995AmJPh..63..882A. doi:10.1119/1.18059. Auerbach attributes the Mpemba effect to differences in the behaviour of supercooled formerly hot water and formerly cold water. Knight, Charles A. (May 1996). "The MPEMBA effect: The freezing times of hot and cold water" (http:// scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=AJPIAS000064000005000524000001& idtype=cvips&gifs=Yes). American Journal of Physics 64 (5): 524. Bibcode1996AmJPh..64..524K. doi:10.1119/1.18275. Monwhea, Jeng (2006). "The Mpemba effect: When can hot water freeze faster than cold?". American Journal of Physics 74 (6): 514. arXiv:physics/0512262. doi:10.1119/1.2186331. Chown, Marcus (June 2006). "Why water freezes faster after heating" (http://www.eurekalert.org/ pub_releases/2006-05/ns-wwf053106.php). New scientist.
External links
Mpemba, E B; Osborne, D G. "The Mpemba effect" (http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/0031-9120/14/7/312/ pev14i7p410.pdf). Institute of Physics. Adams, Cecil; Mary M.Q.C. (1996). "Which freezes faster, hot water or cold water?" (http://www.straightdope. com/classics/a2_098b.html). The Straight Dope. Chicago Reader, Inc. Retrieved January 2008. Brownridge, James (2010). "A search for the Mpemba effect: When hot water freezes faster than cold water". arXiv:1003.3185[physics.pop-ph]. "Heat questions" (http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/freezhot.html). HyperPhysics. Georgia State University. assabs.harvard.edu (http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PHY& db_key=PRE&sim_query=YES&aut_xct=NO&aut_logic=OR&obj_logic=OR&author=&object=& start_mon=&start_year=&end_mon=&end_year=&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=Mpemba+& nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL& start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=& end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES& txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&obj_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES& ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1) article collection. "The Mpemba Effect" (http://www.thecolourblue.co.uk/mpemba.shtml). - History and analysis of the Mpemba Effect. Jeng, Monwhea (November 1998). "Can hot water freeze faster than cold water?" (http://math.ucr.edu/home/ baez/physics/General/hot_water.html). in the University of California Usenet Physics FAQ "The Phase Anomalies of Water: Hot Water may Freeze Faster than Cold Water" (http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/ water/explan.html#mpemba). An analysis of the Mpemba effect. London South Bank University. "Mpemba effect: Why hot water can freeze faster than cold" (http://www.physorg.com/news188801988.html). A possible explanation of the Mpemba Effect
Olbers' paradox
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Olbers' paradox
In astrophysics and physical cosmology, Olbers' paradox, named after the German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers and also called the "dark night sky paradox", is the argument that the darkness of the night sky conflicts with the assumption of an infinite and eternal static universe. The darkness of the night sky is one of the pieces of evidence for a non-static universe such as the Big Bang model. If the universe is static and populated by an infinite number of stars, any sight line from Earth must end at the (very bright) surface of a star, so the night sky should be completely bright. This contradicts the observed darkness of the night.
History
Olbers' paradox in action
Harrison's (1987) is the definitive account to date of the dark night sky paradox, seen as a problem in the history of science. According to Harrison, the first to conceive of anything like the paradox was Thomas Digges, who was also the first to expound the Copernican system in English and may have been the first to postulate an infinite universe with infinitely many stars. Kepler also posed the problem in 1610, and the paradox took its mature form in the 18th century work of Halley and Cheseaux. The paradox is commonly attributed to the German amateur astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers, who described it in 1823, but Harrison shows convincingly that Olbers was far from the first to pose the problem, nor was his thinking about it particularly valuable. Harrison argues that the first to set out a satisfactory resolution of the paradox was Lord Kelvin, in a little known 1901 paper,[1] and that Edgar Allan Poe's essay Eureka (1848) curiously anticipated some qualitative aspects of Kelvin's argument: Were the succession of stars endless, then the background of the sky would present us a uniform luminosity, like that displayed by the Galaxy since there could be absolutely no point, in all that background, at which would not exist a star. The only mode, therefore, in which, under such a state of affairs, we could comprehend the voids which our telescopes find in innumerable directions, would be by supposing the distance of the invisible background so immense that no ray from it has yet been able to reach us at all.[2]
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The paradox
The paradox is that a static, infinitely old universe with an infinite number of stars distributed in an infinitely large space would be bright rather than dark. To show this we divide the universe in to a series of concentric shells, 1 light year thick (say). Thus a certain number of stars will be in the shell 1,000,000,000 to 1,000,000,001 light years away, say. If the universe is homogeneous at a large scale, then there would be four times as many stars in a second shell between 2,000,000,000 to 2,000,000,001 light years away. However, the second shell is twice as far away, so each star in it would appear four times dimmer than the first shell. Thus the total light received from the second shell is the same as the total light received from the first shell.
Thus each shell of a given thickness will produce the same net amount of light regardless of how far away it is. That is, the light of each shell adds to the total amount. Thus the more shells, the more light. And with infinitely many shells there would be a bright night sky. Dark clouds could obstruct the light. But in that case the clouds would heat up, until they were as hot as stars, and then radiated the same amount of light. Kepler saw this as an argument for a finite observable universe, or at least for a finite number of stars. In general relativity theory, it is still possible for the paradox to hold in a finite universe:[3] though the sky would not be infinitely bright, every point in the sky would still be like the surface of a star.
What if every line of sight ended in a star? (Infinite universe assumption #2)
The mainstream explanation

In order to explain Olbers' paradox, it is necessary to account for the relatively low brightness of the night sky in relation to the circle of our sun. The universe is only finitely old, and stars have existed only for part of that time. So, as Poe suggested, the Earth receives no starlight from beyond a certain distance, corresponding to the age of the oldest stars. Space is sufficiently rarefied that most lines from the Earth do not touch any star within this distance of Earth. However, the Big Bang theory introduces a new paradox: it states that the sky was much brighter in the past, especially at the end of the recombination era, when it first became transparent. All points of the local sky at that era were brighter than the circle of the sun, due to the high temperature of the universe in that prehistoric era; and we have seen that most light rays will terminate not in a star but in the relic of the Big Bang. This paradox is explained by the fact that the Big Bang Theory also involves the expansion of space which can cause the energy of emitted
In a universe of three dimensions with stars distributed evenly, the number of stars would be proportional to volume. If the surface of concentric sphere shells were considered, the number of stars on each shell would be proportional to the square of the radius of the shell. In the picture above, the shells are reduced to rings in two dimensions with all of the stars on them.
Olbers' paradox light to be reduced via redshift. More specifically, the extreme levels of radiation from the Big Bang have been redshifted to microwave wavelengths (1100 times lower than its original wavelength) as a result of the cosmic expansion, and thus form the cosmic microwave background radiation. This explains the relatively low light densities present in most of our sky despite the assumed bright nature of the Big Bang. The redshift also affects light from distant stars and quasars, but the diminution is only an order of magnitude or so, since the most distant galaxies and quasars have redshifts of only around 5 to 8.6.
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Alternative explanations
Steady State
The redshift hypothesised in the Big Bang model would by itself explain the darkness of the night sky, even if the universe were infinitely old. The steady state cosmological model assumed that the universe is infinitely old and uniform in time as well as space. There is no Big Bang in this model, but there are stars and quasars at arbitrarily great distances. The light from these distant stars and quasars will be redshifted accordingly (by thermalisation), so that the total light flux from the sky remains finite. Thus the observed radiation density (the sky brightness of extragalactic background light) can be independent of finiteness of the Universe. Mathematically, the total electromagnetic energy density (radiation energy density) in thermodynamic equilibrium from Planck's law is
e.g. for temperature 2.7K it is 40fJ/m3...4.51031kg/m3 and for visible 6000K we get 1J/m3...1.11017kg/m3. But the total radiation emitted by a star (or other cosmic object) is at most equal to the total nuclear binding energy of isotopes in the star. For the density of the observable universe of about 4.61028kg/m3 and given the known abundance of the chemical elements, the corresponding maximal radiation energy density of 9.21031 kg/m3, i.e. temperature 3.2K.[4][5] This is close to the summed energy density of the cosmic microwave background and the cosmic neutrino background. The Big Bang hypothesis, by contrast, predicts that the CBR should have the same energy density as the binding energy density of the primordial helium, which is much greater than the binding energy density of the non-primordial elements; so it gives almost the same result. But (neglecting quantum fluctuations in the early universe) the Big Bang would also predict a uniform distribution of CBR, while the steady-state model predicts nothing about its distribution. Nevertheless the isotropy is very probable in steady state as in the kinetic theory. Thus, Olbers' paradox can not decide between a finite (e.g. some variants of the Big Bang model) and an infinite (Steady State theory or static universe) solution.
Finite age of stars

Stars have a finite age and a finite power, thereby implying that each star has a finite impact on a sky's light field density. But if the universe were infinitely old, there would be infinitely many other stars in the same angular direction, with an infinite total impact.
Absorption
An alternative explanation is that the universe is not transparent, and the light from distant stars is blocked by intermediate dark stars or absorbed by dust or gas, so that there is a bound on the distance from which light can reach the observer. This would resolve the paradox given the following argument: According to the second law of thermodynamics, there can be no material hotter than its surroundings that does not give off radiation and at the same time be uniformly distributed through space, however there is no mathematical formula proving that light energy is absorbed
Olbers' paradox infinitely and not radiated, especially by already highly heated particles of gas in a near vacuum. Energy must be conserved, per the first law of thermodynamics and it can be transformed. Therefore, the intermediate matter would not necessarily heat up or glow and the energy (possibly at different wavelengths) would dissipate in infrared radiation and various diffracted light shifted towards red. This would not result in a paradox if current physics understanding is approaching the truth.
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How bright would the sky be?

Suppose that the universe were not expanding, and always had the same stellar density; then the temperature of the universe would continually increase as the stars put out more radiation. Eventually, it would reach 3000K (corresponding to a typical photon energy of 0.3 eV and so a frequency of 7.51013 Hz), and the photons would begin to be absorbed by the hydrogen plasma filling most of the universe, rendering outer space opaque. This maximal radiation density corresponds to about 1.21017 eV/m3 = 2.11019kg/m3, which is nearly eleven orders of magnitude greater than the observed value of 4.71031kg/m3.[6] So the sky is about fifty billion times darker than it would be if the Universe were neither expanding nor too young to have reached equilibrium yet.
Fractal star distribution

A different resolution, which does not rely on the Big Bang theory, was first proposed by Carl Charlier in 1908 and later rediscovered by Benot Mandelbrot in 1974. They both postulated that if the stars in the universe were distributed in a hierarchical fractal cosmology (e.g., similar to Cantor dust)the average density of any region diminishes as the region considered increasesit would not be necessary to rely on the Big Bang theory to explain Olbers' paradox. This model would not rule out a Big Bang but would allow for a dark sky even if the Big Bang had not occurred. Mathematically, the light received from stars as a function of star distance in a hypothetical fractal cosmos is:
where: r0 = the distance of the nearest star. r0 > 0; r = the variable measuring distance from the Earth; L(r) = average luminosity per star at distance r; N(r) = number of stars at distance r. The function of luminosity from a given distance L(r)N(r) determines whether the light received is finite or infinite. For any luminosity from a given distance L(r)N(r) proportional to ra, is infinite for a1 but finite for a<1. So if L(r) is proportional to r2, then for to be finite, N(r) must be proportional to rb, where b<1. For b=1, the numbers of stars at a given radius is proportional to that radius. When integrated over the radius, this implies that for b=1, the total number of stars is proportional to r2. This would correspond to a fractal dimension of 2. Thus the fractal dimension of the universe would need to be less than 2 for this explanation to work. This explanation is not widely accepted among cosmologists since the evidence suggests that the fractal dimension of the universe is at least 2.[7][8][9] Moreover, the majority of cosmologists take the cosmological principle as a given, which assumes that matter at the scale of billions of light years is distributed isotropically. Contrasting this, fractal cosmology requires anisotropic matter distribution at the largest scales.
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References
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] For a key extract from this paper, see Harrison (1987), pp. 22728. Poe, Edgar Allan (1848). "Eureka: A Prose Poem" (http:/ / books. eserver. org/ poetry/ poe/ eureka. html). . D'Inverno, Ray. Introducing Einstein's Relativity, Oxford, 1992. Eddington's Temperature of Space (http:/ / www. astro. ucla. edu/ ~wright/ Eddington-T0. html) > Eddington's 3.18K "Temperature of Interstellar Space" (http:/ / webdev. archive. org/ stream/ TheInternalConstitutionOfTheStars/ Eddington-TheInternalConstitutionOfTheStars#page/ n379/ mode/ 2up) Unsld, A.; Bodo, B. (2002). The New Cosmos, An Introduction to Astronomy and Astrophysics (5th ed.). SpringerVerlag. p.485. ISBN3-540-67877-8. Joyce, M.; Labini, F.S.; Gabrielli, A.; Montouri, M.; Pietronero, L. (2005). "Basic Properties of Galaxy Clustering in the light of recent results from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey". Astronomy and Astrophysics 443 (11): 1116. arXiv:astro-ph/0501583. Bibcode2005A&A...443...11J. doi:10.1051/0004-6361:20053658. Labini, F.S.; Vasilyev, N.L.; Pietronero, L.; Baryshev, Y. (2009). "Absence of sedlf-averaging and of homogeneity in the large scale galaxy distribution". Europhys.Lett. 86 (4): 49001. arXiv:0805.1132. Bibcode2009EL.....8649001S. doi:10.1209/0295-5075/86/49001. Hogg, David W.; Eisenstein, Daniel J.; Blanton, Michael R.; Bahcall, Neta A.; Brinkmann, J.; Gunn, James E.; Schneider, Donald P. (2005). "Cosmic homogeneity demonstrated with luminous red galaxies". The Astrophysical Journal 624: 5458. arXiv:astro-ph/0411197. Bibcode2005ApJ...624...54H. doi:10.1086/429084.
[8] [9]
Further reading
Edward Robert Harrison (1987) Darkness at Night: A Riddle of the Universe, Harvard University Press. Very readable. -------- (2000) Cosmology, 2nd ed. Cambridge Univ. Press. Chpt. 24. Taylor Mattie, Fundamentals of Heat Transfer. MAHS Wesson, Paul (1991). "Olbers' paradox and the spectral intensity of the extragalactic background light". The Astrophysical Journal 367: 399406. Bibcode1991ApJ...367..399W. doi:10.1086/169638.
External links
Relativity FAQ about Olbers' paradox (http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/GR/olbers.html) Astronomy FAQ about Olbers' paradox (http://www.faqs.org/faqs/astronomy/faq/part9/section-17.html) Cosmology FAQ about Olbers' paradox (http://supernova.lbl.gov/~evlinder/umass/faqm.html#olber) "On Olber's Paradox" (http://www.mathpages.com/home/kmath141/kmath141.htm) at MathPages.com. Why is the sky dark? (http://www.physics.org/facts/sand-dark.asp) physics.org page about Olbers' paradox Why is it dark at night? (http://q2cfestival.com/play.php?lecture_id=8250&talk=alice) A 60-second animation from the Perimeter Institute exploring the question with Alice and Bob in Wonderland
Ontological paradox
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Ontological paradox
The bootstrap paradox is a paradox of time travel in which information or objects can exist without having been created. After information or an object is sent back in time, it is recovered in the present and becomes the very object/information that was initially brought back in time in the first place. Numerous science fiction stories are based on this paradox, which has also been the subject of serious physics articles.[1] The term "bootstrap paradox" refers to the expression "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps"; the use of the term for the time-travel paradox was popularized by Robert A. Heinlein's story By His Bootstraps (see below).
Definition
Because of the possibility of influencing the past while time traveling, one way of explaining why history does not change is to posit that these changes already are contained self-consistently in the past timeline. A time traveler attempting to alter the past in this model, intentionally or not, would only be fulfilling his or her role in creating history, not changing it. The Novikov self-consistency principle proposes that contradictory causal loops cannot form, but that consistent ones can. However, a scenario can occur where items or information are passed from the future to the past, which then become the same items or information that are subsequently passed back. This not only creates a loop, but a situation where these items have no discernible origin. Physical items are even more problematic than pieces of information, since they should ordinarily age and increase in entropy according to the Second law of thermodynamics. But if they age by any nonzero amount at each cycle, they cannot be the same item to be sent back in time, creating a contradiction. Another problem is the "reverse grandfather paradox", where whatever is sent to the past allows the time travel in the first place (such as saving your past self's life, or sending vital information about the time travel mechanism). The paradox raises the ontological questions of where, when and by whom the items were created or the information derived. Time loop logic operates on similar principles, sending the solutions to computation problems back in time to be checked for correctness without ever being computed "originally". Whether or not a scenario described in this paradox would actually be possible, even if time travel itself were possible, is not presently known. The bootstrap paradox is similar to, but distinct from, the predestination paradox, in which individuals or information travel back in time and ultimately trigger events they already experienced in their own present. In the latter case, no information or matter 'appears out of thin air'.
Examples
Involving information
On his 30th birthday, a man who wishes to build a time machine is visited by a future version of himself. This future self explains to him that he should not worry about designing the time machine, as he has done it in the future. The man receives the schematics from his future self and starts building the time machine. Time passes until he finally completes the time machine. He then uses it to travel back in time to his 30th birthday, where he gives the schematics to his past self, closing the loop. A professor travels forward in time, and reads in a physics journal about a new equation that was recently derived. She travels back to her own time, and relates it to one of her students who writes it up, and the article is published in the same journal which the professor reads in the future. A man builds a time machine. He goes into the future and steals a valuable gadget. He then returns and reveals the gadget to the world, claiming it as his own. Eventually, a copy of the device ends up being the item the man originally steals. In other words, the device is a copy of itself and it is not possible to state where the original
Ontological paradox came from. A young physicist receives an old, disintegrating notebook containing information about future events sent by her future self via a time machine; before the book deteriorates so badly as to be unusable, she copies the information in it into a new notebook. Over the years the predictions of the notebook come true, allowing her to become wealthy enough to fund her own research, which results in the development of a time machine, which she uses to send the now old, tattered, disintegrating notebook back to her former self. The notebook is not a paradox (it has an end and a beginning; the beginning where she receives it and the end where she threw it out after she copied the information), but the information is: It's impossible to state where it came from. The professor has transferred the information that she wrote herself, so there was no original notebook.
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Involving physical items

A woman is locked outside her house because she's lost her keys. Another woman approaches her with the keys. When the woman enters the house five minutes later, she encounters a time machine which transports her and her keys back in time five minutes, allowing her to give them to herself and close the loop. [The woman would have to take the keys she left inside back in time, otherwise the keys given to her would age by a non-zero amount.]
Involving people
A man travels back in time and falls in love with and marries a woman, whom he later learns was his own mother, who then gives birth to him. He is therefore his own father and, because of this, also his own grandfather, great-grandfather, great-great grandfather, great-great-great grandfather and so on, making his ancestry infinite, and also giving him no origin for his paternal genetic material.
Examples from fiction

The term bootstrap paradox comes from Robert A. Heinlein's story "By His Bootstraps", in which the protagonist is asked to go through a time portal by a mysterious stranger, a second stranger tries to stop him, and all three get into a fight which results in the protagonist being pushed through anyway. Ultimately, it is revealed that all three are the same person: the first visitor is his future self and the second an even older future self trying to prevent the loop from occurring. The bootstrap paradox here is in where and how the loop started in the first place. Heinlein's "All You Zombies" involves an even more convoluted time loop involving kidnapping, seduction, child abandonment and sex reassignment surgery, resulting in the protagonist creating the circumstances where he becomes his own mother, father, son, daughter, forever-lost lover and kidnapper. One of the most noted examples of the bootstrap paradox in fiction occurs in the film Somewhere in Time, based on the Richard Matheson novel Bid Time Return. In the film, Christopher Reeve's character is given a pocket watch by an old lady. He then goes back in time and gives the pocket watch to the old lady's younger self, played by Jane Seymour, which prompts her to seek him out years in the future and give him the watch, resulting in the watch having no apparent origin. The bootstrap paradox occurs several times in the Terminator franchise, perhaps most notably in the creation of the main villain Skynet. In the first film, the Terminator cyborg sent back in time to kill Sarah Connor is destroyed, but its components are salvaged to form the basis of Skynet, the artificially intelligent computer network that will, in the future, send it back in time on its murderous mission. The knowledge of how to create an artificially intelligent machine therefore has no ultimate source. The current series of Doctor Who features many examples of the bootstrap paradox, most constructed by writer and later showrunner Steven Moffat. For example, in Moffat's 2007 episode "Blink", the Doctor records a message on film in 1969 in the form of half a conversation. The other half is filled in when Sally Sparrow views the film on DVD in 2007, which her friend Lawrence Nightingale transcribes. The full transcript, including the Doctor's portion, is eventually handed to the Doctor in 2008, but before he is sent back to 1969 from his subjective viewpoint, so he
Ontological paradox can use it in creating the message later. The contents of the conversation form a bootstrap paradox.
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References
[1] Matt Visser (1995). Lorentzian wormholes (http:/ / books. google. com/ books?id=Zo_vAAAAMAAJ& q=Bootstrap+ paradox& dq=Bootstrap+ paradox& hl=en& ei=aHunTrGLMqTn0QG7q5inDg& sa=X& oi=book_result& ct=result& resnum=1& ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA). . "Bootstrap paradoxes A second class of logical paradoxes ..."
Painlev paradox
The Painlev paradox is a well known example by Paul Painlev in rigid-body dynamics that showed that rigid-body dynamics with both contact friction and Coulomb friction is inconsistent. This is due to a number of discontinuities in the behavior of rigid bodies and the discontinuities inherent in the Coulomb friction law, especially when dealing with large coefficients of friction.[1] There exist, however, simple examples which prove that the Painlev paradoxes can appear even for small, realistic friction. Modeling rigid bodies and friction greatly simplifies such applications as animation, robotics and bio-mechanics, it is only an approximation to a full elastic model requiring complex systems of partial differential equations. Rigid body assumption also allows one to clarify many features that would otherwise remain hidden: Painlev paradoxes are one of them. Moreover the rigid body models can be reliably and efficiently simulated, avoiding stiff problems and issues related to the estimation of compliant contact/impact models, which is often quite a delicate matter. The paradox was mathematically resolved in the 1990s by David E. Stewart.[2] The Painlev paradox (also called by Jean Jacques Moreau "frictional paroxysms") has not only been solved by D.E. Stewart from the mathematical point of view (i.e. Stewart has shown the existence of solutions for the classical Painlev example that consists of a rod sliding on a rough plane in 2-dimension), but it has been explained from a more mechanical point of view by Franck Gnot and Bernard Brogliato.[3] Gnot and Brogliato have studied in great detail the rod dynamics in the neighborhood of a singular point of the phase space, when the rod is sliding. The dynamical equations are then a particular singular ordinary differential equation with vector field f(x)/g(x), where both f(.) and g(.) may vanish at a certain point (angle and angular velocity). One of the results is that at this singular point the contact force may grow unbounded, however its impulse remains always bounded (this may explain why time-stepping numerical methods like Moreau's scheme can well handle such situations since they estimate the impulse, not the force[4]). Hence the infinite contact force is not at all an obstacle to the integration. Another situation (different from the first one) is that the trajectories may attain a zone in the phase space, where the linear complementarity problem (LCP) that gives the contact force, has no solution. Then the solution (i.e. the angular velocity of the rod) has to jump to an area where the LCP has a solution. This creates indeed a sort of "impact" with velocity discontinuity. Interested readers may also have a look at Section 5.5 in Brogliato's book[5] and at figure 5.20 therein where the various important areas of the dynamics are depicted. It is noteworthy that J.J. Moreau has shown in his seminal paper [6] through numerical simulation with his time-stepping scheme (afterwards called Moreau's scheme) that Painlev paradoxes can be simulated with suitable time-stepping methods, for the above reasons given later by Gnot and Brogliato. Since mechanics is above all an experimental science, it is of utmost importance that experiments validate the theory. The classical chalk example is often cited (when forced to slide on a black board, a chalk has the tendency to bounce on the board). Since the Painlev paradoxes are based on a mechanical model of Coulomb friction (multivalued at zero tangential velocity) that is perhaps a simplified model of contact but which nevertheless encapsulates the main dynamical effects of friction (like sticking and slipping zones), it should logically possess some mechanical meaning and should not be just a mathematical fuss. Painlev paradoxes have been experimentally evidenced several times, see for instance [7].
Painlev paradox
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References
[1] Paul Painlev (1895). C. R. Acad. Sci. (Paris) 121: 112115. [2] Stewart, David E. (2000). "Rigid-Body Dynamics with Friction and Impact" (http:/ / scitation. aip. org/ getabs/ servlet/ GetabsServlet?prog=normal& id=SIREAD000042000001000003000001& idtype=cvips& gifs=yes). SIAM 42 (1): 339. Bibcode2000SIAMR..42....3S. doi:10.1137/S0036144599360110. . [3] Franck Gnot, Bernard Brogliato (1999). "New results on Painlev paradoxes". European Journal of Mechanics A 18 (4): 653678. Bibcode1999EJMS...18..653G. doi:10.1016/S0997-7538(99)00144-8. [4] Vincent Acary, Bernard Brogliato (2008). "Numerical Methods for Nonsmooth Dynamical Systems". Lecture Notes in Applied and Computational Mechanics, Springer Verlag Heidelberg 65. [5] Brogliato, Bernard (1999). "Nonsmooth Mechanics (2nd Edition)". Springer Verlag, Communications and Control Engineering, London. [6] Moreau, Jean Jacques (1988). "Unilateral contact and dry friction in finite freedom dynamics". Nonsmooth Mechanics and Applications, CISM Courses and Lectures 302: 182. [7] Zhen, Zhao et al; Liu, Caishan; Ma, Wei; Chen, Bin (2008). "Experimental Investigation of the Painlev Paradox in a Robotic System". ASME Journal of Applied Mechanics 75 (4): 041006. Bibcode2008JAM....75d1006Z. doi:10.1115/1.2910825.
Physical paradox
A physical paradox is an apparent contradiction in physical descriptions of the universe. While many physical paradoxes have accepted resolutions, others defy resolution and may indicate flaws in theory. In physics as in all of science, contradictions and paradoxes are generally assumed to be artifacts of error and incompleteness because reality is assumed to be completely consistent, although this is itself a philosophical assumption. When, as in fields such as quantum physics and relativity theory, existing assumptions about reality have been shown to break down, this has usually been dealt with by changing our understanding of reality to a new one which remains self-consistent in the presence of the new evidence.
Paradoxes relating to false assumptions

Certain physical paradoxes defy common sense predictions about physical situations. In some cases, this is the result of modern physics correctly describing the natural world in circumstances which are far outside of everyday experience. For example, special relativity has traditionally yielded two common paradoxes: the twin paradox and the ladder paradox. Both of these paradoxes involve thought experiments which defy traditional common sense assumptions about time and space. In particular, the effects of time dilation and length contraction are used in both of these paradoxes to create situations which seemingly contradict each other. It turns out that the fundamental The twin paradox illustrates the theory of postulate of special relativity that the speed of light is invariant in all non-absolute time. frames of reference requires that concepts such as simultaneity and absolute time are not applicable when comparing radically different frames of reference. Another paradox associated with relativity is Supplee's paradox which seems to describe two reference frames that are irreconcilable. In this case, the problem is assumed to be well-posed in special relativity, but because the effect is dependent on objects and fluids with mass, the effects of general relativity need to be taken into account. Taking the correct assumptions, the resolution is actually a way of restating the equivalence principle. Babinet's paradox is that contrary to naive expectations, the amount of radiation removed from a beam in the diffraction limit is equal to twice the cross-sectional area. This is because there are two separate processes which remove radiation from the beam in equal amounts: absorption and diffraction.
Physical paradox Similarly, there exists a set of physical paradoxes that directly rely on one or more assumptions that are incorrect. The Gibbs paradox of statistical mechanics yields an apparent contradiction when calculating the entropy of mixing. If the assumption that the particles in an ideal gas are indistinguishable is not appropriately taken into account, the calculated entropy is not an extensive variable as it should be. Olbers' paradox shows that an infinite universe with a uniform distribution of stars necessarily leads to a sky that is as bright as a star. The observed dark night sky can be alternatively resolvable by stating that one of the two assumptions is incorrect. This paradox was sometimes used to argue that a homogeneous and isotropic universe as required by the cosmological principle was necessarily finite in extent, but it turns out that there are ways to relax the assumptions in other ways that admit alternative resolutions. Mpemba paradox is that under certain conditions, hot water will freeze faster than cold water even though it must pass through the same temperature as the cold water during the freezing process. This is a seeming violation of Newton's law of cooling but in reality it is due to non-linear effects that influence the freezing process. The assumption that only the temperature of the water will affect freezing is not correct.
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Paradoxes relating to unphysical mathematical idealizations

A common paradox occurs with mathematical idealizations such as point sources which describe physical phenomena well at distant or global scales but break down at the point itself. These paradoxes are sometimes seen as relating to Zeno's paradoxes which all deal with the physical manifestations of mathematical properties of continuity, infinitesimals, and infinities often associated with space and time. For example, the electric field associated with a point charge is infinite at the location of the point charge. A consequence of this apparent paradox is that the electric field of a point-charge can only be described in a limiting sense by a carefully constructed Dirac delta function. This mathematically inelegant but physically useful concept allows for the efficient calculation of the associated The infinitely dense gravitational singularity found as time physical conditions while conveniently sidestepping the approaches an initial point in the Big Bang universe is an example philosophical issue of what actually occurs at the of a physical paradox. infinitesimally-defined point: a question that physics is as yet unable to answer. Fortunately, a consistent theory of quantum electrodynamics removes the need for infinitesimal point charges altogether. A similar situation occurs in general relativity with the gravitational singularity associated with the Schwarzschild solution that describes the geometry of a black hole. The curvature of spacetime at the singularity is infinite which is another way of stating that the theory does not describe the physical conditions at this point. It is hoped that the solution to this paradox will be found with a consistent theory of quantum gravity, something which has thus far remained elusive. A consequence of this paradox is that the associated singularity that occurred at the supposed starting point of the universe (see Big Bang) is not adequately described by physics. Before a theoretical extrapolation of a singularity can occur, quantum mechanical effects become important in an era known as the Planck time. Without a consistent theory, there can be no meaningful statement about the physical conditions associated with the universe before this point.
Physical paradox Another paradox due to mathematical idealization is D'Alembert's paradox of fluid mechanics. When the forces associated with two-dimensional, incompressible, irrotational, inviscid steady flow across a body are calculated, there is no drag. This is in contradiction with observations of such flows, but as it turns out a fluid that rigorously satisfies all the conditions is a physical impossibility. The mathematical model breaks down at the surface of the body, and new solutions involving boundary layers have to be considered to correctly model the drag effects.
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Quantum mechanical paradoxes

A significant set of physical paradoxes are associated with the privileged position of the observer in quantum mechanics. Two of the most famous of these are the EPR paradox and Schrdinger's cat, both proposed as thought experiments relevant to the discussions of the correct interpretation of quantum mechanics. These thought experiments try to use principles derived from the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics to derive conclusions that are seemingly contradictory. In the case of Schrdinger's cat this takes the form of a seeming absurdity. A cat is placed in a box sealed off from observation with a quantum mechanical switch designed to kill the cat when appropriately deployed. While in the box, the cat is described as being in a quantum superposition of "dead" and "alive" states, though opening the box effectively collapses the cat's wave function to one of the two conditions. In the case of the EPR paradox, quantum entanglement appears to allow for the physical impossibility of information transmitted faster than the speed of light, violating special relativity. Related to the EPR paradox is the phenomenon of quantum pseudo-telepathy in which parties who are prevented from communicating do manage to accomplish tasks that seem to require direct contact. The "resolutions" to these paradoxes are considered by many to be philosophically unsatisfying because they hinge on what is specifically meant by the measurement of an observation or what serves as an observer in the thought experiments. In a real physical sense, no matter what way either of those terms are defined, the results are the same. Any given observation of a cat will yield either one that is dead or alive; the superposition is a necessary condition for calculating what is to be expected, but will never itself be observed. Likewise, the EPR paradox yields no way of transmitting information faster than the speed of light; though there is a seemingly instantaneous conservation of the quantum-entangled observable being measured, it turns out that it is physically impossible to use this effect to transmit information. Why there is an instantaneous conservation is the subject of which is the correct interpretation of quantum mechanics. Speculative theories of quantum gravity that combine general relativity with quantum mechanics have their own associated paradoxes that are generally accepted to be artifacts of the lack of a consistent physical model that unites the two formulations. One such paradox is the black hole information paradox which points out that information associated with a particle that falls into a black hole is not conserved when the theoretical Hawking radiation causes the black hole to evaporate. In 2004, Stephen Hawking claimed to have a working resolution to this problem, but the details have yet to be published and the speculative nature of Hawking radiation means that it isn't clear whether this paradox is relevant to physical reality.
Causality paradoxes
A set of similar paradoxes occurs within the area of physics involving arrow of time and causality. One of these, the grandfather paradox, deals with the peculiar nature of causality in closed time-like loops. In its most crude conception, the paradox involves a person traveling back in time and murdering an ancestor who hadn't yet had a chance to procreate. The speculative nature of time travel to the past means that there is no agreed upon resolution to the paradox, nor is it even clear that there are physically possible solutions to the Einstein equations that would allow for the conditions required for the paradox to be met. Nevertheless, there are two common explanations for possible resolutions for this paradox that take on similar flavor for the explanations of quantum mechanical paradoxes. In the so-called self-consistent solution, reality is constructed in such a way as to deterministically prevent such paradoxes from occurring. This idea makes many free will advocates uncomfortable, though it is very satisfying to many
Physical paradox philosophical naturalists. Alternatively, the many worlds idealization or the concept of parallel universes is sometimes conjectured to allow for a continual fracturing of possible worldlines into many different alternative realities. This would mean that any person who traveled back in time would necessarily enter a different parallel universe that would have a different history from the point of the time travel forward. Another paradox associated with the causality and the one-way nature of time is Loschmidt's paradox which poses the question how can microprocesses that are time-reversible produce a time-irreversible increase in entropy. A partial resolution to this paradox is rigorously provided for by the fluctuation theorem which relies on carefully keeping track of time averaged quantities to show that from a statistical mechanics point of view, entropy is far more likely to increase than to decrease. However, if no assumptions about initial boundary conditions are made, the fluctuation theorem should apply equally well in reverse, predicting that a system currently in a low-entropy state is more likely to have been at a higher-entropy state in the past, in contradiction with what would usually be seen in a reversed film of a nonequilibrium state going to equilibrium. Thus, the overall asymmetry in thermodynamics which is at the heart of Loschmidt's paradox is still not resolved by the fluctuation theorem. Most physicists believe that the thermodynamic arrow of time can only be explained by appealing to low entropy conditions shortly after the big bang, although the explanation for the low entropy of the big bang itself is still debated.
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Observational paradoxes
A further set of physical paradoxes are based on sets of observations that fail to be adequately explained by current physical models. These may simply be indications of the incompleteness of current theories. It is recognized that unification has not been accomplished yet which may hint at fundamental problems with the current scientific paradigms. Whether this is the harbinger of a scientific revolution yet to come or whether these observations will yield to future refinements or be found to be erroneous is yet to be determined. A brief list of these yet inadequately explained observations includes observations implying the existence of dark matter, observations implying the existence of dark energy, the observed matter-antimatter asymmetry, the GZK paradox, the Pioneer anomaly, the heat death paradox, and the Fermi paradox.
References
Bondi, Hermann (1980). Relativity and Common Sense. Dover Publications. p.177. ISBN0-486-24021-5. Geroch, Robert (1981). General Relativity from A to B. University Of Chicago Press. p.233. ISBN0-226-28864-1. Gott, J. Richard (2002). Time Travel in Einstein's Universe. Mariner Books. p.291. ISBN0-395-95563-7. Gamow, George (1993 (reissue edition)). Mr Tompkins in Paperback. Cambridge University Press. p.202. ISBN0-521-44771-2. Feynman, Richard P. (1988). QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter. Princeton University Press. p.176. ISBN0-691-02417-0. Ford, Kenneth W. and Paul Hewitt (2004). The Quantum World : Quantum Physics for Everyone. Harvard University Press. p.288. ISBN0-674-01342-5.
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External links
Usenet Physics FAQ by John Baez [1] Time travel and modern physics [2]
References
[1] http:/ / math. ucr. edu/ home/ baez/ physics/ [2] http:/ / plato. stanford. edu/ entries/ time-travel-phys
Quantum pseudo-telepathy
Quantum pseudo-telepathy is a phenomenon in quantum game theory resulting in anomalously high success rates in coordination games between separated players. These high success rates would require communication between the players in a purely classical (non-quantum) world; however, the game is set up such that during the game, communication is physically impossible. Quantum pseudo-telepathy is often and easily misrepresented as paranormal[1], given that most people are not aware that the quantum laws of physics are subtly non-local and allow violations of Bell inequalities. This means that for quantum pseudo-telepathy to occur, prior to the game the participants need to share a physical system in an entangled quantum state, and during the game have to execute measurements on this entangled state as part of their game strategy. Games in which the application of such a quantum strategy leads to pseudo-telepathy are also referred to as quantum non-locality games. In their 1999 paper,[2] Gilles Brassard, Richard Cleve and Alain Tapp demonstrated that winning quantum strategies can exist in simple games for which in the absence of quantum entanglement a winning strategy can result only if the participants were allowed to communicate. The term quantum pseudo-telepathy was later introduced[3] for this phenomenon. The prefix 'pseudo' is appropriate, as the quantum non-locality effects that are at the heart of the phenomenon do not allow any transfer of information, but rather eliminate the need to exchange information between the players for achieving a mutual win in the game. The phenomenon of quantum pseudo-telepathy is mostly used as a powerful and explicit thought experiment of the non-local characteristics of quantum mechanics. Yet, the effect is real and subject to experimental verification, as demonstrated by the experimental confirmation of the violation of the Bell inequalities.
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The Mermin-Peres magic square game

An example of quantum pseudo-telepathy can be observed in the following two-player coordination game in which the participants fill one row and one column of a 3x3 table with plus and minus signs. The two players Alice and Bob are separated so that no communication between them is possible. In each round of the game Alice gets informed which row is selected, and Bob is being told which column is selected. Alice does not get to know the column Bob has been presented with, and vice versa (Bob remains unaware of the row presented to Alice). Alice and Bob both have to put the same sign in the cell common to the row and column selected. Furthermore (and this is the catch), Alice has to fill the remainder of the row such that there is an even number of signs in that row, whilst Bob has to fill the remainder of the column such that there is an odd number of signs in that column.
It is easy to see that any prior agreement between Alice and Bob on the use of specific tables filled with + and signs is not going to help them. The reason being that such tables simply do not exist: as these would be self-contradictory with the sum of the minus signs in the table being even based on row sums, and being odd when using column sums. So, how can Alice and Bob succeed in their task? The trick is for Alice and Bob to share an entangled quantum state and to use specific measurements on their components of the entangled state to derive the table entries. A suitable correlated state consists of a pair of Bell states:
When attempting to construct a 3x3 table filled with the numbers +1 and 1, such that each row has an even number and each column an odd number of negative entries, a conflict is bound to emerge.
here |+> and |-> are eigenstates of the Pauli operator Sz with eigenvalues +1 and 1, respectively, whilst the subscripts a and b denote which component of each Bell state is going to Alice and which one goes to Bob. Observables for these components can be written as products of the Pauli spin matrices:
Products of these Pauli spin operators can be used to fill the 3x3 table such that each row and each column contains a mutually commuting set of observables with eigenvalues +1 and 1, and with the product of the obervables in each row being the identity operator, and the product of observables in each column equating to minus the identity operator. This so-called Mermin-Peres magic square[4] is shown in below table.
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Effectively, while it is not possible to construct a 3x3 table with entries +1 and 1 such that the product of the elements in each row equals +1 and the product of elements in each column equals 1, it is possible to do so with the richer algebraic structure based on spin matrices.
Current research
It has been demonstrated[5] that the above described game is the simplest two-player game in which quantum pseudo-telepathy can occur. Other games in which quantum pseudo-telepathy occurs have been studied, including larger magic square games,[6] graph colouring games[7] giving rise to the notion of quantum chromatic number[8], and multiplayer games involving more than two participants.[9] Recent studies tackle the question of the robustness of the effect against noise due to imperfect measurements on the coherent quantum state.[10]
Notes
[1] http:/ / www. science20. com/ hammock_physicist/ telepathy_and_quantum_0 [2] Gilles Brassard, Richard Cleve, Alain Tapp, " The cost of exactly simulating quantum entanglement with classical communication (http:/ / arxiv. org/ abs/ quant-ph/ 9901035)" (1999). [3] Gilles Brassard, Anne Broadbent, Alain Tapp, " Multi-Party Pseudo-Telepathy (http:/ / arxiv. org/ abs/ quant-ph/ 0306042)" (2003). [4] Here we use the table as defined in: P.K. Aravind, " Quantum mysteries revisited again (http:/ / users. wpi. edu/ ~paravind/ Publications/ MSQUARE5. pdf)", American Journal of Physics. 72, 1303-7 (2004). [5] Nicolas Gisin, Andre Allan Methot, Valerio Scarani, " Pseudo-telepathy: input cardinality and Bell-type inequalities (http:/ / arxiv. org/ abs/ quant-ph/ 0610175)" (2006). [6] Samir Kunkri, Guruprasad Kar, Sibasish Ghosh, Anirban Roy, " Winning strategies for pseudo-telepathy games using single non-local box (http:/ / arxiv. org/ abs/ quant-ph/ 0602064)" (2006). [7] David Avis, Jun Hasegawa, Yosuke Kikuchi and Yuuya Sasaki, " A quantum protocol to win the graph colouring game on all Hadamard graphs (http:/ / arxiv. org/ abs/ quant-ph/ 0509047)" (2005). [8] Peter J. Cameron, Ashley Montanaro, Michael W. Newman, Simone Severini, Andreas Winter, " On the quantum chromatic number of a graph (http:/ / arxiv. org/ abs/ quant-ph/ 0608016)" Electronic Journal of Combinatorics 14(1), 2007. [9] Gilles Brassard, Anne Broadbent, Alain Tapp, " Recasting Mermin's multi-player game into the framework of pseudo-telepathy (http:/ / arxiv. org/ abs/ quant-ph/ 0408052)" (2004). [10] P. Gawron, J.A. Miszczak, J. Sladkowski, " Noise Effects in Quantum Magic Squares Game (http:/ / arxiv. org/ abs/ 0801. 4848v1)", International Journal of Quantum Information, Vol. 6, No. 1 (2008), pp. 667 - 673.
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Schrdinger's cat
Schrdinger's cat is a thought experiment, sometimes described as a paradox, devised by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrdinger in 1935. It illustrates what he saw as the problem of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics applied to everyday objects. The scenario presents a cat that might be alive or dead, depending on an earlier random event. Although the original "experiment" was imaginary, Schrdinger's Cat: A cat, along with a flask containing a poison and a radioactive source, similar principles have been researched is placed in a sealed box. If an internal Geiger counter detects radiation, the flask is and used in practical applications. The shattered, releasing the poison that kills the cat. The Copenhagen interpretation of thought experiment is also often quantum mechanics implies that after a while, the cat is simultaneously alive and dead. Yet, when we look in the box, we see the cat either alive or dead, not both alive and featured in theoretical discussions of the dead. interpretation of quantum mechanics. In the course of developing this experiment, Schrdinger coined the term Verschrnkung (entanglement).
Origin and motivation

Schrdinger intended his thought experiment as a discussion of the EPR articlenamed after its authors Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosenin 1935.[1] The EPR article highlighted the strange nature of quantum entanglement, which is a characteristic of a quantum state that is a combination of the states of two systems (for example, two subatomic particles), that once interacted but were then separated and are not each in a definite state. The Copenhagen interpretation implies that the state of the two systems undergoes collapse into a definite state when one of the systems is measured. Schrdinger and Einstein exchanged letters about Einstein's EPR article, in the course of which Einstein pointed out that the state of an unstable keg of gunpowder will, after a while, contain a superposition of both exploded and unexploded states. To further illustrate the putative incompleteness of quantum mechanics, Schrdinger describes how one could, in principle, transpose the superposition of an atom to large-scale systems. He proposed a scenario with a cat in a sealed box, wherein the cat's life or death depended on the state of a subatomic particle. According to Schrdinger, the Copenhagen interpretation implies that the cat remains both alive and dead (to the universe outside the box) until the box is opened. Schrdinger did not wish to promote the idea of dead-and-alive cats as a serious possibility; quite the reverse, the paradox is a classic reductio ad absurdum.[2] The thought experiment illustrates the counterintuitiveness of quantum mechanics and the mathematics necessary to describe quantum states. Intended as a critique of just the Copenhagen interpretation (the prevailing orthodoxy in 1935), the Schrdinger cat thought experiment remains a typical touchstone for all interpretations of quantum mechanics. Physicists often use the way each interpretation deals with Schrdinger's cat as a way of illustrating and comparing the particular features, strengths, and weaknesses of each interpretation.
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The thought experiment

Schrdinger wrote:[3][2] One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat): in a Geiger counter, there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small that perhaps in the course of the hour, one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges, and through a relay releases a hammer that shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The psi-function of the entire system would express this by having in it the living and dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts. It is typical of these cases that an indeterminacy originally restricted to the atomic domain becomes transformed into macroscopic indeterminacy, which can then be resolved by direct observation. That prevents us from so naively accepting as valid a "blurred model" for representing reality. In itself, it would not embody anything unclear or contradictory. There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks. Erwin Schrdinger,Die gegenwrtige Situation in der Quantenmechanik (The present situation in quantum mechanics), Naturwissenschaften (translated by John D. Trimmer in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society) Schrdinger's famous thought experiment poses the question, when does a quantum system stop existing as a superposition of states and become one or the other? (More technically, when does the actual quantum state stop being a linear combination of states, each of which resembles different classical states, and instead begins to have a unique classical description?) If the cat survives, it remembers only being alive. But explanations of the EPR experiments that are consistent with standard microscopic quantum mechanics require that macroscopic objects, such as cats and notebooks, do not always have unique classical descriptions. The thought experiment illustrates this apparent paradox. Our intuition says that no observer can be in a mixture of statesyet the cat, it seems from the thought experiment, can be such a mixture. Is the cat required to be an observer, or does its existence in a single well-defined classical state require another external observer? Each alternative seemed absurd to Albert Einstein, who was impressed by the ability of the thought experiment to highlight these issues. In a letter to Schrdinger dated 1950, he wrote: You are the only contemporary physicist, besides Laue, who sees that one cannot get around the assumption of reality, if only one is honest. Most of them simply do not see what sort of risky game they are playing with realityreality as something independent of what is experimentally established. Their interpretation is, however, refuted most elegantly by your system of radioactive atom + amplifier + charge of gunpowder + cat in a box, in which the psi-function of the system contains both the cat alive and blown to bits. Nobody really doubts that the presence or absence of the cat is something independent of the act of observation.[4] Note that no charge of gunpowder is mentioned in Schrdinger's setup, which uses a Geiger counter as an amplifier and hydrocyanic poison instead of gunpowder. The gunpowder had been mentioned in Einstein's original suggestion to Schrdinger 15 years before, and apparently Einstein had carried it forward to the present discussion.
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Interpretations of the experiment

Since Schrdinger's time, other interpretations of quantum mechanics have been proposed that give different answers to the questions posed by Schrdinger's cat of how long superpositions last and when (or whether) they collapse.
Copenhagen interpretation
The most commonly held interpretation of quantum mechanics is the Copenhagen interpretation.[5] In the Copenhagen interpretation, a system stops being a superposition of states and becomes either one or the other when an observation takes place. This experiment makes apparent the fact that the nature of measurement, or observation, is not well-defined in this interpretation. The experiment can be interpreted to mean that while the box is closed, the system simultaneously exists in a superposition of the states "decayed nucleus/dead cat" and "undecayed nucleus/living cat," and that only when the box is opened and an observation performed does the wave function collapse into one of the two states. However, one of the main scientists associated with the Copenhagen interpretation, Niels Bohr, never had in mind the observer-induced collapse of the wave function, so that Schrdinger's Cat did not pose any riddle to him. The cat would be either dead or alive long before the box is opened by a conscious observer.[6] Analysis of an actual experiment found that measurement alone (for example by a Geiger counter) is sufficient to collapse a quantum wave function before there is any conscious observation of the measurement.[7] The view that the "observation" is taken when a particle from the nucleus hits the detector can be developed into objective collapse theories. In contrast, the many worlds approach denies that collapse ever occurs.
Many-worlds interpretation and consistent histories

In 1957, Hugh Everett formulated the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, which does not single out observation as a special process. In the many-worlds interpretation, both alive and dead states of the cat persist after the box is opened, but are decoherent from each other. In other words, when the box is opened, the observer and the already-dead cat split into an observer looking at a box with a dead cat, and an observer looking at a box with a live cat. But since the dead and alive states are decoherent, there is no effective communication or interaction between them.
The quantum-mechanical "Schrdinger's cat" paradox according to the many-worlds interpretation. In this interpretation, every event is a branch point. The cat is both alive and deadregardless of whether the box is openedbut the "alive" and "dead" cats are in different branches of the universe that are equally real but cannot interact with each other.
When opening the box, the observer becomes entangled with the cat, so "observer states" corresponding to the cat's being alive and dead are formed; each observer state is entangled or linked with the cat so that the "observation of the cat's state" and the "cat's state" correspond with each other. Quantum decoherence ensures that the different outcomes have no interaction with each other. The same mechanism of quantum decoherence is also important for the interpretation in terms of consistent histories. Only the "dead cat" or "alive cat" can be a part of a consistent history in this interpretation. Roger Penrose criticises this:
Schrdinger's cat "I wish to make it clear that, as it stands, this is far from a resolution of the cat paradox. For there is nothing in the formalism of quantum mechanics that demands that a state of consciousness cannot involve the simultaneous perception of a live and a dead cat",[8] Although the mainstream view (without necessarily endorsing many-worlds) is that decoherence is the mechanism that forbids such simultaneous perception.[9][10] A variant of the Schrdinger's Cat experiment, known as the quantum suicide machine, has been proposed by cosmologist Max Tegmark. It examines the Schrdinger's Cat experiment from the point of view of the cat, and argues that by using this approach, one may be able to distinguish between the Copenhagen interpretation and many-worlds.
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Ensemble interpretation
The ensemble interpretation states that superpositions are nothing but subensembles of a larger statistical ensemble. The state vector would not apply to individual cat experiments, but only to the statistics of many similarly prepared cat experiments. Proponents of this interpretation state that this makes the Schrdinger's Cat paradox a trivial non-issue. This interpretation serves to discard the idea that a single physical system in quantum mechanics has a mathematical description that corresponds to it in any way.
Relational interpretation
The relational interpretation makes no fundamental distinction between the human experimenter, the cat, or the apparatus, or between animate and inanimate systems; all are quantum systems governed by the same rules of wavefunction evolution, and all may be considered "observers." But the relational interpretation allows that different observers can give different accounts of the same series of events, depending on the information they have about the system.[11] The cat can be considered an observer of the apparatus; meanwhile, the experimenter can be considered another observer of the system in the box (the cat plus the apparatus). Before the box is opened, the cat, by nature of it being alive or dead, has information about the state of the apparatus (the atom has either decayed or not decayed); but the experimenter does not have information about the state of the box contents. In this way, the two observers simultaneously have different accounts of the situation: To the cat, the wavefunction of the apparatus has appeared to "collapse"; to the experimenter, the contents of the box appear to be in superposition. Not until the box is opened, and both observers have the same information about what happened, do both system states appear to "collapse" into the same definite result, a cat that is either alive or dead.
Objective collapse theories

According to objective collapse theories, superpositions are destroyed spontaneously (irrespective of external observation) when some objective physical threshold (of time, mass, temperature, irreversibility, etc.) is reached. Thus, the cat would be expected to have settled into a definite state long before the box is opened. This could loosely be phrased as "the cat observes itself," or "the environment observes the cat." Objective collapse theories require a modification of standard quantum mechanics to allow superpositions to be destroyed by the process of time evolution.
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Applications and tests

The experiment as described is a purely theoretical one, and the machine proposed is not known to have been constructed. However, successful experiments involving similar principles, e.g. superpositions of relatively large (by the standards of quantum physics) objects have been performed.[12] These experiments do not show that a cat-sized object can be superposed, but the known upper limit on "cat states" has been pushed upwards by them. In many cases the state is short-lived, even when cooled to near absolute zero. A "cat state" has been achieved with photons.[13] A beryllium ion has been trapped in a superposed state.[14] An experiment involving a superconducting quantum interference device ("SQUID") has been linked to theme of the thought experiment: " The superposition state does not correspond to a billion electrons flowing one way and a billion others flowing the other way. Superconducting electrons move en masse. All the superconducting electrons in the SQUID flow both ways around the loop at once when they are in the Schrdingers cat state.".[15] A piezoelectric "tuning fork" has been constructed, which can be placed into a superposition of vibrating and non vibrating states. The resonator comprises about 10 trillion atoms.[16] An experiment involving a flu virus has been proposed.[17] In quantum computing the phrase "cat state" often refers to the special entanglement of qubits wherein the qubits are in an equal superposition of all being 0 and all being 1; e.g., .
Extensions
Wigner's friend is a variant on the experiment with two external observers: the first opens and inspects the box and then communicates his observations to a second observer. The issue here is, does the wave function "collapse" when the first observer opens the box, or only when the second observer is informed of the first observer's observations? In another extension, prominent physicists have gone so far as to suggest that astronomers observing dark energy in the universe in 1998 may have "reduced its life expectancy" through a pseudo-Schrdinger's Cat scenario, although this is a controversial viewpoint.[18][19]
References
[1] EPR article: Can Quantum-Mechanical Description Reality Be Considered Complete? (http:/ / prola. aps. org/ abstract/ PR/ v47/ i10/ p777_1) [2] Schrdinger, Erwin (November 1935). "Die gegenwrtige Situation in der Quantenmechanik (The present situation in quantum mechanics)". Naturwissenschaften. [3] Schroedinger: "The Present Situation in Quantum Mechanics" (http:/ / www. tu-harburg. de/ rzt/ rzt/ it/ QM/ cat. html#sect5) [4] Pay link to Einstein letter (http:/ / www. jstor. org/ pss/ 687649) [5] Hermann Wimmel (1992). Quantum physics & observed reality: a critical interpretation of quantum mechanics (http:/ / books. google. com/ books?id=-4sJ_fgyZJEC& pg=PA2). World Scientific. p.2. ISBN9789810210106. . Retrieved 9 May 2011. [6] Faye, J (2008-01-24). "Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics" (http:/ / plato. stanford. edu/ entries/ qm-copenhagen/ ). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The Metaphysics Research Lab Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University. . Retrieved 2010-09-19. [7] Carpenter RHS, Anderson AJ (2006). "The death of Schroedinger's Cat and of consciousness-based wave-function collapse" (http:/ / web. archive. org/ web/ 20061130173850/ http:/ / www. ensmp. fr/ aflb/ AFLB-311/ aflb311m387. pdf). Annales de la Fondation Louis de Broglie (http:/ / web. archive. org/ web/ 20080618174026/ http:/ / www. ensmp. fr/ aflb/ AFLB-Web/ en-annales-index. htm) 31 (1): 4552. Archived from the original (http:/ / www. ensmp. fr/ aflb/ AFLB-311/ aflb311m387. pdf) on 2006-11-30. . Retrieved 2010-09-10. [8] Penrose, R. The Road to Reality, p 807. [9] Wojciech H. Zurek, Decoherence, einselection, and the quantum origins of the classical, Reviews of Modern Physics 2003, 75, 715 or (http:/ / arxiv. org/ abs/ quant-ph/ 0105127) [10] Wojciech H. Zurek, "Decoherence and the transition from quantum to classical", Physics Today, 44, pp 3644 (1991) [11] Rovelli, Carlo (1996). "Relational Quantum Mechanics". International Journal of Theoretical Physics 35: 16371678. arXiv:quant-ph/9609002. Bibcode1996IJTP...35.1637R. doi:10.1007/BF02302261.
Schrdinger's cat
[12] What is the World's Biggest Schrodinger Cat? (http:/ / physics. stackexchange. com/ questions/ 3309/ what-is-the-worlds-biggest-schrodinger-cat) [13] Schr%C%B6dingers Cat Now Made of Light (http:/ / www. science20. com/ news_articles/ schrdingers_cat_now_made_light) [14] C. Monroe, et. al. A Schrodinger Cat Superposition State of an Atom (http:/ / www. quantumsciencephilippines. com/ seminar/ seminar-topics/ SchrodingerCatAtom. pdf) [15] Physics World: Schrodinger's cat comes into view (http:/ / physicsworld. com/ cws/ article/ news/ 2815) [16] Scientific American : Macro-Weirdness: "Quantum Microphone" Puts Naked-Eye Object in 2 Places at Once: A new device tests the limits of Schrdinger's cat (http:/ / www. scientificamerican. com/ article. cfm?id=quantum-microphone) [17] How to Create Quantum Superpositions of Living Things (http:/ / www. technologyreview. com/ blog/ arxiv/ 24101/ )> [18] Chown, Marcus (2007-11-22). "Has observing the universe hastened its end?" (http:/ / www. newscientist. com/ channel/ fundamentals/ mg19626313. 800-has-observing-the-universe-hastened-its-end. html). New Scientist. . Retrieved 2007-11-25. [19] Krauss, Lawrence M.; James Dent (April 30, 2008). "Late Time Behavior of False Vacuum Decay: Possible Implications for Cosmology and Metastable Inflating States". Phys. Rev. Lett. (US: APS) 100 (17). arXiv:0711.1821. Bibcode2008PhRvL.100q1301K. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.100.171301.
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External links
Schrdinger's cat in audio (http://soundcloud.com/siftpodcast/schr-dingers-cat) produced by Sift (http:// siftpodcast.com/) Erwin Schrdinger, The Present Situation in Quantum Mechanics (Translation) (http://www.tu-harburg.de/rzt/ rzt/it/QM/cat.html) The EPR paper (http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PR/v47/i10/p777_1) Viennese Meow (the cat's perspective - short story) (http://primastoria.com/story/viennese-meow/) The story of Schroedinger's cat (an epic poem) (http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_122.html); The Straight Dope Tom Leggett (Aug. 1, 2000) New life for Schrdinger's cat, Physics World, UK (http://physicsworld.com/cws/ article/print/525) Experiments at two universities claim to observe superposition in large scale systems Information Philosopher on Schrdinger's cat (http://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/ experiments/schrodingerscat/) More diagrams and an information creation explanation. A YouTube video explaining Schrdingers cat (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrxqTtiWxs4)
Supplee's paradox
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Supplee's paradox
In relativistic physics, Supplee's paradox (also called the submarine paradox) arises when considering the buoyant force exerted on a relativistic bullet immersed in a fluid subject to an ambient gravitational field. If a bullet with neutral buoyancy passes through a fluid at a relativistic speed, will its increased mass in the fluid's frame of reference cause it to sink, or will the fluid's increased mass in the bullet's frame of reference cause it to rise? The paradox was apparently first discussed by James M. Supplee.
A bit about buoyancy

To simplify the analysis, it is customary to neglect drag and viscosity, and even to assume that the fluid has constant density. Consider a small object immersed in a container of fluid subject to a uniform gravitational field. Then the object will be subject to a net downward gravitational force. Compare this with the net downward gravitational force on an equal volume of the fluid. If the object is less dense than the fluid, the difference between these two vectors is an upward pointing vector, the buoyant force, and the object will rise. If things are the other way around, it will sink. If the object and the fluid have equal density, we say that the object has neutral buoyancy and it will neither rise nor sink.
Statement of the paradox

It is simplest to assume that at rest, the bullet has neutral buoyancy. In the rest frame of the fluid, if the bullet moves at speed , then according to the kinematic laws of special relativity, its density (as measured in the frame of the fluid) increases by the square of the Lorentz Factor . Therefore, a rapidly moving bullet should sink. In the rest frame of the bullet, the density of fluid, as measured in the frame of the bullet, increases by the same factor, so the moving bullet should rise.

The resolution comes down to observing that the gravitational force lies outside the domain of kinematics; when it is treated properly, the paradox disappears. Supplee himself concluded that the paradox can be resolved by noting that in the frame of the bullet, the shape of the container of fluid is altered (viz. the sea floor is curved upwards). Given certain assumptions about how to treat the gravitational force, he argued that the bullet sinks with acceleration , where g is the acceleration due to gravity (assumed to be uniform over the scale of the thought experiment) and is the factor mentioned above. The paradox has also been studied by George Matsas, who used mathematical methods from general relativity to remove Supplee's assumptions. In particular, he modeled the situation using a Rindler chart. Matsas concluded that the paradox can be resolved by noting that in the frame of the fluid, the shape of the bullet is altered, and derived the same result which had been obtained by Supplee. Matsas has applied a similar analysis to shed light on certain questions involving the thermodynamics of black holes.
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References
Matsas, George E. A. (2003). "Relativistic Arquimedes law for fast moving bodies and the general-relativistic resolution of the "submarine paradox"". Phys. Rev. D 68 (2): 027701. arXiv:gr-qc/0305106. Bibcode2003PhRvD..68b7701M. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.68.027701. See also the eprint version [1]. Supplee, J. M. (1989). "Relativistic buoyancy". Am. J. Phys. 57: 757. Bibcode1989AmJPh..57...75S. doi:10.1119/1.15875.
External links
Light Speed Submarine [2] - article about the paradox in Physical Review Focus
References
[1] http:/ / arxiv. org/ abs/ gr-qc/ 0305106 [2] http:/ / focus. aps. org/ story/ v12/ st4
Tea leaf paradox

The tea leaf paradox describes a phenomenon where tea leaves in a cup of tea migrate to the center and bottom of the cup after being stirred rather than being forced to the edges of the cup, as would be expected from a spiral centrifugal force. The solution first came from Albert Einstein in a 1926 paper where he used it to explain the erosion of river banks (Baer's law).[1][2]
Explanation
Stirring the liquid makes it spin around the cup. In order to maintain this curved path, a centripetal force in towards the center is needed (similar to the tension in a string when spinning a bucket over your head). This is accomplished by a pressure gradient outward (higher pressure outside than inside). However, near the bottom and outer edges the liquid is slowed by the friction against the cup. There the centrifugal force is weaker and cannot overcome the pressure gradient, so these pressure differences become more important for the water flow. This is called a boundary layer or more specifically an Ekman layer.[3] Because of the centrifugal force, the pressure is higher along the rim than in the middle. If all the liquid rotated as a solid body, the inward (centripetal) force would match the outward (centrifugal) force from the rotation and there would be no inward or outward movement.
The tea leaves collect in the middle and the bottom, instead of along the rim.
The blue line is the secondary flow that pushes the tea leaves to the middle of the bottom.
In a teacup, where the rotation is slower at the bottom, the pressure gradient takes over and creates an inward flow along the bottom. Higher up, the liquid flows outward instead. This secondary flow
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travels inward along the bottom bringing the leaves to the center, then up, out and down near the rim. The leaves are too heavy to lift upwards, so they stay in the middle. Combined with the primary rotational flow, the leaves will spiral inward along the bottom.[2]
Applications
The phenomenon has been used to develop a new technique to separate red blood cells from blood plasma[4][5] to understand atmospheric pressure systems,[6] and in the process of brewing beer to separate out coagulated trub in the whirlpool.[7]
References
[1] Bowker, Kent A. (1988). "Albert Einstein and Meandering Rivers" (http:/ / www. searchanddiscovery. net/ documents/ Einstein/ albert. htm). Earth Science History 1 (1). . Retrieved 2008-12-28. Albert Einstein solved the paradox in 1926.
[2] Einstein, Albert (March 1926). "Die Ursache der Manderbildung der Flulufe und des sogenannten Baerschen Gesetzes". Die Naturwissenschaften (Berlin / Heidelberg: Springer) 14 (11): 2234. Bibcode1926NW.....14..223E. doi:10.1007/BF01510300. English translation: The Cause of the Formation of Meanders in the Courses of Rivers and of the So-Called Baers Law (http:/ / www. ucalgary. ca/ ~kmuldrew/ river. html), accessed 2008-12-28. [3] "CEE 262A Hydrodynamics Lecture 18" (http:/ / www. stanford. edu/ ~zhonghua/ cee262a/ Lecture18. ppt) (PPT). 2007. p.35. . Retrieved 2008-12-29. [4] Arifin, Dian R.; Leslie Y Yeo, James R. Friend (20 December 2006). "Microfluidic blood plasma separation via bulk electrohydrodynamic flows" (http:/ / link. aip. org/ link/ ?BIOMGB/ 1/ 14103/ 1). Biomicrofluidics (American Institute of Physics) 1 (1): 014103 (CID). doi:10.1063/1.2409629. PMC2709949. PMID19693352. . Retrieved 2008-12-28. Lay summary (http:/ / www. sciencedaily. com/ releases/ 2007/ 01/ 070116205009. htm)Science Daily (January 17, 2007). [5] Pincock, Stephen (17 January 2007). "Einstein's tea-leaves inspire new gadget" (http:/ / www. abc. net. au/ science/ news/ stories/ 2007/ 1828408. htm). ABC Online. . Retrieved 2008-12-28. [6] Tandon, Amit; Marshall, John. "Einsteins Tea Leaves and Pressure Systems in the Atmosphere" (http:/ / www-paoc. mit. edu/ paoc/ papers/ Einstein'sTeaLeavesTPT. pdf). . Retrieved 2008-12-29. [7] Bamforth, Charles W. (2003). Beer: tap into the art and science of brewing (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. p.56. ISBN9780195154795.
Additional reading
Highfield, Roger (14 January 2008). "Dr Roger's Home Experiments" (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/3291786/Dr-Roger's-Home-Experiments.html). The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 2008-12-28.
External links
Sethi, Ricky J. (September 30, 1997). "Why do particles move towards the center of the cup instead of outer rim?" (http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/1997-12/875655758.Ph.r.html). MadSci Network. Retrieved 2008-12-29. Booker, John R.. "Student Notes - Physics of Fluids - ESS 514/414" (http://earthweb.ess.washington.edu/roe/ ESS514_notes/ch5.pdf). Department of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Washington. ch.5.8 p.48. Retrieved 2008-12-29. See also figure 25 in figures.pdf (http://earthweb.ess.washington.edu/roe/ ESS514_notes/figures.pdf) Stubley, Gordon D. (May 31, 2001). "Mysteries of Engineering Fluid Mechanics" (http://www.ansys.com/ solutions/documents/mystery.pdf). Mechanical Engineering Department, University of Waterloo. Retrieved 2008-12-29.
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Twin paradox
In physics, the twin paradox is a thought experiment in special relativity, in which a twin makes a journey into space in a high-speed rocket and returns home to find he has aged less than his identical twin who stayed on Earth. This result appears puzzling because each twin sees the other twin as traveling, and so, according to a naive application of time dilation, each should paradoxically find the other to have aged more slowly. However, this scenario can be resolved within the standard framework of special relativity, and therefore is not a paradox in the sense of a logical contradiction. Starting with Paul Langevin in 1911, there have been numerous explanations of this paradox, many based upon there being no contradiction because there is no symmetryonly one twin has undergone acceleration and deceleration, thus differentiating the two cases. Max von Laue argued in 1913 that since the traveling twin must be in two separate inertial frames, one on the way out and another on the way back, this frame switch is the reason for the aging difference, not the acceleration per se.[1] Explanations put forth by Albert Einstein and Max Born invoked gravitational time dilation to explain the aging as a direct effect of acceleration.[2] The twin paradox has been verified experimentally by precise measurements of atomic clocks flown in aircraft and satellites. For example, gravitational time dilation and special relativity together have been used to explain the HafeleKeating experiment.[3]
History
Further information: Time dilation and twin paradox In his famous work on special relativity in 1905, Albert Einstein predicted that when two clocks were brought together and synchronized, and then one was moved away and brought back, the clock which had undergone the traveling would be found to be lagging behind the clock which had stayed put.[4] Einstein considered this to be a natural consequence of special relativity, not a paradox as some suggested, and in 1911, he restated and elaborated on this result as printed below, (with physicist Robert Resnick's comments following Einstein's):[5][6] "If we placed a living organism in a box ... one could arrange that the organism, after any arbitrary lengthy flight, could be returned to its original spot in a scarcely altered condition, while corresponding organisms which had remained in their original positions had already long since given way to new generations. For the moving organism, the lengthy time of the journey was a mere instant, provided the motion took place with approximately the speed of light." If the stationary organism is a man and the traveling one is his twin, then the traveler returns home to find his twin brother much aged compared to himself. The paradox centers around the contention that, in relativity, either twin could regard the other as the traveler, in which case each should find the other youngera logical contradiction. This contention assumes that the twins' situations are symmetrical and interchangeable, an assumption that is not correct. Furthermore, the accessible experiments have been done and support Einstein's prediction. ... In 1911, Paul Langevin gave a "striking example" by describing the story of a traveler making a trip at a Lorentz factor of . The traveler remains in a projectile for one year of his time, and then reverses direction. Upon return, the traveler will find that he has aged two years, while 200 years have passed on Earth. During the trip, both the traveler and Earth keep sending signals to each other at a constant rate, which places Langevin's story among the Doppler shift versions of the twin paradox. The relativistic effects upon the signal rates are used to account for the different aging rates. The asymmetry that occurred because only the traveler underwent acceleration, is used to explain why there is any difference at all, because "any change of velocity, or any acceleration has an absolute meaning".[7] Max von Laue (1911, 1913) elaborated on Langevin's explanation. Using Minkowski's spacetime formalism, Laue went on to demonstrate that the world lines of the inertially moving bodies maximize the proper time elapsed between two events. He also wrote that
Twin paradox the asymmetric aging is completely accounted for by the fact that the astronaut twin travels in two separate frames, while the earth twin remains in one frame, and the time of acceleration can be made arbitrarily small compared with the time of inertial motion.[8] Eventually, Lord Halsbury and others removed any acceleration by introducing the "three-brother" approach. The traveling twin transfers his clock reading to a third one, traveling in the opposite direction. Another way of avoiding acceleration effects is the use of the relativistic Doppler effect.[9] Neither Einstein nor Langevin considered such results to be literally paradoxical: Einstein only called it "peculiar" while Langevin presented it as a consequence of absolute acceleration.[10] A paradox in logical and scientific usage refers to results which are inherently contradictory, that is, logically impossible and both men argued that, from the time differential illustrated by the story of the twins, no self-contradiction could be constructed. In other words, neither Einstein nor Langevin saw the story of the twins as constituting a challenge to the self-consistency of relativistic physics.
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Specific example
Consider a space ship traveling from Earth to the nearest star system outside of our solar system: a distance light years away, at a speed (i.e., 80 percent of the speed of light). (To make the numbers easy, the ship is assumed to attain its full speed immediately upon departure - actually it would need more than a year accelerating at 1 G to get up to speed.) The Earth-based mission control reasons about the journey this way : the round trip will take years in Earth time (i.e. everybody on earth will be 10 years older when the ship returns). The amount of time as measured on the ship's clocks and the aging of the travelers during their trip will be reduced by the factor , the reciprocal of the Lorentz factor. In this case and the travelers will have aged only 0.60010 = 6 years when they return. The ship's crew members also calculate the particulars of their trip from their perspective. They know that the distant star system and the Earth are moving relative to the ship at speed during the trip. In their rest frame the distance between the Earth and the star system is = 2.4 light years (length contraction), for both the outward and return journeys. Each half of the journey takes = 3 years, and the round trip takes 23 = 6 years. Their calculations show that they will arrive home having aged 6 years. The travelers' final calculation is in complete agreement with the calculations of those on Earth, though they experience the trip quite differently from those who stay at home. If a pair of twins are born on the day the ship leaves, and one goes on the journey while the other stays on Earth, they will meet again when the traveler is 6 years old and the stay-at-home twin is 10 years old. The calculation illustrates the usage of the phenomenon of length contraction and the experimentally verified phenomenon of time dilation to describe and calculate consequences and predictions of Einstein's special theory of relativity.
Resolution of the paradox in special relativity

The standard textbook approach treats the twin paradox as a straightforward application of special relativity. Here the Earth and the ship are not in a symmetrical relationship: the ship has a turnaround in which it undergoes non-inertial motion, while the Earth has no such turnaround. Since there is no symmetry, it is not paradoxical if one twin is younger than the other. Nevertheless it is still useful to show that special relativity is self-consistent, and how the calculation is done from the standpoint of the traveling twin. Special relativity does not claim that all observers are equivalent, only that all observers at rest in inertial reference frames are equivalent. But the space ship jumps frames (accelerates) when it performs a U-turn. In contrast, the twin who stays home remains in the same inertial frame for the whole duration of his brother's flight. No accelerating or decelerating forces apply to the twin on Earth.
Twin paradox There are indeed not two but three relevant inertial frames: the one in which the stay-at-home twin remains at rest, the one in which the traveling twin is at rest on his outward trip, and the one in which he is at rest on his way home. It is during the acceleration at the U-turn that the traveling twin switches frames. That is when he must adjust his calculated age of the twin at rest. In special relativity there is no concept of absolute present. A present is defined as a set of events that are simultaneous from the point of view of a given observer. The notion of simultaneity depends on the frame of reference (see relativity of simultaneity), so switching between frames requires an adjustment in the definition of the present. If one imagines a present as a (three-dimensional) simultaneity plane in Minkowski space, then switching frames results in changing the inclination of the plane. In the spacetime diagram on the right, drawn for the reference frame of the stay-at-home twin, that twin's world line coincides with the vertical axis (his position is constant in space, moving only in time). On the first leg of the trip, the second twin moves to the right (black sloped line); and on the second leg, back to the left. Blue lines show the planes of simultaneity for the traveling twin during the first leg of the journey; red lines, during the second leg. Just before turnaround, the traveling twin calculates the age of the resting twin by measuring the interval along the vertical axis from the origin to the upper blue line. Just after turnaround, if he recalculates, he'll measure the interval from Minkowski diagram of the twin paradox the origin to the lower red line. In a sense, during the U-turn the plane of simultaneity jumps from blue to red and very quickly sweeps over a large segment of the world line of the resting twin. The traveling twin reckons that there has been a jump discontinuity in the age of the resting twin. The twin paradox illustrates a feature of the special relativistic spacetime model, the Minkowski space. The world lines of the inertially moving bodies are the geodesics of Minkowskian spacetime. In Minkowski geometry the world lines of inertially moving bodies maximize the proper time elapsed between two events.
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Transfer of clock reading in a twin paradox trip

An "out and back" twin paradox adventure may incorporate the transfer of clock reading from an "outgoing" astronaut to an "incoming" astronaut, thus entirely eliminating the effect of acceleration. Acceleration is not involved in any kinematical effects of special relativity. The time differential between two reunited clocks is deduced through purely uniform linear motion considerations, as seen in Einstein's original paper on the subject,[11] as well as in all subsequent derivations of the Lorentz transformations. Because spacetime diagrams incorporate Einstein's clock synchronization, there will be a requisite "jump in time" in the calculation made by a "suddenly returning astronaut" who inherits a "new meaning of simultaneity" in keeping with that clock synchronization (with its lattice of clocks methodology) as explained in Spacetime Physics by John A. Wheeler.[12] Such clock synchronization makes an absolute frame of reference superfluous for all predictive purposes.[13] If, instead of incorporating Einstein's clock synchronization (lattice of clocks), the astronaut (outgoing and incoming) and the earth-bound party regularly update each other on the status of their clocks by way of sending radio signals (which travel at light speed), then all parties will note an incremental build up of asymmetry in time-keeping, beginning at the "turn around" point. Prior to the "turn around", each party regards the other party's clock to be recording time differently than his own, but the noted difference is symmetrical between the two parties. After the "turn around", the noted differences are not symmetrical, and the asymmetry grows incrementally until the two parties are reunited. Upon finally reuniting, this asymmetry can be seen in the actual difference showing on the two reunited clocks.
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The equivalence of biological aging and clock time-keeping

It would probably be prudent to mention: All processeschemical, biological, measuring apparatus functioning, human perception involving the eye and brain, the communication of forceeverything, is constrained by the speed of light. There is clock functioning at every level, dependent on light speed and the inherent delay at even the atomic level. Thus, we speak of the "twin paradox", involving biological aging. It is in no way different from clock time-keeping. Biological aging is equated to clock time-keeping by John A. Wheeler in Spacetime Physics.[14]
What it looks like: the relativistic Doppler shift

Now, if both twins send a video feed of themselves to each other, what do they see in their screens? Or, if each twin always carried a clock indicating his age, what time would each see in the image of their distant twin and his clock? Shortly after departure, the traveling twin sees the stay-at-home twin with no time delay. At arrival, the image in the ship screen shows the staying twin as he was 1 year after launch, because radio emitted from Earth 1 year after launch gets to the other star 4 years afterwards and meets the ship there. During this leg of the trip, the traveling twin sees his own clock advance 3 years and the clock in the screen advance 1 year, so it seems to advance at 1/3 the normal rate, just 20 image seconds per ship minute. This combines the effects of time dilation due to motion (by factor =0.6, five years on earth are 3 years on ship) and the effect of increasing light-time-delay (which grows from 0 to 4 years). Of course, the observed frequency of the transmission is also 1/3 the frequency of the transmitter (a reduction in frequency; "red-shifted"). This is called the relativistic Doppler effect. The frequency of clock-ticks (or of wavefronts) which one sees from a source with rest frequency is
when the source is moving directly away. This is
for v/c=0.8.
As for the stay-at-home twin, he gets a slowed signal from the ship for 9 years, at a frequency 1/3 the transmitter frequency. During these 9 years, the clock of the traveling twin in the screen seem to advance 3 years, so both twins see the image of their sibling aging at a rate only 1/3 their own rate. Expressed in other way, they would both see the other's clock run at 1/3 their own clock speed. If they factor out of the calculation the fact that the light-time delay of the transmission is increasing at a rate of 0.8 seconds per second, BOTH can work out that the other twin is aging slower, at 60% rate. Then the ship turns back toward home. The clock of the staying twin shows ' 1 year after launch' in the screen of the ship, and during the 3 years of the trip back it increases up to '10 years after launch', so the clock in the screen seems to be advancing 3 times faster than usual. When the source is moving towards the observer, the observed frequency is higher ("blue-shifted") and given by
This is
for v/c=0.8.
As for the screen on earth, it shows that trip back beginning 9 years after launch, and the traveling clock in the screen shows that 3 years have passed on the ship. One year later, the ship is back home and the clock shows 6 years. So, during the trip back, BOTH twins see their sibling's clock going 3 times faster than their own. Factoring out the fact that the light-time-delay is decreasing by 0.8 seconds every second, each twin calculates that the other twin is aging at 60% his own aging speed.
Twin paradox
434 The (space-time) diagrams at left show the paths of light
After the ship has reached its cruising speed of 0.8 c, each twin would see 1 second pass in the received image of the other twin for every 3 seconds of his own time. That is, each would see the image of the other's clock going slow, not just slow by the factor 0.6, but even slower because light-time-delay is increasing 0.8 seconds per second. This is shown in the figures by red light paths. At some point, the images received by each twin change so that each would see 3 seconds pass in the image for every second of his own time. That is, the received signal has been increased in frequency by the Doppler shift. These high frequency images are shown in the figures by blue light paths.
Light paths for images exchanged during tripLeft: Earth to ship. Right: Ship to Earth. Red lines indicate low frequency images are received Blue lines indicate high frequency images are received
signals traveling between Earth and ship (1st diagram) and between ship and Earth (2nd diagram). These signals carry the images of each twin and his age-clock to the other twin. The vertical black line is the Earth's path through space time and the other two sides of the triangle show the ship's path through space time (as in the Minkowski diagram above). As far as the sender is concerned, he transmits these at equal intervals (say, once an hour) according to his own clock; but according to the clock of the twin receiving these signals, they are not being received at equal intervals.
The asymmetry in the Doppler shifted images

The asymmetry between the earth and the space ship is manifested in this diagram by the fact that more blue-shifted (fast aging) images are received by the ship. Put another way, the space ship sees the image change from a red-shift (slower aging of the image) to a blue-shift (faster aging of the image) at the mid-point of its trip (at the turnaround, 5 years after departure); the Earth sees the image of the ship change from red-shift to blue shift after 9 years (almost at the end of the period that the ship is absent). In the next section, one will see another asymmetry in the images: the Earth twin sees the ship twin age by the same amount in the red and blue shifted images; the ship twin sees the Earth twin age by different amounts in the red and blue shifted images.
Calculation of elapsed time from the Doppler diagram

The twin on the ship sees low frequency (red) images for 3 years. During that time, he would see the Earth twin in the image grow older by 3/3 = 1 years. He then sees high frequency (blue) images during the back trip of 3 years. During that time, he would see the Earth twin in the image grow older by 3 3 = 9 years. When the journey is finished, the image of the Earth twin has aged by 1 + 9 = 10 years. The Earth twin sees 9 years of slow (red) images of the ship twin, during which the ship twin ages (in the image) by 9/3 = 3 years. He then sees fast (blue) images for the remaining 1 year until the ship returns. In the fast images, the ship twin ages by 1 3 = 3 years. The total aging of the ship twin in the images received by Earth is 3 + 3 = 6 years, so the ship twin returns younger (6 years as opposed to 10 years on Earth).
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The distinction between what they see and what they calculate
To avoid confusion, note the distinction between what each twin sees and what each would calculate. Each sees an image of his twin which he knows originated at a previous time and which he knows is Doppler shifted. He does not take the elapsed time in the image as the age of his twin now. If he wants to calculate when his twin was the age shown in the image (i.e. how old he himself was then), he has to determine how far away his twin was when the signal was emittedin other words, he has to consider simultaneity for a distant event. If he wants to calculate how fast his twin was aging when the image was transmitted, he adjusts for the Doppler shift. For example, when he receives high frequency images (showing his twin aging rapidly) with frequency , he does not conclude that the twin was aging that rapidly when the image was generated, any more than he concludes that the siren of an ambulance is emitting the frequency he hears. He knows that the Doppler effect has increased the image frequency by the factor . Therefore he calculates that his twin was aging at the rate of when the image was emitted. A similar calculation reveals that his twin was aging at the same reduced rate of in all low frequency images.
Simultaneity in the Doppler shift calculation

It may be difficult to see where simultaneity came into the Doppler shift calculation, and indeed the calculation is often preferred because one does not have to worry about simultaneity. As seen above, the ship twin can convert his received Doppler-shifted rate to a slower rate of the clock of the distant clock for both red and blue images. If he ignores simultaneity, he might say his twin was aging at the reduced rate throughout the journey and therefore should be younger than he is. He is now back to square one, and has to take into account the change in his notion of simultaneity at the turnaround. The rate he can calculate for the image (corrected for Doppler effect) is the rate of the Earth twin's clock at the moment it was sent, not at the moment it was received. Since he receives an unequal number of red and blue shifted images, he should realize that the red and blue shifted emissions were not emitted over equal time periods for the Earth twin, and therefore he must account for simultaneity at a distance.
Viewpoint of the traveling twin

During the turnaround, the traveling twin is in an accelerated reference frame. According to the equivalence principle, the traveling twin may analyze the turnaround phase as if the stay-at-home twin were freely falling in a gravitational field and as if the traveling twin were stationary. A 1918 paper by Einstein presents a conceptual sketch of the idea.[15] From the viewpoint of the traveler, a calculation for each separate leg, ignoring the turnaround, leads to a result in which the Earth clocks age less than the traveler. For example, if the Earth clocks age 1 day less on each leg, the amount that the Earth clocks will lag behind amounts to 2 days. The physical description of what happens at turnaround has to produce a contrary effect of double that amount: 4 days' advancing of the Earth clocks. Then the traveler's clock will end up with a net 2-day delay on the Earth clocks, in agreement with calculations done in the frame of the stay-at-home twin. The mechanism for the advancing of the stay-at-home twin's clock is gravitational time dilation. When an observer finds that inertially moving objects are being accelerated with respect to themselves, those objects are in a gravitational field insofar as relativity is concerned. For the traveling twin at turnaround, this gravitational field fills the universe. In a weak field approximation, clocks tick at a rate of where is the difference in gravitational potential. In this case, where g is the acceleration of the traveling observer during turnaround and h is the distance to the stay-at-home twin. The rocket is firing towards the stay-at-home twin, thereby placing that twin at a higher gravitational potential. Due to the large distance between the twins, the stay-at-home twin's
Twin paradox clocks will appear to be sped up enough to account for the difference in proper times experienced by the twins. It is no accident that this speed-up is enough to account for the simultaneity shift described above. The general relativity solution for a static homogeneous gravitational field and the special relativity solution for finite acceleration produce identical results.[16] Other calculations have been done for the traveling twin (or for any observer who sometimes accelerates), which do not involve the equivalence principle, and which do not involve any gravitational fields. Such calculations are based only on the special theory, not the general theory, of relativity. One approach calculates surfaces of simultaneity by considering light pulses, in accordance with Hermann Bondi's idea of the k-calculus.[17] A second approach calculates a straightforward but technically complicated integral to determine how the traveling twin measures the elapsed time on the stay-at-home clock. An outline of this second approach is given in a separate section below.
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Difference in elapsed time as a result of differences in twins' spacetime paths

The following paragraph shows several things: how to employ a precise mathematical approach in calculating the differences in the elapsed time how to prove exactly the dependency of the elapsed time on the different paths taken through spacetime by the two twins how to quantify the differences in elapsed time how to calculate proper time as a function (integral) of coordinate time Let clock K be associated with the "stay at home twin". Let clock K' be associated with the rocket that makes the trip. At the departure event both clocks are set to 0. Phase 1: Rocket (with clock K') embarks with constant proper acceleration a during a time Ta as measured by clock K until it reaches some velocity V. Phase 2: Rocket keeps coasting at velocity V during some time Tc according to clock K. Phase 3: Rocket fires its engines in the opposite direction of K during a time Ta according to clock K until it is at rest with respect to clock K. The constant proper acceleration has the value -a, in other words the rocket is decelerating. Phase 4: Rocket keeps firing its engines in the opposite direction of K, during the same time Ta according to clock K, until K' regains the same speed V with respect to K, but now towards K (with velocity -V). Phase 5: Rocket keeps coasting towards K at speed V during the same time Tc according to clock K. Phase 6: Rocket again fires its engines in the direction of K, so it decelerates with a constant proper acceleration a during a time Ta, still according to clock K, until both clocks reunite. Knowing that the clock K remains inertial (stationary), the total accumulated proper time given by the integral function of coordinate time of clock K' will be
where v(t) is the coordinate velocity of clock K' as a function of t according to clock K, and, e.g. during phase 1, given by
This integral can be calculated for the 6 phases:[18] Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3
Twin paradox Phase 4 Phase 5 Phase 6 where a is the proper acceleration, felt by clock K' during the acceleration phase(s) and where the following relations hold between V, a and Ta:
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So the traveling clock K' will show an elapsed time of
which can be expressed as
whereas the stationary clock K shows an elapsed time of
which is, for every possible value of a, Ta, Tc and V, larger than the reading of clock K':
Difference in elapsed times: how to calculate it from the ship

In the standard proper time formula
represents the time of the non-inertial (travelling) observer K' as a function of the elapsed time inertial (stay-at-home) observer K for whom observer K' has velocity v(t) at time t. To calculate the elapsed time of the inertial observer K as a function of the elapsed time
of the
of the non-inertial
observer K' , where only quantities measured by K' are accessible, the following formula can be used:[19]
where
is the proper acceleration of the non-inertial observer K' as measured by himself (for instance with an
accelerometer) during the whole round-trip. The CauchySchwarz inequality can be used to show that the inequality follows from the previous expression:
Using the Dirac delta function to model the infinite acceleration phase in the standard case of the traveller having constant speed v during the outbound and the inbound trip, the formula produces the known result:
In the case where the accelerated observer K' departs from K with zero initial velocity, the general equation reduces to the simpler form:
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which, in the smooth version of the twin paradox where the traveller has constant proper acceleration phases, successively given by a, -a, -a, a, results in[19]
where the convention c=1 is used, in accordance with the above expression with acceleration phases and coasting phases .
A rotational version
Twins Bob and Alice inhabit a space station in circular orbit around a massive body in space. Bob departs the station and uses a rocket to hover in the fixed position where he left Alice, while she stays in the station. When the station completes an orbit and returns to Bob, he rejoins Alice. Alice is now younger than Bob.[20] In addition to rotational acceleration, Bob must decelerate to become stationary and then accelerate again to match the orbital speed of the space station.
Explanation in terms of Mach's principle

A minority of physicists also favor some version of Mach's principle, which would imply that the difference between accelerated motion and inertial motion can only be defined relative to the rest of the matter in the universe, often referred to as motion relative to the "fixed stars". For example, A.P. French writes, regarding the twin paradox: "Note, though, that we are appealing to the reality of A's acceleration, and to the observability of the inertial forces associated with it. Would such effects as the twin paradox exist if the framework of fixed stars and distant galaxies were not there? Most physicists would say no. Our ultimate definition of an inertial frame may indeed be that it is a frame having zero acceleration with respect to the matter of the universe at large."[21]
Primary sources
[1] Miller, Arthur I. (1981). Albert Einsteins special theory of relativity. Emergence (1905) and early interpretation (19051911). Reading: AddisonWesley. pp.257264. ISBN0-201-04679-2. [2] Max Jammer (2006). Concepts of Simultaneity: From Antiquity to Einstein and Beyond (http:/ / books. google. com/ ?id=vuTXBPvswOwC& pg=PA165). The Johns Hopkins University Press. p.165. ISBN0801884225. . [3] Hafele, J.; Keating, R. (July 14, 1972). "Around the world atomic clocks:predicted relativistic time gains" (http:/ / www. sciencemag. org/ cgi/ content/ abstract/ 177/ 4044/ 166). Science 177 (4044): 166168. Bibcode1972Sci...177..166H. doi:10.1126/science.177.4044.166. PMID17779917. . Retrieved 2006-09-18.Hafele, J.; Keating, R. (July 14, 1972). "Around the world atomic clocks:observed relativistic time gains" (http:/ / www. sciencemag. org/ cgi/ content/ abstract/ 177/ 4044/ 168). Science 177 (4044): 168170. Bibcode1972Sci...177..168H. doi:10.1126/science.177.4044.168. PMID17779918. . Retrieved 2006-09-18. [4] Einstein, Albert (1905). "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" (http:/ / www. fourmilab. ch/ etexts/ einstein/ specrel/ www/ ). Annalen der Physik 17 (10): 891. Bibcode1905AnP...322..891E. doi:10.1002/andp.19053221004. . [5] Einstein, Albert (1911). "Die Relativitts-Theorie" (http:/ / www. archive. org/ details/ vierteljahrsschr56natu). Naturforschende Gesellschaft, Zrich, Vierteljahresschrift 56: 114. . [6] Resnick, Robert (1968). "Supplementary Topic B: The Twin Paradox" (http:/ / books. google. com/ ?id=FRtNPwAACAAJ). Introduction to Special Relativity. place:New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.. p.201. ISBN0471717258. LCCN67031211. .. via August Kopff, Hyman Levy (translator), The Mathematical Theory of Relativity (London: Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1923), p. 52, as quoted by G. J. Whitrow, The Natural Philosophy of Time (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1961), p. 215. [7] Langevin, Paul (1911). "The Evolution of Space and Time". Scientia 10: 3154. [8] von Laue, Max (1911/2). "Two Objections Against the Theory of Relativity and their Refutation". Physikalische Zeitschrift 13: 118120. von Laue, Max (1913). The Principle of Relativity (2 ed.). Braunschweig, Germany: Friedrich Vieweg. OCLC298055497. von Laue, Max (1913). "The Principle of Relativity". Jahrbcher der Philosophie 1: 99128. [9] Debs, Talal A.; Redhead, Michael L. G. (1996). "The twin "paradox" and the conventionality of simultaneity". American Journal of Physics 64 (4): 384392. Bibcode1996AmJPh..64..384D. doi:10.1119/1.18252. [10] "We are going to see this absolute character of the acceleration manifest itself in another form." ("Nous allons voir se manifester sous une autre forme ce caractre absolu de lacclration."), page 82 of Langevin1911
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[11] Einstein, A., Lorentz, H. A., Minkowski, H., and Weyl, H. (1923). Arnold Sommerfeld. ed. The Principle of Relativity. Dover Publications: Mineola, NY. pp. 38-49. [12] Wheeler, J., Taylor, E. (1992). Spacetime Physics, second edition. W. H. Freeman: New York, pp. 38, 170-171. [13] Einstein, A., Lorentz, H. A., Minkowski, H., and Weyl, H. (1923). Arnold Sommerfeld. ed. The Principle of Relativity. Dover Publications: Mineola, NY. p. 38. [14] Wheeler, J., Taylor, E. (1992). Spacetime Physics, second edition. W. H. Freeman: New York, p. 150. [15] Einstein, A. (1918) "dialog about objections against the theory of relativity", Die Naturwissenschaften 48, pp. 697-702, 29 November 1918 [16] Jones, Preston; Wanex, L.F. (February 2006). "The clock paradox in a static homogeneous gravitational field". Foundations of Physics Letters 19 (1): 7585. arXiv:physics/0604025. Bibcode2006FoPhL..19...75J. doi:10.1007/s10702-006-1850-3. [17] Dolby, Carl E. and Gull, Stephen F (2001). "On Radar Time and the Twin 'Paradox'". American Journal of Physics 69 (12): 12571261. arXiv:gr-qc/0104077. Bibcode2001AmJPh..69.1257D. doi:10.1119/1.1407254. [18] C. Lagoute and E. Davoust (1995) The interstellar traveler, Am. J. Phys. 63:221-227 [19] E. Minguzzi (2005) - Differential aging from acceleration: An explicit formula - Am. J. Phys. 73: 876-880 arXiv:physics/0411233 (http:/ / arxiv. org/ abs/ physics/ 0411233) (Notation of source variables was adapted to match this article's.) [20] Michael Paul Hobson, George Efstathiou, Anthony N. Lasenby (2006). General Relativity: An Introduction for Physicists (http:/ / books. google. com/ ?id=xma1QuTJphYC). Cambridge University Press. p.227. ISBN0521829518. . See exercise 9.25 (http:/ / books. google. com/ books?id=xma1QuTJphYC& pg=PA227) on page 227. [21] French, A. P. (1968). Special relativity. W. W. Norton, New York. p.156. ISBN0-393-09804-4.
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Secondary sources Further reading

The ideal clock The ideal clock is a clock whose action depends only on its instantaneous velocity, and is independent of any acceleration of the clock. Wolfgang Rindler (2006). "Time dilation" (http:/ / books. google. com/ ?id=0J_dwCmQThgC& pg=PA43). Relativity: Special, General, and Cosmological. Oxford University Press. p.43. ISBN0198567316. Gravitational time dilation; time dilation in circular motion John A Peacock (2001). Cosmological Physics (http://books.google.com/?id=t8O-yylU0j0C&pg=PA7). Cambridge University Press. p.8. ISBN0521422701. Silvio Bonometto, Vittorio Gorini, Ugo Moschella (2002). Modern Cosmology (http://books.google.com/ ?id=jtyCC-b0SToC&pg=PA12). CRC Press. p.12. ISBN0750308109. Patrick Cornille (2003). Advanced Electromagnetism and Vacuum Physics (http://books.google.com/ ?id=y8sSFTDkQ20C&pg=PA180). World Scientific. p.180. ISBN9812383670.
External links
Twin Paradox overview in the Usenet Physics FAQ (http://www.physics.adelaide.edu.au/~dkoks/Faq/ Relativity/SR/TwinParadox/twin_paradox.html) The twin paradox: Is the symmetry of time dilation paradoxical? (http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/einsteinlight/ jw/module4_twin_paradox.htm) From Einsteinlight: Relativity in animations and film clips (http://www.phys. unsw.edu.au/einsteinlight). FLASH Animations: (http://math.ucr.edu/~jdp/Relativity/TwinParadox.html) from John de Pillis. (Scene 1): "View" from the Earth twin's point of view. (Scene 2): "View" from the traveling twin's point of view.
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Self-reference
Barber paradox
This article is about a paradox of self-reference. For an unrelated paradox in the theory of logical conditionals with a similar name, introduced by Lewis Carroll, see the Barbershop paradox. The Barber paradox is a puzzle derived from Russell's paradox. It was used by Bertrand Russell himself as an illustration of the paradox, though he attributes it to an unnamed person who suggested it to him.[1] It shows that an apparently plausible scenario is logically impossible.
The Paradox
Suppose there is a town with just one male barber. In this town, every man keeps himself clean-shaven by doing exactly one of two things: 1. Shaving himself, or 2. going to the barber. Another way to state this is: The barber shaves only those men in town who do not shave themselves. All this seems perfectly logical, until we pose the paradoxical question: Who shaves the barber? This question results in a paradox because, according to the statement above, he can either be shaven by: 1. himself, or 2. the barber (which happens to be himself). However, none of these possibilities are valid! This is because: If the barber does shave himself, then the barber (himself) must not shave himself. If the barber does not shave himself, then the barber (himself) must shave himself.
History
This paradox is often attributed to Bertrand Russell (e.g., by Martin Gardner in Aha!). It was suggested to him as an alternate form of Russell's paradox,[1] which he had devised to show that set theory as it was used by Georg Cantor and Gottlob Frege contained contradictions. However, Russell denied that the Barber's paradox was an instance of his own: That contradiction [Russell's paradox] is extremely interesting. You can modify its form; some forms of modification are valid and some are not. I once had a form suggested to me which was not valid, namely the question whether the barber shaves himself or not. You can define the barber as "one who shaves all those, and those only, who do not shave themselves." The question is, does the barber shave himself? In this form the contradiction is not very difficult to solve. But in our previous form I think it is clear that you can only get around it by observing that the whole question whether a class is or is not a member of itself is nonsense, i.e. that no class either is or is not a member of itself, and that it is not even true to say that, because the whole form of words is just noise without meaning. Bertrand Russell, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism
Barber paradox This point is elaborated further under Applied versions of Russell's paradox.
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In Prolog
In Prolog, one aspect of the Barber paradox can be expressed by a self-referencing clause: shaves(barber, X) :- male(X), not shaves(X,X). male(barber). where negation as failure is assumed. If we apply the stratification test known from Datalog, the predicate shaves is exposed as unstratifiable since it is defined recursively over its negation.
In first-order logic
This sentence is unsatisfiable (a contradiction) because of the universal quantifier. The universal quantifier y will include every single element in the domain, including our infamous barber x. So when the value x is assigned to y, the sentence can be rewritten to , which simplifies to , a contradiction.
In literature
In his book Alice in Puzzleland, the logician Raymond Smullyan had the character Humpty Dumpty explain the apparent paradox to Alice. Smullyan argues that the paradox is akin to the statement "I know a man who is both five feet tall and six feet tall," in effect claiming that the "paradox" is merely a contradiction, not a true paradox at all, as the two axioms above are mutually exclusive. A paradox is supposed to arise from plausible and apparently consistent statements; Smullyan suggests that the "rule" the barber is supposed to be following is too absurd to seem plausible. The paradox is also mentioned several times in David Foster Wallace's first novel, The Broom of the System.
Non-paradoxical variations
A modified version of the Barber paradox is frequently encountered in the form of a brainteaser puzzle or joke. The joke is phrased nearly identically to the standard paradox, but omitting a detail that allows an answer to escape the paradox entirely. For example, the puzzle can be stated as occurring in a small town whose barber claims: I shave all and only the men in our town who do not shave themselves. This version omits the sex of the barber, so a simple solution is that the barber is a woman. The barber's claim applies to only "men in our town," so there is no paradox if the barber is a woman (or a gorilla, or a child, or a man from some other townor anything other than a "man in our town"). Such a variation is not considered to be a paradox at all: the true Barber paradox requires the contradiction arising from the situation where the barber's claim applies to himself. Notice that the paradox still occurs if we claim that the barber is a man in our town with a beard. In this case, the barber does not shave himself (because he has a beard); but then according to his claim (that he shaves all men who do not shave themselves), he must shave himself. In a similar way, the paradox still occurs if the barber is a man in our town who cannot grow a beard. Once again, he does not shave himself (because he has no hair on his face), but that implies that he does shave himself.
Barber paradox
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In music
Chip Hop (rap) artist MC Plus+ refers to the Barber paradox in his song "Man Vs Machine" from the album Chip Hop. He uses it to defeat his own fictional AI opponent, Max Flow, in a rap-battle.
References
[1] The Philosophy of Logical Atomism, reprinted in The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, 1914-19, Vol 8., p. 228
External links
Proposition of the Barber's Paradox (http://www.umsl.edu/~siegel/SetTheoryandTopology/TheBarber.html) Joyce, Helen. "Mathematical mysteries: The Barber's Paradox." (http://plus.maths.org/issue20/xfile/index. html) Plus, May 2002. Edsger Dijkstra's take on the problem (http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD09xx/ EWD923a.html)
Berry paradox
The Berry paradox is a self-referential paradox arising from the expression "the smallest possible integer not definable by a given number of words". Bertrand Russell, the first to discuss the paradox in print, attributed it to G. G. Berry (18671928),[1] a junior librarian at Oxford's Bodleian library, who had suggested the more limited paradox arising from the expression "the first undefinable ordinal".
The paradox
Consider the expression: "The smallest positive integer not definable in under eleven words." Since there are finitely many words, there are finitely many phrases of under eleven words, and hence finitely many positive integers that are defined by phrases of under eleven words. Since there are infinitely many positive integers, this means that there are positive integers that cannot be defined by phrases of under eleven words. By the well ordering principle, if there are positive integers that satisfy a given property, then there is a smallest positive integer that satisfies that property; therefore, there is a smallest positive integer satisfying the property "not definable in under eleven words". This is the integer to which the above expression refers. The above expression is only ten words long, so this integer is defined by an expression that is under eleven words long; it is definable in under eleven words, and is not the smallest positive integer not definable in under eleven words, and is not defined by this expression. This is a paradox: there must be an integer defined by this expression, but since the expression is self-contradictory (any integer it defines is definable in under eleven words), there cannot be any integer defined by it.
Resolution
The Berry paradox as formulated above arises because of systematic ambiguity in the word "definable". In other formulations of the Berry paradox, such as one that instead reads: "...not nameable in less..." the term "nameable" is also one that has this systematic ambiguity. Terms of this kind give rise to vicious circle fallacies. Other terms with this type of ambiguity are: satisfiable, true, false, function, property, class, relation, cardinal, and ordinal.[2] To resolve one of these paradoxes means to pinpoint exactly where our use of language went wrong and to provide restrictions on the use of language which may avoid them.
Berry paradox This family of paradoxes can be resolved by incorporating stratifications of meaning in language. Terms with systematic ambiguity may be written with subscripts denoting that one level of meaning is considered a higher priority than another in their interpretation. "The number not nameable0 in less than eleven words" may be nameable1 in less than eleven words under this scheme.[3]
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Formal analogues
Using programs or proofs of bounded lengths, it is possible to construct an analogue of the Berry expression in a formal mathematical language, as has been done by Gregory Chaitin. Though the formal analogue does not lead to a logical contradiction, it does prove certain impossibility results. George Boolos (1989) built on a formalized version of Berry's paradox to prove Gdel's Incompleteness Theorem in a new and much simpler way. The basic idea of his proof is that a proposition that holds of x if x = n for some natural number n can be called a definition for n, and that the set {(n, k): n has a definition that is k symbols long} can be shown to be representable (using Gdel numbers). Then the proposition "m is the first number not definable in less than k symbols" can be formalized and shown to be a definition in the sense just stated.
Relationship with Kolmogorov complexity

It is not possible in general to unambiguously define what is the minimal number of symbols required to describe a given string (given a specific description mechanism). In this context, the terms string and number may be used interchangeably, since a number is actually a string of symbols, i.e. an English word (like the word "eleven" used in the paradox) while, on the other hand, it is possible to refer to any word with a number, e.g. by the number of its position in a given dictionary, or by suitable encoding. Some long strings can be described exactly using fewer symbols than those required by their full representation, as is often experienced using data compression. The complexity of a given string is then defined as the minimal length that a description requires in order to (unambiguously) refer to the full representation of that string. The Kolmogorov complexity is defined using formal languages, or Turing machines which avoids ambiguities about which string results from a given description. It can be proven that the Kolmogorov complexity is not computable. The proof by contradiction shows that if it were possible to compute the Kolmogorov complexity, then it would also be possible to systematically generate paradoxes similar to this one, i.e. descriptions shorter than what the complexity of the described string implies. That is to say, the definition of the Berry number is paradoxical because it is not actually possible to compute how many words are required to define a number, and we know that such computation is not feasible because of the paradox.
Notes
[1] Nicholas Griffin, The Cambridge companion to Bertrand Russell (http:/ / books. google. com/ books?id=obY48lTt-2AC& pg=PA63& lpg=PA63& dq=g+ g+ berry), p. 63. [2] Russell and Whitehead (1927). [3] Willard Quine (1976) Ways of Paradox. Harvard Univ. Press
References
Charles H. Bennett (1979) " On Random and Hard-to-Describe Numbers. (http://www.research.ibm.com/ people/b/bennetc/Onrandom.pdf)" IBM Report RC7483. George Boolos (1989) "A new proof of the Gdel Incompleteness Theorem", Notices of the American Mathematical Society 36: 38890; 676. Reprinted in his (1998) Logic, Logic, and Logic. Harvard Univ. Press: 383-88. Gregory Chaitin (1995) " The Berry Paradox. (http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/CDMTCS/chaitin/unm2. html)" Complexity 1: 26-30.
Berry paradox French, James D. (1988) " The False Assumption Underlying Berry's Paradox, (http://www.jstor.org/pss/ 2274615)" Journal of Symbolic Logic 53: 12201223. Bertrand Russell (1906) "Les paradoxes de la logique", Revue de mtaphysique et de morale 14: 627650 Bertrand Russell and Alfred N. Whitehead (1927) Principia Mathematica. Cambridge University Press. 1962 partial paperback reissue goes up to *56.
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External links
Roosen-Runge, Peter H. (1997) " Berry's Paradox. (http://www.cs.yorku.ca/~peter/Berry.html)" Weisstein, Eric W., " Berry Paradox (http://mathworld.wolfram.com/BerryParadox.html)" from MathWorld.
Epimenides paradox
The Epimenides paradox reveals a problem with self-reference in logic. It is named after the Cretan philosopher Epimenides of Knossos (alive circa 600 BC) who is credited with the original statement. A typical description of the problem is given in the book Gdel, Escher, Bach, by Douglas Hofstadter Epimenides was a Cretan who made one immortal statement: "All Cretans are liars." A paradox of self-reference arises when one considers whether it is possible for Epimenides to have spoken the truth.
Logical paradox
Epimenides from "Promptuarii Iconum Insigniorum"
Thomas Fowler (1869) states the paradox as follows: "Epimenides the Cretan says, 'that all the Cretans are liars,' but Epimenides is himself a Cretan; therefore he is himself a liar. But if he be a liar, what he says is untrue, and consequently the Cretans are veracious; but Epimenides is a Cretan, and therefore what he says is true; hence the Cretans are liars, Epimenides is himself a liar, and what he says is untrue. Thus we may go on alternately proving that Epimenides and the Cretans are truthful and untruthful."[1] Paradoxical versions of the Epimenides problem are closely related to a class of more difficult logical problems, including the liar paradox, Russell's paradox, and the Burali-Forti paradox, all of which have self-reference in common with Epimenides. Indeed, the Epimenides paradox is usually classified as a variation on the liar paradox, and sometimes the two are not distinguished. The study of self-reference led to important developments in logic and mathematics in the twentieth century.
Origin of the phrase

Epimenides was a 6th Century BC philosopher and religious prophet who, against the general sentiment of Crete, proposed that Zeus was immortal, as in the following poem: They fashioned a tomb for thee, O holy and high one The Cretans, always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies! But thou art not dead: thou livest and abidest forever, For in thee we live and move and have our being. Epimenides, Cretica
Epimenides paradox Denying the immortality of Zeus, then, was the lie of the Cretans. The phrase "Cretans, always liars" was quoted by the poet Callimachus in his Hymn to Zeus, with the same theological intent as Epimenides: O Zeus, some say that thou wert born on the hills of Ida; Others, O Zeus, say in Arcadia; Did these or those, O Father lie? -- Cretans are ever liars. Yea, a tomb, O Lord, for thee the Cretans builded; But thou didst not die, for thou art for ever. Callimachus, Hymn I to Zeus
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Emergence as a logical contradiction

The logical inconsistency of a Cretan asserting all Cretans are always liars may not have occurred to Epimenides, nor to Callimachus, who both used the phrase to emphasize their point, without irony. Later, in the 1st Century AD, the quote is given similar credence as it had in the past: One of Crete's own prophets has said it: 'Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, idle bellies'. He has surely told the truth. For this reason correct them sternly, that they may be sound in faith instead of paying attention to Jewish fables and to commandments of people who turn their backs on the truth. Epistle to Titus, 1:1213 Nor does Clement of Alexandria, in the late 2nd Century AD, indicate that the concept of logical paradox is an issue: In his epistle to Titus, Apostle Paul wants to warn Titus that Cretans don't believe in the one truth of Christianity, because "Cretans are always liars". To justify his claim, Apostle Paul cites Epimenides. Stromata 1.14 During the early 4th Century, Saint Augustine restates the closely related liar paradox in Against the Academicians (III.13.29), but without mentioning Epimenides. In the Middle Ages, many forms of the liar paradox were studied under the heading of insolubilia, but these were not explicitly associated with Epimenides. Finally, in 1740, the second volume of Pierre Bayle's Dictionnaire Historique et Critique explicitly connects Epimenides with the paradox, though Bayle labels the paradox a "sophisme".[2]
Notes
[1] Fowler, Thomas (1869). The Elements of Deductive Logic (http:/ / books. google. com/ books?id=FSYCAAAAQAAJ& dq=epimenides& pg=PA163#v=onepage& q=epimenides& f=false) (3rd ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. p.163. . Retrieved 1 April 2011. [2] Bayle, Pierre (1740). Dictionnaire Historique et Critique (http:/ / books. google. com/ books?id=FKs-AAAAcAAJ& dq=epimenides logic& pg=PA414#v=onepage& q=qu'Epimenide& f=false). 2 (5th ed.). p.414. . Retrieved 1 April 2011. Dictionnaire Historique et Critique at Wikipedia.
References
All of the works of Epimenides are now lost, and known only through quotations by other authors. The quotation from the Cretica of Epimenides is given by R.N. Longenecker, "Acts of the Apostles", in volume 9 of The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Frank E. Gaebelein, editor (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Corporation, 19761984), page 476. Longenecker in turn cites M.D. Gibson, Horae Semiticae X (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1913), page 40, "in Syriac". Longenecker states the following in a footnote: The Syr. version of the quatrain comes to us from the Syr. church father Isho'dad of Merv (probably based on the work of Theodore of Mopsuestia), which J.R. Harris translated back into Gr. in Exp ["The Expositor"] 7
Epimenides paradox (1907), p 336. An oblique reference to Epimenides in the context of logic appears in "The Logical Calculus" by W. E. Johnson, Mind (New Series), volume 1, number 2 (April, 1892), pages 235250. Johnson writes in a footnote, Compare, for example, such occasions for fallacy as are supplied by "Epimenides is a liar" or "That surface is red," which may be resolved into "All or some statements of Epimenides are false," "All or some of the surface is red." The Epimenides paradox appears explicitly in "Mathematical Logic as Based on the Theory of Types", by Bertrand Russell, in the American Journal of Mathematics, volume 30, number 3 (July, 1908), pages 222262, which opens with the following: The oldest contradiction of the kind in question is the Epimenides. Epimenides the Cretan said that all Cretans were liars, and all other statements made by Cretans were certainly lies. Was this a lie? In that article, Russell uses the Epimenides paradox as the point of departure for discussions of other problems, including the Burali-Forti paradox and the paradox now called Russell's paradox. Since Russell, the Epimenides paradox has been referenced repeatedly in logic. Typical of these references is Gdel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter, which accords the paradox a prominent place in a discussion of self-reference.
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Exception paradox
Exception paradox: if every rule has an exception (this is the false premise), then there must be an exception to the rule that every rule has an exception. From the logical point of view, this can be taken as a proof that the sentence "every rule has an exception" is false - a simple example of a proof technique known as reductio ad absurdum. More formally, 1. 2. 3. 4. Every rule has an exception. (Statement) "Every rule has an exception" has an exception. (By 1) There exists some rule R without exception. (By 2) Since R is a rule, by the first statement it must have an exception. But as stated in 3, it does not have an exception - an apparent contradiction.
Yet again, the rule may be true, as well as false, in particular, if the rule R is "Every rule has an exception". Such a rule has no domain to restrict it, and so its truth and falsehood need not conflict, as they do not compete on any domain.
Variations on the Paradox

The liar paradox has similar self-reference, with the added twist that rejecting it leads to another paradox. If everything is possible, then it is possible for anything to be impossible. The only rule is that there are no rules. The only thing certain is that there is nothing certain. If everything has an opposite, then the opposite of there being an opposite to everything, is that there is not an opposite to everything. If everything should be taken in moderation, then moderation should itself be taken moderately, meaning that not everything would be taken in moderation.
GrellingNelson paradox
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GrellingNelson paradox
The GrellingNelson paradox is a semantic self-referential paradox formulated in 1908 by Kurt Grelling and Leonard Nelson and sometimes mistakenly attributed to the German philosopher and mathematician Hermann Weyl.[1] It is thus occasionally called Weyl's paradox as well as Grelling's paradox. It is closely analogous to several other well-known paradoxes, in particular the Barber paradox and Russell's paradox.
The paradox
Suppose one interprets the adjectives "autological" and "heterological" as follows: 1. An adjective is autological (sometimes homological) if and only if it describes itself. For example "short" is autological, since the word "short" is short. "English," "unhyphenated" and "pentasyllabic" are also autological. 2. An adjective is heterological if it does not describe itself. Hence "long" is a heterological word, as are "abbreviated" and "monosyllabic". All adjectives, it would seem, must be either autological or heterological, for each adjective either describes itself, or it doesn't. The GrellingNelson paradox arises when we consider the adjective "heterological". One can ask: Is "heterological" a heterological word? If the answer is 'no', "heterological" is autological. This leads to a contradiction. In this case, "heterological" does not describe itself: it must be a heterological word. If the answer is 'yes', "heterological" is heterological. This again leads to a contradiction, because if the word "heterological" describes itself, it is autological. The paradox can be eliminated, without changing the meaning of "heterological" where it was previously well-defined, by modifying the definition of "heterological" slightly to hold of all nonautological words except "heterological." But "nonautological" is subject to the same paradox, for which this evasion is not applicable because the rules of English uniquely determine its meaning from that of "autological." A similar slight modification to the definition of "autological" (such as declaring it false of "nonautological" and its synonyms) might seem to fix that, but the paradox still obtains for synonyms of "autological" and "heterological" such as "selfdescriptive" and "nonselfdescriptive," whose meanings also would need adjusting, and the consequences of those adjustments would then need to be pursued, and so on. Freeing English of the GrellingNelson paradox entails considerably more modification to the language than mere refinements of the definitions of "autological" and "heterological," which need not even be in the language for the paradox to arise. The scope of these obstacles for English is comparable to that of Russell's paradox for mathematics founded on sets, argued as follows.
Is "autological" autological?
One may also ask if "autological" is autological. It can be chosen consistently to be either: if we say that "autological" is autological, and then ask if it applies to itself, then yes, it does, and thus is autological; if we say that "autological" is not autological, and then ask if it applies to itself, then no, it does not, and thus is not autological. This is the opposite of the situation for heterological: while "heterological" logically cannot be autological or heterological, "autological" can be either. (It cannot be both, as the category of autological and heterological cannot overlap.) In logical terms, the situation for "autological" is: "autological" is autological if and only if "autological" is autological A if and only if A, a tautology while the situation for "heterological" is:
GrellingNelson paradox "heterological" is heterological if and only if "heterological" is autological A if and only if not A, a contradiction.
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Similarities with Russell's paradox

The GrellingNelson paradox can be translated into Bertrand Russell's famous paradox in the following way. First one must identify each adjective with the set of objects to which that adjective applies. So, for example, the adjective "red" is equated with the set of all red objects. In this way, the adjective "pronounceable" is equated with the set of all pronounceable things, one of which is the word "pronounceable" itself. Thus, an autological word is understood as a set, one of whose elements is the set itself. The question of whether the word "heterological" is heterological becomes the question of whether the set of all sets not containing themselves contains itself as an element.
Notes
[1] Weyl refers to it as a "well-known paradox" in Das Kontinuum, mentioning it only to dismiss it. Its misattribution to him may stem from [Ramsey 1926] (attested in [Peckhaus 2004]).
References
K. Grelling und L. Nelson: Bemerkungen zu den Paradoxien von Russell und Burali-Forti. In: Abhandlungen der Friesschen Schule II, Gttingen 1908, S. 301-334. also in: Leonard Nelson: Gesammelte Schriften III. Die kritische Methode in ihrer Bedeutung fr die Wissenschaften. Felix Meiner Verlag. Hamburg. 1974 pp. 95127. Frank P. Ramsey: The Foundations of Mathematics. In: Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society (2) 25. 1926 pp. 338384. Volker Peckhaus: Paradoxes in Gottingen. In: One hundred years of Russell's paradox: mathematics, logic, philosophy. Godehard Link (ed.); Walter de Gruyter. 2004 pp. 501516.
External links
Autological words (http://www.segerman.org/autological.html)
Intentionally blank page
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An intentionally blank page is a page that is devoid of content, and may be unexpected. Such pages may serve purposes ranging from place-holding to space-filling and content separation. Sometimes, these pages carry a notice such as, "This page is intentionally left blank." Such notices typically appear in printed works, such as legal documents, manuals and exam papers, in which the reader might otherwise suspect that the blank pages are due to a printing error and where missing pages might have serious consequences.
Intentionally blank pages at the end of a book.
Uses for intentionally blank pages

Print media
Intentionally blank pages are usually the result of printing conventions and techniques. Chapters conventionally start on an odd-numbered page; therefore, if the preceding chapter happens to have an odd number of pages, a blank page is inserted at the end. Book pages are often printed on large sheets because of technical and financial considerations. Thus, a group of 8, 16, or 32 consecutive pages will be printed on a single sheet in such a way that when the sheet is mechanically folded and cut, the pages will be in the correct order for binding. Such a group is called a section or signature. Books printed in this manner will always have as many pages as a multiple of the large sheets they were printed on, such as a multiple of 8, 16, or 32. As a result, these books will usually have pages
An intentionally blank page on a PDF document from the Australian Electoral Commission. The document has 80 printable pages and content ends on page 77.
left blank. For example, if a book with 318 pages of content is printed using 32-page signatures, it will require 10 signatures, 320 pages in total. At the very end of the book that is, at the end of the last signature there will be 2 unused (blank) pages. If a printer's document processor has been designed to skip completely blank pages, notices may also be required on intentionally blank pages to prevent incorrect page numbering. Intentionally blank pages are ubiquitous in technical and instructional manuals, directories, and other large, mass-produced volumes of text. The contents of manuals produced by a given product's vendor are often compiled
Intentionally blank page from generic instructions suitable for a variety of products, with additional instructions or chapters included for the specific product or model in question. This automation of manual-generation leads to intentionally blank pages required to fit the requirements for mass printing. In digital documents, pages are intentionally left blank so that the document can be printed correctly in double-sided format, rather than have new chapters start on the backs of pages. Intentionally blank pages have also been used in documents distributed in ring binders. The intention is to leave room for expansion without breaking the document's page numbering. This allows updates to be made to a document while requiring minimal new pages, reducing printing costs. The only drawback is the increased time required by the reader to manually insert various newly updated pages into their correct locations in the document.
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Standardized tests
Intentionally blank pages can be useful in standardized tests such as the GCSE, Higher School Certificate, SAT, CAT, ACT, MCAT, and GRE. In these exams, there are often individual, timed sections in which test-takers are prohibited from proceeding to the next section until that section's time interval has passed and the examiner allows them to continue. Because all of these separate sections are printed consecutively in the examination booklet, it may be possible for a test-taker who has finished the section early to see through the page and read the problems in the next section. By placing intentionally blank pages between these sections, the test-taker is prevented from cheating in this way. By printing a notice on the page, such as "this page has been intentionally left blank", test-takers will not be concerned that their test has been misprinted.
Sheet music
In books of sheet music, pieces of relatively short Intentionally blank page in the style used in standardized tests. music that can span two to four pages often need to be arranged so the number of page turns for the performer is minimized. For example, a three-page work (starting on the left hand sheet) followed immediately by a two-page work involves one page turn during each work. If a blank page immediately followed the three-page work (on the right hand sheet), the two-page work will span the left and right pages, alleviating the need for a page turn during the second work. Intentionally blank pages may also appear to prevent a page turn during a difficult passage.
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Classified documents
In the United States armed forces, classified documents require page checks whenever custody is transferred or an inventory is conducted.[1] Blank pages are all marked "This page intentionally left blank" so page checks are unambiguous and every page of the document is accounted for.
Variations
Intentionally blank pages placed at the end of books are often used to balance the folios which make up the book (see bookbinding). Often these pages are completely blank with no such statement, or are used as "Notes" pages, serving a practical purpose. In the case of telephone number directories, these pages are often used to list important numbers and addresses. In novels, pages may list other books available from the same publisher. Book publishers have also used stylized designs (dingbats) underneath the last paragraph of a chapter to indicate that no other content is to be expected until the next chapter, allowing for the possibility of blank pages without misunderstandings by the readers.
Examples
Andy Griffiths' book Just Stupid!, begins with a cartoon snail saying to the reader, "This page would be blank if I were not here telling you that this page would be blank if I were not here telling you that..." on an endless loop. Author Idries Shah, distrusting critics' reviews of his books, wrote The Book of the Book,[2] which consists of sixteen written pages of reviews of itself. The rest of the book is intentionally filled with about 140 blank pages to give the appearance of a normal book. Humorist Don Novello's 1977 book The Lazlo Letters ends with several otherwise-blank pages marked "FREE PAPER!".
References
[1] Chaney, Scott (November 1996). "NAVEDTRA 14127: Intelligence Specialist 3 & 2, Volume 1" (http:/ / www. militarynewbie. com/ pubs/ NAVEDTRA 14127 - Intelligence Specialist 3 & 2, Volume 1. pdf) (in English). Non-Resident Course. Naval Education and Training Professional Development and Technology Center (United States Navy). Archived from the original on 6 June 2010. . [2] Shah, Idries (1969). The Book of the Book. Octagon. ISBN090086012X.
External links
The This Page Intentionally Left Blank Project (http://www.this-page-intentionally-left-blank.org/) Everything2 discussion of the phrase (http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=80737) BBC h2g2 entry on the phrase (http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A676280) "This page intentionally left blank" (http://web.archive.org/web/20070521042812/http://public.srce.hr/ ~zheimer/blank.htm) phrase translated into over 60 languages. (Via Internet Archive.) Humorous look at the history of blank pages (http://www.makingpages.org/pagemaker/humor/hist-blank. html) Guide to writing intentionally blank pages (http://xml.apache.org/fop/fo.html#fo-blank-pages) in XSL-FO
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Liar paradox
In philosophy and logic, the liar paradox or liar's paradox (pseudomenon in Ancient Greek), is the statement "this sentence is false." Trying to assign to this statement a classical binary truth value leads to a contradiction (see paradox). If "this sentence is false" is true, then the sentence is false, which would in turn mean that it is actually true, but this would mean that it is false, and so on ad infinitum. Similarly, if "this sentence is false" is false, then the sentence is true, which would in turn mean that it is actually false, but this would mean that it is true, and so on ad infinitum.
History
The Epimenides paradox (circa 600 BC) has been suggested as an example of the liar paradox, but they are not logically equivalent. The semi-mythical seer Epimenides, a Cretan, reportedly stated that "The Cretans are always liars."[1] However Epimenides' statement that all Cretans are liars can be resolved as false, given that he knows of at least one other Cretan who does not lie. The oldest known version of the actual liar paradox is attributed to the Greek philosopher Eubulides of Miletus who lived in the 4th century BC. It is very unlikely that he knew of Epimenides's words, even if they were intended as a paradox. Eubulides reportedly asked, "A man says that he is lying. Is what he says true or false?" The paradox was once discussed by St. Jerome in a sermon: "I said in my alarm, 'Every man is a liar!' (Psalm. 116:11) Is David telling the truth or is he lying? If it is true that every man is a liar, and David's statement, "Every man is a liar" is true, then David also is lying; he, too, is a man. But if he, too, is lying, his statement: "Every man is a liar," consequently is not true. Whatever way you turn the proposition, the conclusion is a contradiction. Since David himself is a man, it follows that he also is lying; but if he is lying because every man is a liar, his lying is of a different sort."[2] In early Islamic tradition liar paradox was discussed for at least 5 centuries starting from late 9th century apparently without being influenced by any other tradition. Nar al-Dn al-s could have been the first logician to identify the liar paradox as self-referential. [3]
Explanation of the paradox and variants

The problem of the liar paradox is that it seems to show that common beliefs about truth and falsity actually lead to a contradiction. Sentences can be constructed that cannot consistently be assigned a truth value even though they are completely in accord with grammar and semantic rules. The simplest version of the paradox is the sentence: This statement is false. (A) If (A) is true, then "This statement is false" is true. Therefore (A) must be false. The hypothesis that (A) is true leads to the conclusion that (A) is false, a contradiction. If (A) is false, then "This statement is false" is false. Therefore (A) must be true. The hypothesis that (A) is false leads to the conclusion that (A) is true, another contradiction. Either way, (A) is both true and false, which is a paradox. However, that the liar sentence can be shown to be true if it is false and false if it is true has led some to conclude that it is "neither true nor false". This response to the paradox is, in effect, the rejection of the claim that every statement has to be either true or false, also known as the principle of bivalence, a concept related to the law of the excluded middle.
Liar paradox The proposal that the statement is neither true nor false has given rise to the following, strengthened version of the paradox: This statement is not true. (B) If (B) is neither true nor false, then it must be not true. Since this is what (B) itself states, it means that (B) must be true. Since initially (B) was not true and is now true, another paradox arises. Another reaction to the paradox of (A) is to posit, as Graham Priest has, that the statement is both true and false. Nevertheless, even Priest's analysis is susceptible to the following version of the liar: This statement is only false. (C) If (C) is both true and false, then (C) is only false. But then, it is not true. Since initially (C) was true and is now not true, it is a paradox. There are also multi-sentence versions of the liar paradox. The following is the two-sentence version: The following statement is true. (D1) The preceding statement is false. (D2) Assume (D1) is true. Then (D2) is true. This would mean that (D1) is false. Therefore (D1) is both true and false. Assume (D1) is false. Then (D2) is false. This would mean that (D1) is true. Thus (D1) is both true and false. Either way, (D1) is both true and false - the same paradox as (A) above. The multi-sentence version of the liar paradox generalizes to any circular sequence of such statements (wherein the last statement asserts the truth/falsity of the first statement), provided there are an odd number of statements asserting the falsity of their successor; the following is a three-sentence version, with each statement asserting the falsity of its successor: E2 is false. (E1) E3 is false. (E2) E1 is false. (E3) Assume (E1) is true. Then (E2) is false, which means (E3) is true, and hence (E1) is false, leading to a contradiction. Assume (E1) is false. Then (E2) is true, which means (E3) is false, and hence (E1) is true. Either way, (E1) is both true and false - the same paradox as with (A) and (D1).
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Possible resolutions
Alfred Tarski
Alfred Tarski diagnosed the paradox as arising only in languages that are "semantically closed", by which he meant a language in which it is possible for one sentence to predicate truth (or falsehood) of another sentence in the same language (or even of itself). To avoid self-contradiction, it is necessary when discussing truth values to envision levels of languages, each of which can predicate truth (or falsehood) only of languages at a lower level. So, when one sentence refers to the truth-value of another, it is semantically higher. The sentence referred to is part of the "object language", while the referring sentence is considered to be a part of a "meta-language" with respect to the object language. It is legitimate for sentences in "languages" higher on the semantic hierarchy to refer to sentences lower in the "language" hierarchy, but not the other way around. This prevents a system from becoming self-referential.
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Arthur Prior
Arthur Prior asserts that there is nothing paradoxical about the liar paradox. His claim (which he attributes to Charles Sanders Peirce and John Buridan) is that every statement includes an implicit assertion of its own truth. Thus, for example, the statement, "It is true that two plus two equals four", contains no more information than the statement "two plus two equals four", because the phrase "it is true that..." is always implicitly there. And in the self-referential spirit of the Liar Paradox, the phrase "it is true that..." is equivalent to "this whole statement is true and ...". Thus the following two statements are equivalent: This statement is false. This statement is true and this statement is false. The latter is a simple contradiction of the form "A and not A", and hence is false. There is therefore no paradox because the claim that this two-conjunct Liar is false does not lead to a contradiction. Eugene Mills[4] and Neil Lefebvre and Melissa Schelein[5] present similar answers. But the claim that every statement is really a conjunction in which the first conjunct says "this statement is true" seems to run afoul of standard rules of propositional logic, especially the rule, sometimes called Conjunction Elimination, that from a conjunction any of the conjuncts can be derived. Thus, from, "This statement is true and this statement is false", it follows that "this statement is false" and so we have, once again, a paradoxical (and non-conjunctive) statement. It seems then that Prior's attempt at resolution requires either a whole new propositional logic or else the postulation that the "and" in, "This statement is true and this statement is false", is a special type of conjunctive for which Conjunction Elimination does not apply. But then we need, at least, an expansion of standard propositional logic to account for this new kind of "and".[6]
Saul Kripke
Saul Kripke argued that whether a sentence is paradoxical or not can depend upon contingent facts. If the only thing Smith says about Jones is A majority of what Jones says about me is false. and Jones says only these three things about Smith: Smith is a big spender. Smith is soft on crime. Everything Smith says about me is true. If Smith really is a big spender but is "not" soft on crime, then both Smith's remark about Jones and Jones's last remark about Smith are paradoxical. Kripke proposes a solution in the following manner. If a statement's truth value is ultimately tied up in some evaluable fact about the world, that statement is "grounded". If not, that statement is "ungrounded". Ungrounded statements do not have a truth value. Liar statements and liar-like statements are ungrounded, and therefore have no truth value.
Barwise and Etchemendy

Jon Barwise and John Etchemendy propose that the liar sentence (which they interpret as synonymous with the Strengthened Liar) is ambiguous. They base this conclusion on a distinction they make between a "denial" and a "negation". If the liar means, "It is not the case that this statement is true", then it is denying itself. If it means, "This statement is not true", then it is negating itself. They go on to argue, based on situation semantics, that the "denial liar" can be true without contradiction while the "negation liar" can be false without contradiction.
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Dialetheism
Graham Priest and other logicians, including J.C. Beall, and Bradley Armour-garb have proposed that the liar sentence should be considered to be both true and false, a point of view known as dialetheism. Dialetheism is the view that there are true contradictions. Dialetheism raises its own problems. Chief among these is that since dialetheism recognizes the liar paradox, an intrinsic contradiction, as being true, it must discard the long-recognized principle of ex falso quodlibet, which asserts that any proposition can be deduced from a contradiction, unless the dialetheist is willing to accept trivialism - the view that all propositions are true. Since trivialism is an intuitively false view, dialetheists nearly always reject "ex falso quodlibet". Logics that reject "ex falso quodlibet" are called paraconsistent.
Chris Langan
Chris Langan in his work The Theory of Theories states: ... Consider the statement this sentence is false. It is easy to dress this statement up as a logical formula. Aside from being true or false, what else could such a formula say about itself? Could it pronounce itself, say, unprovable? Lets try it: "This formula is unprovable". If the given formula is in fact unprovable, then it is true and therefore a theorem. Unfortunately, the axiomatic method cannot recognize it as such without a proof. On the other hand, suppose it is provable. Then it is self-apparently false (because its provability belies what it says of itself) and yet true (because provable without respect to content)! It seems that we still have the makings of a paradoxa statement that is "unprovably provable" and therefore absurd. But what if we now introduce a distinction between levels of proof? For example, what if we define a metalanguage as a language used to talk about, analyze or prove things regarding statements in a lower-level object language, and call the base level of Gdels formula the "object" level and the higher (proof) level the "metalanguage" level? Now we have one of two things: a statement that can be metalinguistically proven to be linguistically unprovable, and thus recognized as a theorem conveying valuable information about the limitations of the object language, or a statement that cannot be metalinguistically proven to be linguistically unprovable, which, though uninformative, is at least no paradox. Voil: self-reference without paradox! It turns out that "this formula is unprovable" can be translated into a generic example of an undecidable mathematical truth.
Logical structure of the liar paradox

For a better understanding of the liar paradox, it is useful to write it down in a more formal way. If "this statement is false" is denoted by A and its truth value is being sought, it is necessary to find a condition that restricts the choice of possible truth values of A. Because A is self-referential it is possible to give the condition by an equation. If some statement, B, is assumed to be false, one writes, "B = false". The statement (C) that the statement B is false would be written as "C = 'B = false'". Now, the liar paradox can be expressed as the statement A, that A is false: "A = 'A = false'" This is an equation from which the truth value of A = "this statement is false" could hopefully be obtained. In the boolean domain "A = false" is equivalent to "not A" and therefore the equation is not solvable. This is the motivation for reinterpretation of A. The simplest logical approach to make the equation solvable is the dialetheistic approach, in which case the solution is A being both "true" and "false". Other resolutions mostly include some modifications of the equation; Arthur Prior claims that the equation should be "A = 'A = false and A = true'" and therefore A is false. In computational verb logic, the liar paradox is extended to statement like, "I hear what he says; he says what I don't hear", where verb logic must be used to resolve the paradox.[7]
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Applications
Gdel's First Incompleteness Theorem
Gdel's incompleteness theorems are two fundamental theorems of mathematical logic which state inherent limitations of all but the most trivial axiomatic systems for mathematics. The theorems were proven by Kurt Gdel in 1931, and are important in the philosophy of mathematics. Roughly speaking, in proving the first incompleteness theorem, Gdel used a slightly modified version of the liar paradox, replacing "this sentence is false" with "this sentence is not provable", called the "Gdel sentence G". Thus for a theory "T", "G" is true, but not provable in "T". The analysis of the truth and provability of "G" is a formalized version of the analysis of the truth of the liar sentence. To prove the first incompleteness theorem, Gdel represented statements by numbers. Then the theory at hand, which is assumed to prove certain facts about numbers, also proves facts about its own statements. Questions about the provability of statements are represented as questions about the properties of numbers, which would be decidable by the theory if it were complete. In these terms, the Gdel sentence states that no natural number exists with a certain, strange property. A number with this property would encode a proof of the inconsistency of the theory. If there were such a number then the theory would be inconsistent, contrary to the consistency hypothesis. So, under the assumption that the theory is consistent, there is no such number. It is not possible to replace "not provable" with "false" in a Gdel sentence because the predicate "Q is the Gdel number of a false formula" cannot be represented as a formula of arithmetic. This result, known as Tarski's undefinability theorem, was discovered independently by Gdel (when he was working on the proof of the incompleteness theorem) and by Alfred Tarski. George Boolos has since sketched an alternative proof of the first incompleteness theorem that uses Berry's paradox rather than the liar paradox to construct a true but unprovable formula.
In popular culture
In Portal 2, GLaDOS tries to use this paradox to defeat Wheatley, on assumption that paradoxes take all of the CPU power to process. But, as Wheatley is programmed to be "the dumbest moron who ever lived", the paradox doesn't affect him, although the nearby "Frankenturrets" short out upon hearing the paradox. In Star Trek: The Original Series episode I, Mudd, the Liar paradox is used by the characters of Captain Kirk and Harry Mudd to confuse and ultimately disable an android. In Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga, Cordelia Naismith frequently muses on the axiom All Cretans are liars in her inner monologue.
Notes
[1] Epimenides paradox has "All Cretans are liars." Titus 1: 12 [2] St. Jerome, Homily on Psalm 115 (116B), translated by Sr. Marie Liguori Ewald, IHM, in The Homilies of Saint Jerome, Volume I (1-59 On the Psalms), The Fathers of the Church 48 (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1964), 294 [3] Ahmed Alwishah and David Sanson (2009). "The Early Arabic Liar:The Liar Paradox in the Islamic World from the Mid-Ninth to the Mid-Thirteenth Centuries CE" (http:/ / files. davidsanson. com/ research/ ArabicLiar. pdf). p.1. . [4] Mills, Eugene (1998) A simple solution to the Liar, Philosophical Studies 89: 197-212. [5] Lefebvre, N. and Schelein, M., "The Liar Lied," in Philosophy Now issue 51 [6] Kirkham, Theories of Truth, chap. 9 [7] Yang, T. (Sept. 2001). "Computational verb systems: The paradox of the liar". International Journal of Intelligent Systems (?) 16 (9): 10531067.
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References
Jon Barwise and John Etchemendy (1987) The Liar. Oxford University Press. Greenough, P.M., (2001) " ," American Philosophical Quarterly 38: Hughes, G.E., (1992) John Buridan on Self-Reference : Chapter Eight of Buridan's Sophismata, with a Translation, and Introduction, and a Philosophical Commentary, Cambridge Univ. Press, ISBN 0-521-28864-9. Buridan's detailed solution to a number of such paradoxes. Kirkham, Richard (1992) Theories of Truth. MIT Press. Especially chapter 9. Saul Kripke (1975) "An Outline of a Theory of Truth," Journal of Philosophy 72: 690-716. Lefebvre, Neil, and Schelein, Melissa (2005) "The Liar Lied," Philosophy Now issue 51. Graham Priest (1984) "The Logic of Paradox Revisited," Journal of Philosophical Logic 13: 153-179. A. N. Prior (1976) Papers in Logic and Ethics. Duckworth. Smullyan, Raymond (19nn) What is the Name of this Book?. ISBN 0-671-62832-1. A collection of logic puzzles exploring this theme. Portal 2: Chapter 7 The reunion (2011) Valve Corporation
External links
Liar Paradox (http://www.iep.utm.edu/par-liar) entry in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy by Bradley Dowden Liar Paradox (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liar-paradox) entry by J C Beall and Michael Glanzberg in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Opposite Day
Opposite Day, also known as Opposites Day is a word game where speech is modified so that meaning is inverted. Once Opposite Day is declared, statements mean the opposite of what they usually mean. Usually, a person would say, "After this phrase is over, it will be officially opposite day," and then Opposite Day will be officially started. Opposite Day can also be declared retroactively to indicate that the opposite meaning of what was said should be inferred. Opposite day games are usually played by schoolchildren. In the sense that opposite day "excuses" untrue statements, it is similar to the notion that crossed fingers automatically nullify promises. Play has been compared to a children's "philosophy course",[1] and the game has been used as an educational aid and suggested as preparation for "standardized testing". The sentence "Today is opposite day" is in fact a paradox, similar to the liar paradox. If the statement is true, then it is opposite day. But since it is opposite day, the statement "Today is opposite day" can be interpreted as "Today is not opposite day" which is implied to also be true. Hence, a paradox exists and one is forced to conclude that it is not opposite day.
References
[1] Shelton, Sandi Kahn (2001). Preschool Confidential. Macmillan. pp.232234. ISBN 9780312254582.
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Paradox of the Court

The Paradox of the Court, also known as the counterdilemma of Euathlus, is a very old problem in logic stemming from ancient Greece. It is said that the famous sophist Protagoras took on a pupil, Euathlus, on the understanding that the student pay Protagoras for his instruction after he wins his first court case. Protagoras decided to sue Euathlus for the amount owed. Protagoras argued that if he won the case he would be paid his money. If Euathlus won the case, Protagoras would still be paid according to the original contract, because Euathlus would have won his first case. Euathlus, however, claimed that if he won then by the court's decision he would not have to pay Protagoras. If on the other hand Protagoras won then Euathlus would still not have won a case and therefore not be obliged to pay. The question is: which of the two men is in the right? The story is related by the Latin author Aulus Gellius in Attic Nights.[1]
Analysis
From a moral standpoint it may be that either party was right, or that both weren't, due to the ambiguous nature of the scenario. However, as a matter of law, if the Court were to rule in favor of Protagoras, the conditions of the original contract between him and his pupil would be invalid and Euathlus would have to pay Protagoras. If, on the other hand, Euathlus were to win, the Court could also void Euathlus's obligation of payment. How, from an objective standpoint, the way the Court could make its ruling is not necessarily a paradox either. The Court would either rule that Euathlus (as the defendant) had violated the terms of the contract, or had not. The subsequent conundrum would have no legal bearing on the court's decision. In some civil cases the respondent, if he receives the favor of the court, is also shielded from payments associated with the act of going to court. The Court could indeed rule that Protagoras, as the unsuccessful plaintiff, pay Euathlus the amount which it cost to win. In this case, Euathlus would pay Protagoras only to have the money returned by order of the court. The original contract would have been fulfilled, and Euathlus would bear no further obligation to pay Protagoras for his instruction. The net outcome for Protagoras would be to lose his case, receive payment per the original contract, and then have to pay for the defendant's losses due to his failed suit (Which would be equal to, or exceeding, the cost of Euathlus's education.) Additionally, Euathlus could hire a lawyer to take on the case, thus invalidating this case as a standard for payment.
Another theory
Another means of viewing this case is as follows: Euathlus would win his case because Protagoras sued him BEFORE Euathlus won his first case. Protagoras would lose that particular case because Euathlus has not yet won a case, and therefore Protagoras's cause of action had not yet manifested itself. The new victory of Euathlus would qualify as new evidence for Protagoras, thus constituting grounds for a new trial. It has been criticized that though this represents a practical solution, it does not solve the logical paradox[2]. This however can be challenged by identifying a key assumption in the logic, that of eternal states. This solution works because it targets the assumption of eternal states, that a description applies during all time. If such assumption were false, that the court makes the decision without knowledge of the outcome of the court (or excludes evidence any time after the case start but before the case end), then it is resolvable because the student has not won the case at that time. Court can rule he has not won, therefore does not have to pay without contradiction. Protagoras suing again is neither contradictory. At the second suing the state of the student has changed: he now has won a case. The second suing will now include the outcome of the first trial because it happened prior to the second
Paradox of the Court trial, and the court can freely rule in favor of Protagoras. If assumption of eternal states is in play, the court is required to have all knowledge of all cases student has fought in his lifetime, both past and future. Then there will be a contradiction from the assumption, albeit an unrealistic one. In this solution the student can have both won his first case and not won the first case, because they occur at different times of evaluation.
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Other versions of the paradox

In some versions Protagoras would demand the money if and only if Euathlus wins his first court case.[3] Some accounts claim that Protagoras demanded his money as soon as Euathlus completed his education, others say that Protagoras waited until it was obvious that Euathlus was making no effort to take on clients[4] and still others [5] assert that Euathlus made a genuine attempt but that no clients ever came.
References
[1] Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, book 5, chapter 10 (http:/ / www. perseus. tufts. edu/ hopper/ text?doc=Perseus:text:2007. 01. 0072:book=5:chapter=10). [2] W. Hughes, J. Lavery. "Critical Thinking An Introduction to the Basic Skills Fifth Edition", pp. 327-328, Broadview Press, 2008. [3] L. Alqvist, "Deontic Logic", in Handbook of Philosophical logic, vol. II, pp. 605-714, 1984. [4] Peter Suber, Protagoras v. Euathlus (http:/ / www. earlham. edu/ ~peters/ writing/ psa/ sec20. htm#A), a section within The Paradox of Self-Amendment (http:/ / www. earlham. edu/ ~peters/ writing/ psa/ index. htm), Peter Lang Publishing, 1990. [5] Eugene P. Northrop, "Riddles in Mathematics", Penguin Books
Petronius
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Petronius
Petronius
Born
Circa 27 AD Massalia (ancient Marseille) Circa 66 AD Cumae Novelist The Satyricon
Died
Occupation Notable work(s)
Gaius Petronius Arbiter (ca. 2766 AD) was a Roman courtier during the reign of Nero. He is generally believed to be the author of the Satyricon, a satirical novel believed to have been written during the Neronian age.
Life
Tacitus, Plutarch and Pliny the Elder describe Petronius as the elegantiae arbiter, "judge of elegance" in the court of the emperor Nero. He served as consul in the year AD 62. Later, he became a member of the senatorial class who devoted themselves to a life of pleasure, whose relationship to Nero was apparently akin to that of a fashion advisor. Tacitus gives this account of Petronius in his historical work the Annals: He spent his days in sleep, his nights in attending to his official duties or in amusement, that by his dissolute life he had become as famous as other men by a life of energy, and that he was regarded as no ordinary profligate, but as an accomplished voluptuary. His reckless freedom of speech, being regarded as frankness, procured him popularity. Yet during his provincial government, and later when he held the office of consul, he had shown vigor and capacity for affairs. Afterwards returning to his life of vicious indulgence, he became one of the chosen circle of Nero's intimates, and was looked upon as an absolute authority on questions of taste (elegantiae arbiter) in connection with the science of luxurious living. None of the ancient sources give any further detail about his life, or mention that he was a writer. However a medieval manuscript, written around 1450, of the Satyricon credited a "Titus Petronius" as the author of the original work. Traditionally this reference is linked with Petronius Arbiter, since the novel appears to have been written or at least set during his lifetime. The link, however, remains speculative and disputed.
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As a writer
Petronius' development of his characters in the Satyricon, namely Trimalchio, transcends the traditional style of writing of ancient literature. In the literature written during Petronius' life the emphasis was always on the typical considerations of plot, which had been laid down by classical rules. The character, which was hardly known in ancient literature, was secondary. Petronius goes beyond these literary limitations in his exact portrayals of detailed speech, behavior, surroundings, and appearance of the characters. Another literary device Petronius employs in his novel is a collection of specific allusions. The allusions to certain people and events are evidence that the Satyricon was written during Nero's time. These also suggest that it was aimed at a contemporary audience in which a part consisted of Nero's courtiers and even Nero himself. One such allusion, found in Book IX, refers to the story of the good wife Lucretia which was well-known at the time: "If you're a Lucretia," he said, "You've found a Tarquin". The message Petronius tries to convey in his work is far from moral and does not intend to produce reform, but is written above all to entertain and should be considered artistically. As the title implies the Satyricon is a satire, specifically a Menippean satire, in which Petronius satirizes nearly anything, using his impeccable taste as the only standard. It is speculated that Petronius' depiction of Trimalchio mirrors that of Nero. Although we never know the author's own opinion, we see the opinions of the characters in the story and how Encolpius criticizes Trimalchio.
Death
Petronius' high position soon made him the object of envy for those around him. Having attracted the jealousy of Tigellinus, the commander of the emperor's guard, he was accused of treason. He was arrested at Cumae in 65 AD but did not wait for a sentence. Instead he chose to take his own life. Tacitus again records his elegant suicide in the sixteenth book of the Annals: Yet he did not fling away life with precipitate haste, but having made an incision in his veins and then, according to his humour, bound them up, he again opened them, while he conversed with his friends, not in a serious strain or on topics that might win for him the glory of courage. And he listened to them as they repeated, not thoughts on the immortality of the soul or on the theories of philosophers, but light poetry and playful verses. To some of his slaves he gave liberal presents, a flogging to others. He dined, indulged himself in sleep, that death, though forced on him, might have a natural appearance. Even in his will he did not, as did many in their last moments, flatter Nero or Tigellinus or any other of the men in power. On the contrary, he described fully the prince's shameful excesses, with the names of his male and female companions and their novelties in debauchery, and sent the account under seal to Nero. Then he broke his signet-ring, that it might not be subsequently available for imperiling others.
In fiction
Petronius appears or is referenced in several works of fiction: Henryk Sienkiewicz's novel Quo Vadis and its adaptations, where C. Petronius is the preferred courtier of Nero, using his wit to adulate and mock him at the same time. He is horrified at Nero's burning of Rome, and eventually commits suicide to escape both Nero's antics and his anticipated execution. In the 1951 film of Quo Vadis, Petronius is portrayed by Leo Genn, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. In the 2001 film of Quo Vadis, Petronius is portrayed by Boguslaw Linda. It was the first Polish adaptation of Sienkiewicz's novel. Mika Waltari's novel The Roman. in Robert A. Heinlein's novel The Door into Summer, in which the protagonist's cat is named "Petronius the Arbiter".
Petronius in Jesse Browner's novel The Uncertain Hour, which recounts Petronius' final banquet and suicide (as told by Tacitus, Annals 16 [1]). in Anthony Burgess's novel The Kingdom of the Wicked, Gaius Petronius appears as a major character, an advisor to Nero. In the 1835 short story "A Tale of Roman Life" by Alexander Pushkin, Petronius' final days in Cumae are chronicled. George Orwell in "Bookshop Memories" (1936): "Modern books for children are rather horrible things, especially when you see them in the mass. Personally I would sooner give a child a copy of Petronius Arbiter than Peter Pan, but even Barrie seems manly and wholesome compared with some of his later imitators." In recent times, a popular quote (reportedly by Charlton Ogburn, 1957[2]) on reorganization is often (but spuriously[3][4]) attributed to a Gaius Petronius. In one version it reads: We trained hard ... but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.
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References
This articleincorporates text from a publication now in the public domain:Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopdia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
[1] [2] [3] [4] http:/ / www. chieftainsys. freeserve. co. uk/ tacitus_annals16. htm "The Quotations Page" (http:/ / www. quotationspage. com/ quote/ 25618. html). . Retrieved 2007-09-14. "Petronius Arbiter, Time Traveller" (http:/ / www. dtc. umn. edu/ ~reedsj/ petronius. html). . Retrieved 2007-09-14. "ARTICLES FROM THE PETRONIAN SOCIETY NEWSLETTER" (https:/ / umdrive. memphis. edu/ mhooker/ psn_articles. html). . Retrieved 2008-05-22.
Conte, Gian Biagio, The Hidden Author: An interpretation of Petronius' Satyricon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). Connors, Catherine, Petronius the Poet: Verse and Literary Tradition in the Satyricon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Jensson, Gottskalk, The Recollections of Encolpius. The Satyrica of Petronius as Milesian Fiction (Groningen: Barkhuis Publishing and Groningen University Library, 2004) (Ancient narrative Suppl. 2). Vannini, Giulio, Petronius 1975-2005: bilancio critico e nuove proposte (Goettingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007) (Lustrum, 49). Prag, Jonathan and Ian Repath (eds), Petronius: A Handbook (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009). Breitenstein, Natalie, Petronius, Satyrica 1-15. Text, bersetzung, Kommentar (Berlin - New York: De Gruyter, 2009) (Texte und Kommentare, 32). Vannini, Giulio, Petronii Arbitri Satyricon 100-115. Edizione critica e commento (Berlin - New York: De Gruyter, 2010) (Beitrge zur Altertumskunde, 281).
External links
Works by Petronius (http://www.gutenberg.org/author/Petronius+Arbiter) at Project Gutenberg Latin text (http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/petronius.html) of the Satyricon from The Latin Library (http:// www.thelatinlibrary.com)
Quine's paradox
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Quine's paradox
Quine's paradox is a paradox concerning truth values, attributed to Willard Van Orman Quine. It is related to the liar paradox as a problem, and it purports to show that a sentence can be paradoxical even if it is not self-referring and does not use demonstratives or indexicals (i.e. it does not explicitly refer to itself). The paradox can be expressed as follows: "Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation" yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation. If the paradox is not clear, consider each part of the above description of the paradox incrementally: it = yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation its quotation = "yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation" it preceded by its quotation = "yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation" yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation. With these tools, we may now reconsider the description of the paradox. It can be seen to assert the following: The statement "'yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation' yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation" is false. In other words, the sentence implies that it is false, which is paradoxicalfor if it is false, what it states is in fact true.
Motivation
The liar paradox ("This sentence is false", or "The next sentence is true. The previous sentence is false") demonstrates essential difficulties in assigning a truth value even to simple sentences. Many philosophers, attempting to explain the liar paradox, concluded that the problem was with the use of demonstrative word "this" or its replacements. Once we properly analyze this sort of self-reference, according to said philosophers, the paradox no longer arises. Quine's construction demonstrates that paradox of this kind arises independently of such direct self-reference, for, no lexeme of the sentence refers to the sentence, though Quine's sentence does contain a lexeme which refers to one of its parts. Namely, "its" near the end of the sentence is a possessive pronoun whose antecedent is the very predicate in which it occurs. Thus, although Quine's sentence per se is not self-referring, it does contain a self-referring predicate. Any system, such as English, that contains entities such as words or sentences that can be used to apply to themselves, must contain this type of paradox. There is no way to eliminate the paradoxes, short of a severe crippling of the language.
Application
Quine suggested an unnatural linguistic resolution to such logical antinomies, inspired by Bertrand Russell's Type theory and Tarski's work. His system would attach levels to a line of problematic expressions such as falsehood and denote. Entire sentences would use a higher hierarchy each of their parts'. The form "'Clause about falsehood0' yields falsehood1" will be grammatically correct, and "'Denoting0 phrase' denotes0 itself" wrong. George Boolos, inspired by his student Michael Ernst, has written that the sentence might be syntactically ambiguous, in using multiple quotation marks whose exact mate marks cannot be determined. He revised traditional quotation into a system where the length of outer pairs of so called q-marks of an expression is determined by the q-marks that appear inside the expression. This accounts not only for ordered quotes-within-quotes but also to, say, strings with an odd number of quotation marks.
Quine's paradox In Gdel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, author Douglas Hofstadter suggests that the Quine sentence in fact uses an indirect type of self-reference. He then shows that indirect self-reference is crucial in many of the proofs of Gdel's incompleteness theorems.
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Bibliography
Boolos, George (1995). Leonardi, P; Santambrogio, M. eds. On Quine: New Essays. Cambridge University Press. pp.283-2296. ISBN9780521470919. Reprinted in Boolos, George (1998). "Quotational Ambiguity". Logic, Logic and Logic. Harvard University Press. pp.392405. ISBN0674537661. Hofstadter, Douglas (1979). Gdel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. New York: Basic Books. Quine, W.V.O (1962). "Paradox". Scientific American 206 (4). reprinted as "The Ways of Paradox" [1]. The Ways of Paradox and Other Essays. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1966. pp.121. Quine, W. V. O. (1987). "Paradoxes". Quiddities: An Intermittently Philosophical Dictionary. Harvard University Press. pp.145149. ISBN0-674-74352-0.
References
[1] http:/ / www. math. dartmouth. edu/ ~matc/ Readers/ HowManyAngels/ Paradox. html
Richard's paradox
In logic, Richard's paradox is a semantical antinomy in set theory and natural language first described by the French mathematician Jules Richard in 1905. Today, the paradox is ordinarily used in order to motivate the importance of carefully distinguishing between mathematics and metamathematics. The paradox was also a motivation in the development of predicative mathematics.
Description
The original statement of the paradox, due to Richard (1905), has a relation to Cantor's diagonal argument on the uncountability of the set of real numbers. The paradox begins with the observation that certain expressions in English unambiguously define real numbers, while other expressions in English do not. For example, "The real number whose integer part is 17 and whose nth decimal place is 0 if n is even and 1 if n is odd" defines the real number 17.1010101..., while the phrase "London is in England" does not define a real number. Thus there is an infinite list of English phrases (where each phrase is of finite length, but lengths vary in the list) that unambiguously define real numbers; arrange this list by length and then dictionary order, so that the ordering is canonical. This yields an infinite list of the corresponding real numbers: r1, r2, ... . Now define a new real number r as follows. The integer part of r is 0, the nth decimal place of r is 1 if the nth decimal place of rn is not 1, and the nth decimal place of r is 2 if the nth decimal place of rn is 1. The preceding two paragraphs are an expression in English which unambiguously defines a real number r. Thus r must be one of the numbers rn. However, r was constructed so that it cannot equal any of the rn. This is the paradoxical contradiction.
Richard's paradox
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Analysis and relationship with metamathematics

Richard's paradox leaves an untenable contradiction, which must be analyzed to find an error. The proposed definition of the new real number r clearly contains a finite string of characters, and hence it appears at first to be a definition of a real number. However, the definition refers to definability-in-English itself. If it were possible to determine which English expressions actually do define a real number, and which do not, then the paradox would go through. Thus the resolution of Richard's paradox is that there is no way to unambiguously determine exactly which English sentences are definitions of real numbers (see Good1966). That is, there is no way to describe in a finite number of words how to tell whether an arbitrary English expression is a definition of a real number. This is not surprising, as the ability to make this determination would also imply the ability to solve the halting problem and perform any other non-algorithmic calculation that can be described in English. A similar phenomenon occurs in formalized theories that are able to refer to their own syntax, such as ZermeloFraenkel set theory (ZFC). Say that a formula (x) defines a real number if there is exactly one real number r such that (r) holds. Then it is not possible to define, in ZFC, the set of all (Gdel numbers of) formulas that define real numbers. For, if it were possible to define this set, it would be possible to diagonalize over it to produce a new definition of a real number, following the outline of Richard's paradox above. Note that the set of formulas which define real numbers may exist, as a set F; the limitation of ZFC is that there is no formula which defines F without reference to other sets. This is closely related to Tarski's indefinability theorem. The example of ZFC illustrates the importance of distinguishing the metamathematics of a formal system from the statements of the formal system itself. The property D() that a formula of ZFC defines a unique real number is not itself expressible in ZFC, but must be studied in the metatheory used to formalize ZFC. From this viewpoint, Richard's paradox results from treating a construction in the metatheory (the enumeration of all statements in the original system that define real numbers) as if that construction could be conducted in the original system.
Variation: Richardian numbers

A variation of the paradox uses integers instead of real-numbers, while preserving the self-referential character of the original. Consider a language (such as English) in which the arithmetical properties of integers are defined. For example, "the first natural number" defines the property of being the first natural number, one; and "not divisible by any natural number other than 1 and itself" defines the property of being a prime number. (It is clear that some properties cannot be defined explicitly, since every deductive system must start with some axioms. But for the purposes of this argument, it is assumed that phrases such as "an integer is the sum of two integers" are already understood.) While the list of all such possible definitions is itself infinite, it is easily seen that each individual definition is composed of a finite number of words, and therefore also a finite number of characters. Since this is true, we can order the definitions, first by length of word and then lexicographically (in dictionary order). Now, we may map each definition to the set of natural numbers, such that the definition with the smallest number of characters and alphabetical order will correspond to the number 1, the next definition in the series will correspond to 2, and so on. Since each definition is associated with a unique integer, then it is possible that occasionally the integer assigned to a definition fits that definition, i.e. the number of letters in the definition equals the integer. If, for example, the 43 letters long (ignoring the spaces) description "not divisible by any integer other than 1 and itself" were assigned to the number 43, then this would be true. Since 43 is itself not divisible by any integer other than 1 and itself, then the number of this definition has the property of the definition itself. However, this may not always be the case. If the definition: "the first natural number" were assigned to the number 4, then the number of the definition does not have the property of the definition itself. This latter example will be termed as having the property of being Richardian. Thus, if a number is Richardian, then the definition corresponding to that number is a property that the number itself does not have. (More formally, "x is Richardian" is equivalent to "x does not have the property designated by the defining expression with which x is correlated in the serially ordered set of definitions".)
Richard's paradox Now, since the property of being Richardian is itself a numerical property of integers, it belongs in the list of all definitions of properties. Therefore, the property of being Richardian is assigned some integer, n. Finally, the paradox becomes: Is n Richardian? Suppose n is Richardian. This is only possible if n does not have the property designated by the defining expression which n is correlated with. In other words, this means n is not Richardian, contradicting our assumption. However, if we suppose n is not Richardian, then it does have the defining property which it corresponds to. This, by definition, means that it is Richardian, again contrary to assumption. Thus, the statement "n is Richardian" can not consistently be designated as either true or false.
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Relation to predicativism
Another viewpoint on Richard's paradox relates to mathematical predicativism. In this view, the real numbers are defined in stages, with each stage only making reference to previous stages and other things that have already been defined. From a predicative viewpoint is it not valid to quantify over all real numbers in the process of generating a new real number, because this is believed to lead to a vicious-circle problem in the definitions. Set theories such as ZFC are not based on this sort of predicative framework, and allow impredicative definitions. Richard (1905) presented a solution to the paradox from the viewpoint of predicativisim. Richard claimed that the flaw in the paradoxical construction was that the expression for the construction of the real number r does not actually unambiguously define a real number, because the statement refers to the construction of an infinite set of real numbers, of which r itself is a part. Thus, Richard says, the real number r will not be included as any rn, because the definition of r does not meet the criteria for being included in the sequence of definitions used to construct the sequence rn. Contemporary mathematicians agree that the definition of r is invalid, but for a different reason. They believe the definition of r is invalid because there is no well-defined notion of when an English phrase defines a real number, and so there is no unambiguous way to construct the sequence rn. Although Richard's solution to the paradox did not gain favor with mathematicians, predicativism is an important part of the study of the foundations of mathematics. Predicativism was first studied in detail by Henri Poincar and Hermann Weyl in Das Kontinuum, where they showed that much of elementary real analysis can be conducted in a predicative manner starting with only the natural numbers. More recently, predicativism has been studied by Solomon Feferman, who has used proof theory to explore the relationship between predicative and impredicative systems.
References
Fraenkel, Abaraham; Bar-Hillel, Yehoshua & Levy, Azriel (1973). Foundations of Set Theory. With the collaboration of Dirk van Dalen (Second ed.). Amsterdam: Noord-Hollandsche. ISBN0-7204-2270-1. Good, I. J. (1966). "A Note on Richard's Paradox". Mind 75 (299): 431. doi:10.1093/mind/LXXV.299.431. Richard, Jules (1905). Les Principes des Mathmatiques et le Problme des Ensembles. Revue Gnrale des Sciences Pures et Appliques. Translated in Heijenoort, J. van, ed. (1964). Source Book in Mathematical Logic 1879-1931. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
External links
"Paradoxes and contemporary logic [1]", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Self-reference
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Self-reference
Self-reference occurs in natural or formal languages when a sentence, idea or formula refers to itself. The reference may be expressed either directlythrough some intermediate sentence or formulaor by means of some encoding. In philosophy, it also refers to the ability of a subject to speak of or refer to himself, herself, or itself: to have the kind of thought expressed by the first person pronoun, the word "I" in English. Self-reference is studied and has applications in mathematics, philosophy, computer programming, and linguistics. Self-referential statements are sometimes paradoxical.
Usage
An example of a self-referential situation is the one of self-creation, as the logical organization produces itself the physical structure which creates itself. In metaphysics, self-reference is subjectivity, while "hetero-reference", as it is called (see Niklas Luhmann), is objectivity. Self-reference also occurs in literature and film when an author refers to his work in the context of the work itself. Famous examples include Cervantes's Don Quixote, Denis Diderot's Jacques le fataliste et son matre, Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler, many stories by Nikolai Gogol, Lost in the Funhouse by John Barth, Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author, and Federico Fellini's 8 . This is closely related to the concepts of breaking the fourth wall and meta-reference, which often involve self-reference.
The Ouroboros, a dragon that continually consumes itself, is used as a symbol for self-reference.
The surrealist painter Ren Magritte is famous for his self-referential works. His painting The Treachery of Images, shown above, includes the words this is not a pipe, the truth of which depends entirely on whether the word "ceci" (in English, "this") refers to the pipe depictedor to the painting or the sentence itself. In computer science, self-reference occurs in reflection, where a program can read or modify its own instructions like any other data. Numerous programming languages support reflection to some extent with varying degrees of expressiveness. Additionally, self-reference is seen in recursion (related to the mathematical recurrence relation), where a code structure refers back to itself during computation.
Examples
In language
A word that describes itself is called an autological word (or autonym). This generally applies to adjectives, for example sesquipedalian, but can also apply to other parts of speech, such as TLA, as a three-letter abbreviation for three-letter abbreviation, and PHP which is a recursive acronym for "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor". A reflexive sentence has the same subject and object (e.g., "The man washed himself"). In contrast, a transitive sentence requires the subject and object to be non-identical (e.g., "The man hit John"). There is a special case of meta-sentence in which the content of the sentence in the metalanguage and the content of the sentence in the object language are the same. Such a sentence is referring to itself. However some meta-sentences
Self-reference of this type can lead to paradoxes. "This is a sentence." can be considered to be a self-referential meta-sentence which is obviously true. However "This sentence is false" is a meta-sentence which leads to a self-referential paradox. Self-referential sentences include "This sentence contains thirty-eight letters.", and Quine's paradox of "Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation" which yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation. Fumblerules are a humorous list of rules of good grammar and writing, demonstrated through sentences that violate those very rules, such as "Avoid cliches like the plague" and "Don't use no double negatives". The term was coined in a published list of such rules by William Safire.
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In mathematics
Impredicativity Loop (graph theory) Tupper's self-referential formula Hofstadter's law, which specifies that "It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law"[1] is an example of a self-referencing adage.
In cognition
Neuroscience research suggests the existence of neuroplasticity, a phenomenon in which thinking processes unconsciously change the neural circuitry and structure of the brain via sensory experience, input from the environment or reactions hitherto.[2]
In popular culture
Literature Paul Auster's The New York Trilogy, specifically City Of Glass. Miguel de Cervantes mentions his own work La Galatea and the novel Don Quixote itself in the novel Don Quixote. A character of an apocryphal version of Don Quixote acknowledges that Cervantes' Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are the real ones and not those of the apocryphal text, which implies that the reader is one of the characters of the novel. Dave Eggers's A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius has characters referring to their role in the book and references to the book itself. Michael Ende's The Neverending Story uses self-reference of the book prominently, when a character (Bastian) of a story within the story (also called 'Neverending Story') finds a book called the same, and it is the same book the reader is reading. Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World, in which the titular character realizes she is the character in a book. Robert A. Heinlein's The Cat Who Walks Through Walls considers the universe, or multiverse, as an author-manipulated object, including the plot of the book itself. The title of Abbie Hoffman's Steal This Book is self-referential Douglas Hofstadter's Gdel, Escher, Bach uses self-referencing mathematical (formal language) and English (natural language) sentences, pictures (M.C. Escher's dragon for example), and music (Bach's fugues) to convey the concept and its recursive nature. James Joyce's Finnegans Wake contains multiple references to itself. Spike Milligan's comic novel Puckoon features several arguments between the protagonist Dan Mulligan and the author, after Dan is made aware that he is a fictional character. Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author involves a collection of people that show up at a play rehearsal, claiming to be characters in search of a playwright to help them finish their story. The play plays itself out as a way of (possibly) doing just that.
Self-reference The Sesame Street book The Monster at the End of This Book references itself in the title, as well as throughout the story. In Clifford D. Simak's 1951 novel Time and Again, the main character travels back in time to 1977 and meets a man who calls himself "Old Cliff", who mentions that he had written a book about the very same theme as the novel itself. In Miguel de Unamuno's novel Niebla ("Fog") the main character, Augusto Prez, confronts Unamuno himself and has a quarrel with his author and inventor, reproaching Unamuno to have created him. Kurt Vonnegut refers to himself as the author in his novel Breakfast of Champions, where he has a conversation with himself about the writing of the novel itself. The character Kilgore Trout also engages in a conversation with the author. Robert Anton Wilson's Schrdinger's Cat Trilogy takes place in a universe where the books of the trilogy exist. Indeed, a character named Robert Wilson exists in the third book, and he is aware that he is a character in a book, having read the book and found himself described there. Film In Mel Brooks' 1974 film Blazing Saddles the villain is killed outside a movie theater premiering Blazing Saddles. Similarly, Brooks' 1987 film Spaceballs uses the video release of the movie that the audience is watching to see what will happen in the future. Some Monty Python sketches involves characters consulting or referring to the script to determine what to do next. Their film Monty Python and the Holy Grail is extensively self-referencing, including numerous on-screen references to incidents in "Scene 24"; soundtrack music being repeatedly noticed and silenced by a character; a sotto voce admission that a castle is "only a model", and the like. The 2006 film Stranger Than Fiction is about a character's knowledge that he is apparently living out a story written by an author, complete with narration which is audible to him. He eventually confronts the author, identifying himself as a character from one of her books. Several classic Warner Bros. Looney Tunes animated cartoons show characters going into a movie theatre, where they watch a version of the cartoon they're in. Comics In DC Comics' Legion of the 3 Worlds, The main antagonist, Superboy Prime, is the Clark Kent from a destroyed iteration of the real universe, supremely displeased from how his favourite comic books turned out while journeying in their multiverse (depicted as coexisting with the real one). Eventually, Clark returns to our dimension, where is confronted by his distraught parents and girlfriend, having read the chronicles of his villainous action from the comic books published after his "departure". In the Tintin adventure "Cigars of the Pharaoh", Tintin finds himself the relenting guest of a sheikh who recognizes him and shows him another album of his adventures. In earlier editions, the album was Tintin in America, then Tintin in the Congo in the color version. But later (current) editions go even further by showing the album cover of an adventure yet to come (Destination Moon) at the time of the story, but which is by now known by modern readers of earlier adventures. Plays In Ain and David Gordon's Obie Award-winning play The Family Business, a character who is a playwright is asked what he is writing. "This," he replies, "I'm writing this." Music The folk song "Goober Peas", which dates from around the time of the American Civil War contains the lyrics: I think my song has lasted almost long enough. / The subject is most interesting, but rhymes are mighty tough. In Arlo Guthrie's 1967 recording of his song/monologue "Alice's Restaurant", he says at one point to the live audience he's performing for: "I've been singing this song for 45 minutes now, I can sing it for another 45; I'm not tired ... or proud."
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Self-reference Carly Simon's song "You're So Vain", which contains the lyrics, "You're so vain, you probably think this song is about you." Da Vinci's Notebook's song "Title of the Song" is composed entirely of self-references.
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References
Notes
[1] Hodstadter, Douglas. Gdel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. 20th anniversary ed., 1999, p. 152. ISBN 0-465-02656-7 [2] Grohol, John M.. "Can a Person Change their Brain Structure? Yes" (http:/ / psychcentral. com/ blog/ archives/ 2008/ 02/ 29/ can-a-person-change-their-brain-structure-yes/ ). Psych Central. World of Psychology. . Retrieved 19 November 2011.
Bibliography Hofstadter, D. R. (1980). Gdel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid. New York, Vintage Books. Smullyan, Raymond (1994), Diagonalization and Self-Reference, Oxford Science Publications, ISBN 0-19-853450-7
External links
Self-Referential Story (http://cgi.cs.indiana.edu/~oracle/digest.cgi?N=1353#1353-01|A), from the Internet Oracularities #1353 Self-Referential Aptitude Test (http://faculty.uml.edu/jpropp/srat.html), by Jim Propp Self-reference and apparent self-reference (http://www.cut-the-knot.org/selfreference/index.shtml) Self-reference jokes (http://www.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/selfref.html) The Paradox of Self-Amendment: A Study of Logic, Law, Omnipotence, and Change (http://www.earlham.edu/ ~peters/writing/psa/), by Peter Suber (Peter Lang Publishing, 1990). A book-length study of self-reference in law. (Out of print, but the full text is available online) University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (at archive.org) (http://web.archive.org/web/20070705233424/http:// www.uwm.edu/~chruska/recursive/selfref.html) Self-Reference in ``Self-Reference in `Self-Reference in ...'", a review of a review of a review of ... ( archived (http://www.webcitation.org/5mGZsMlWy) at WebCite)
Socratic paradox
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Socratic paradox
The phrase Socratic paradox can refer to two separate things.
"I know that I know nothing"

The more common usage refers to an object or idea whose very existence, or acknowledgment, is a paradox. Its name is derived from a quote of Socrates from the Republic, where he says, "I know nothing at all."[1] The question that arises is how he knows that he knows nothing, if this is the only information he possesses. It is also mentioned in Plato's Apology.[2]
Secondary usage
The secondary usage refers to statements of Socrates that seem contrary to common sense, such as that "no one desires evil."[3] In this usage, the term does not refer to a strict paradox, but rather to either of two surprising and unacceptable conclusions drawn from the Socratic dialogues of Plato: (i) the startling consequence of Socrates' association of knowledge and virtue, according to which nobody ever does wrong knowingly; (ii) the view that nobody knows what they mean when they use a term unless they can provide an explicit definition of it. Although this last is sometimes called the Socratic fallacy, this can be regarded as being uncharitable to Socrates, whose concern was not simply with meaning, but more with notions like justice or reason, for which our inability to provide principles may well reflect ignorance and muddle.
References
[1] Plato, the Republic. Book I. [2] Plato, Apology 20c-24b. [3] p. 14, Terence Irwin, The Development of Ethics, vol. 1, Oxford University Press 2007; p. 147, Gerasimos Santas, "The Socratic Paradoxes", Philosophical Review 73 (1964), pp. 147-64.
Yablo's paradox
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Yablo's paradox
Yablo's paradox is of type similar to the liar paradox published by Stephen Yablo in 1993.[1] The paradox arises from considering the following infinite set of sentences: (S1): for all k > 1, Sk is false (S2): for all k > 2, Sk is false (S3): for all k > 3, Sk is false ... ...
The set is paradoxical, because it is unsatisfiable (contradictory), but this unsatisfiability defies immediate intuition. Moreover, none of the sentences refers to itself, but only to the subsequent sentences; this leads Yablo to claim that his paradox does not rely on self-reference.
References
[1] "Paradox Without Self-Reference" (http:/ / www. mit. edu/ ~yablo/ pwsr. pdf). Analysis 53 (4): 251252. 1993. doi:10.1093/analys/53.4.251. .
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Vagueness
Absence paradox
The absence paradox while named a paradox, is more precisely an informal fallacy and humorous misuse of language which results in the conclusion that "No one is ever present." The statement of the argument is some formulation of the following: No person is ever present because he is either not in Rome or alternatively is not in Beijing. Therefore, he must be somewhere else. If he is somewhere else he is not here. The use of this fallacy dates from the 19th century. The fallacy in the argument is that it interprets the relative adverb "else" in an absolute sense.[1]
References
[1] Bothamley, Dictionary of theories
Bonini's paradox
Bonini's Paradox, named after Stanford business professor Charles Bonini, explains the difficulty in constructing models or simulations that fully capture the workings of complex systems (such as the human brain).[1]
Statements
In modern discourse, the paradox was articulated by John M. Dutton and William H. Starbuck[2] "As a model of a complex system becomes more complete, it becomes less understandable. Alternatively, as a model grows more realistic, it also becomes just as difficult to understand as the real-world processes it represents" (Computer Simulation of Human Behaviour, 1971). This paradox may be used by researchers to explain why complete models of the human brain and thinking processes have not been created and will undoubtedly remain difficult for years to come. This same paradox was observed earlier from a quote by Paul Valry, "Everything simple is false. Everything which is complex is unusable." (Notre destin et les lettres, 1937) Also, the same topic has been discussed by Richard Levins in his classic essay "The Strategy of Model Building in Population Biology", in stating that complex models have 'too many parameters to measure, leading to analytically insoluble equations that would exceed the capacity of our computers, but the results would have no meaning for us even if they could be solved. (See Odenbaugh, 2006)
Related issues
Bonini's paradox can be seen as a case of the mapterritory relation: simpler maps are less accurate representations of the territory. An extreme form is given in the fictional stories Sylvie and Bruno Concluded and On Exactitude in Science, which imagine a map of a scale of 1:1 (the same size as the territory), which is precise but unusable, illustrating one extreme of Bonini's paradox. Isaac Asimov's fictional science of "Psychohistory" in his Foundation series also faces with this dilemma; Asimov even had one of his psychohistorians discuss the paradox.
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Selected bibliography
Levins, R. "The Strategy of Model Building in Population Biology", American Scientist, 54:421-431, 1966 Odenbaugh, Jay. "The strategy of 'The Strategy of Model Building in Population Biology' ", Biology and Philosophy, 21:607-621.
References
[1] Charles P. Bonini (1963) Simulation of information and decision systems in the firm, Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall [2] W. H. Starbuck (1976) Organizations and their environments; In: M. D. Dunnette (ed.), Handbook of industrial and organizational psychology Chicago: Rand, S. 1069-1123
Code-talker paradox
The code-talker paradox is an issue in linguistics that brings into question some fundamental ideas of the nature of languages. Specifically, the fact that language can both facilitate and block communication. This term, coined by Mark Baker raises the issue of how Philip Johnston and the code talker were able to communicate in a way such that human beings created references that were mutually intelligible to each other but completely unintelligible to everyone who was not familiar with the structure and meaning of the signals.
Ship of Theseus
The Ship of Theseus, also known as Theseus' paradox, or various variants, notably grandfather's axe and (in the UK) Trigger's Broom (based upon the BBC sitcom Only Fools and Horses) is a paradox that raises the question of whether an object which has had all its component parts replaced remains fundamentally the same object. The paradox is most notably recorded by Plutarch in Life of Theseus from the late 1st century. Plutarch asked whether a ship which was restored by replacing all its wooden parts remained the same ship. The paradox had been discussed by more ancient philosophers such as Heraclitus, Socrates, and Plato prior to Plutarch's writings; and more recently by Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. This problem is "a model for the philosophers"; some say "it remained the same, some saying it did not remain the same".[1]
Variations of the paradox

Ancient philosophy
The paradox was first raised in Greek legend as reported by Plutarch, "The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned [from Crete] had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their place, insomuch that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same." Plutarch,Theseus[2] Plutarch thus questions whether the ship would remain the same if it were entirely replaced, piece by piece. Centuries later, the philosopher Thomas Hobbes introduced a further puzzle, wondering: what would happen if the original planks were gathered up after they were replaced, and used to build a second ship.[3] Which ship, if either, is the original Ship of Theseus?
Ship of Theseus Another early variation involves a scenario in which Socrates and Plato exchange the parts of their carriages piece by piece until, finally, Socrates's carriage is made up of all the parts of Plato's original carriage and vice versa. The question is presented if or when they exchanged their carriages.
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Enlightenment era
John Locke proposed a scenario regarding a favorite sock that develops a hole. He pondered whether the sock would still be the same after a patch was applied to the hole, and if it would be the same sock, would it still be the same sock after a second patch was applied until all of the material of the original sock has been replaced with patches. George Washington's axe (sometimes "my grandfather's axe") is the subject of an apocryphal story of unknown origin in which the famous artifact is "still George Washington's axe" despite having had both its head and handle replaced. ...as in the case of the owner of George Washington's axe which has three times had its handle replaced and twice had its head replaced! Ray Broadus Browne,Objects of Special Devotion: Fetishism in Popular Culture, p. 134[4] This has also been recited as "Abe Lincoln's axe";[5] Lincoln was well known for his ability with an axe, and axes associated with his life are held in various museums.[6] The French equivalent is the story of Jeannot's knife, where the eponymous knife has had its blade changed fifteen times and its handle fifteen times, but is still the same knife.[7] In some Spanish-speaking countries, Jeannot's knife is present as a proverb, though referred to simply as "the family knife". The principle, however, remains the same. In the 1872 story "Dr. Ox's Experiment" by Jules Verne there is a reference to Jeannot's knife apropos of the van Tricasse's family. In this family, since 1340, each time one of the spouses died the other remarried with someone younger, who took the family name. Thus the family can be said to have been a single marriage lasting through centuries, rather than a series of generations. A similar concept, but involving more than two persons at any given time, is described in some detail in Robert Heinlein's novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress as a line marriage.
Modern examples
There are many examples of objects which might fall prey to Theseus's paradox: buildings and automobiles for example can undergo complete replacement while still maintaining some aspect of their identity. An example is found in the popular UK television show Only Fools and Horses in the episode Heroes and Villains, where road-sweeper Trigger is given a medal by the council for using the same broom for 20 years. He then adds that the broom has had 17 new heads and 14 new handles. When asked how can it be the same broom, Trigger produces a picture of himself and his broom and asks, "What more proof do you need?"
Buildings and institutions

Businesses, colleges, and universities often change addresses and residences, thus completely "replacing" their old material structure for a new one, yet keeping the same purpose and often the same people that keep the organization functioning as it was. If two businesses merge, their identities merge. For example, the original Yankee Stadium was built in 1923, but underwent an extensive renovation in the mid 1970s. The stadium was so heavily remodeled that some view the post-renovation stadium as a different building than the original structure. Businesses, organizations, and political entities maintain their purpose and function but continually change their membership, so that at any given time the group of people composing them is different than at previous times.
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Human body
Similarly, the human body constantly creates new cells as old cells die. The average age of non-bone cells in an adult body may be less than 10 years.[8] The body is analogous to Heraclitus' river in that it consumes and expels a steady flow of nutrients, gas and water, all of it processed by cell bodies and enzymes that are themselves destroyed and remade.
Hurricanes
If one relates identity to actions and phenomena, identity becomes even harder to grasp. Depending upon one's chosen perspective of what identifies or continues a hurricane, if a Hurricane Evan collapses at a particular location and then one forms again at or near the same location, a person may be totally consistent to either choose to call the latter mentioned hurricane the same as the former (as in "Evan" was reinvigorated), or choose to call the latter a new hurricane with another name.
Automobiles
The National Public Radio show Car Talk has occasionally addressed this paradox in the context of automotive reliability. The consensus has emerged that if an unreliable or quirky vehicle has all of its parts replaced, the vehicle will remain unreliable or quirky, with the phenomenon sometimes being referred to as "Carma".
Sport
In the world of sport, Welsh football player Andy Melville wore the same pair of boots for five seasons. They had "new uppers, new soles, new studs, new everything. But ... they were the same boots."[9] Also, a team will change its playing personnel on a frequent basis; the same team may win a particular title or tournament many times over decades, even though the squad of players is partially or completely different.
Music ensembles
The current personnel of some contemporary bands may contain few or none of the founding members, yet continue to use the same name.[10] The singing group "The Temptations" fired and replaced members with such frequency that ex-Temps soon out-numbered the members of the "original" group. These men decided to form a second group, also called "The Temptations." Both groups toured at the same time, and both claimed to be the "real" Temptations. The philosophy professor Michael P. Wolf uses Napalm Death to illustrate this puzzle. All of the band's members have been replaced twice.[11] This is also true of the Ink Spots.[12] The British band Sugababes has also undergone numerous lineup changes, so that none of the original members are in the current line-up. Furthermore, the original line-up members wanted to do a reunion tour, but had legal troubles in using the original Sugababes name. The courts decided that the original line up would get to use the name, and the new line-up would have to stop using it. The "krautrock" band Faust currently exists as two independent ensembles: One centered around original members Jean-Herve Peron and Zappi Diermaier, the other based around co-founder Hans Joachim Irmler. Each group records and performs using the same name, independent of and with the consent of the other. The Toasters is an American Ska band who gained reasonable popularity during the early nineties. The members of the band have varied so wildly that not a single founding member remained for the most recent studio album. The bands Menudo and Underoath are other examples of this phenomenon.
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In literature
Robert Graves also employs the "grandfather's axe" version in his historical novel, The Golden Fleece, first published in 1945.[13] In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) by L. Frank Baum, a lumberjack's cursed axe chopped all his limbs one by one, and each time a limb was cut off, a smith made him a mechanical one, finally making him a torso and a head, thus turning him into the Tin Woodman, an entirely mechanical being, albeit possessing the consciousness of the lumberjack he once was.[14] Conversely, in the book The Tin Woodman of Oz, the Tin Woodsman learns that his old human body parts (minus the head) were sewn together to create a new man who then married his old sweetheart. David Wong's book John Dies at the End, the book opens with David musing about the continual identity of an axe which has its handle replaced after it is damaged in the course of the slaying of a man, and then the head replaced after being used to slay a half-badger, half-anaconda monstrosity. The axe wielder, returning from the hardware store where the axe's new head was fitted, is confronted by the zombie of the man slain earlier who cries out in terror that he wields the axe that killed him. David muses over the validity of the zombie's statement. Although he doesn't revisit or attempt to answer the question, it becomes clear by the end of the book that the axe is merely a metaphor for a much stranger supernatural incident he was involved in. Terry Pratchett's Discworld series pays homage to Heraclitus's statement by claiming that the polluted and slow-moving to the point of being solid River Ankh in the city of Ankh-Morpork is the only river that is possible to cross twice. There are also numerous references to the supposed inability of witches and wizards to cross the same river twice (e.g., in Lords and Ladies); the wizards refute this by demonstrating that an agile wizard can cross and recross a small river many times an hour. Also, Senior witch Granny Weatherwax possesses a flying broom whose handle and bristles have been replaced many times, yet remains unreliable to the point that she has to run up and down very quickly to essentially "bump-start" it. Pratchett also directly references the paradox in The Fifth Elephant, for instance in the axes of the dwarves, and in his early novels The Bromeliad. All incarnations of the Ghost in the Shell franchise deeply involve Theseus' Paradox in terms of full-body prosthetics. A reoccurring theme is the question of what defines humanity, if the entire body has been replaced by machines.
Prosthesis
Modern fiction shows concern with potential problems of personal identity. In the 1986 book Foundation and Earth by Isaac Asimov, the ancient robot R. Daneel Olivaw says that over the thousands of years of his existence, every part of him has been replaced several times, including his brain, which he has carefully redesigned six times, replacing it each time with a newly constructed brain having the positronic pathways containing his current memories and skills, along with free space for him to learn more and continue operating for longer. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams makes continuing sport of classic paradoxes. In the trilogy's fourth book So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish, Marvin the Paranoid Android says of himself: "Every part of me has been replaced at least fifty times...". In the sixth book of the series, character Trillian has had so many body parts and functions replaced by technology that she doubts she is still the same person, referring to her present self as New Trillian and the past as Old Trillian. Japanese manga series Ghost in the Shell cyclically returns to this paradox of a "human" whose body is replaced by artificial parts. Theseus's paradox bears also on the question of virtual human identity discussed in Douglas Hofstadter's and Daniel Dennett's The Mind's I: Fantasies and reflections on self and soul (1981). Speculations concerning mind uploading suggest it is possible to transfer a human mind from an organic brain to a computer, incrementally and in such a way that consciousness is never interrupted, e.g. by replacing neurons one by one with electronics designed to simulate the neurons' firing patterns. Yet the result of this process is an object entirely physically distinct from the starting point. Depending on the underlying technological speculation, the concept of human teleportation introduces similar paradoxes. The plot of the James Blish novel "Spock Must Die!" hinges on
Ship of Theseus this philosophical dilemma. The issue is addressed in the episode Life Support of Deep Space Nine Star Trek series. In the episode, the complete replacement of the human brain is considered the destruction of the individual.[15] Meanwhile in our world contemporary users of prosthesis have a tendency to suffer complications from phantom limb syndrome.
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Heraclitus
The Greek philosopher Heraclitus attempted to solve the paradox by introducing the idea of a river where water replenishes it. Arius Didymus quoted him as saying "upon those who step into the same rivers, different and again different waters flow."[16] Plutarch disputed Heraclitus' claim about stepping twice into the same river, citing that it cannot be done because "it scatters and again comes together, and approaches and recedes."[17]
Aristotle's causes
According to the philosophical system of Aristotle and his followers, there are four causes or reasons that describe a thing; these causes can be analyzed to get to a solution to the paradox. The formal cause or form is the design of a thing, while the material cause is the matter that the thing is made of. The "what-it-is" of a thing, according to Aristotle, is its formal cause; so the Ship of Theseus is the same ship, because the formal cause, or design, does not change, even though the matter used to construct it may vary with time. In the same manner, for Heraclitus's paradox, a river has the same formal cause, although the material cause (the particular water in it) changes with time, and likewise for the person who steps in the river. Another of Aristotle's causes is the end or final cause, which is the intended purpose of a thing. The Ship of Theseus would have the same ends, those being, mythically, transporting Theseus, and politically, convincing the Athenians that Theseus was once a living person, even though its material cause would change with time. The efficient cause is how and by whom a thing is made, for example, how artisans fabricate and assemble something; in the case of the Ship of Theseus, the workers who built the ship in the first place could have used the same tools and techniques to replace the planks in the ship.
Definitions of "the same"

One common argument found in the philosophical literature is that in the case of Heraclitus' river one is tripped up by two different definitions of "the same". In one sense things can be "qualitatively identical", by sharing some properties. In another sense they might be "numerically identical" by being "one". As an example, consider two different marbles that look identical. They would be qualitatively, but not numerically, identical. A marble can be numerically identical only to itself. Note that some languages differentiate between these two forms of identity. In German, for example, "selbst" ("self-same") and "gleich" ("equal") are the pertinent terms. At least in formal speech, the former refers to numerical identity (e.g. die selbe Murmel, "the same[numerical] marble") and the latter to qualitative identity (e.g. die gleiche Murmel, "the same[qualitative] marble"). Colloquially, the terms are sometimes used interchangeably however.
Four-dimensionalism
One solution to this paradox may come from the concept of four-dimensionalism. Ted Sider and others have proposed that these problems can be solved by considering all things as four-dimensional objects. An object is a spatially extended three-dimensional thing that also extends across the fourth dimension of time. This four-dimensional object is made up of three-dimensional time-slices. These are spatially extended things that exist only at individual points in time. An object is made up of a series of causally related time-slices. All time-slices are numerically identical to themselves. And the whole aggregate of time-slices, namely the four-dimensional object, is
Ship of Theseus also numerically identical with itself. But the individual time-slices can have qualities that differ from each other. The problem with the river is solved by saying that at each point in time, the river has different properties. Thus the various three-dimensional time-slices of the river have different properties from each other. But the entire aggregate of river time-slices, namely the whole river as it exists across time, is identical with itself. So one can never step into the same river time-slice twice, but one can step into the same (four-dimensional) river twice.[18] A seeming difficulty with this is that in special relativity there is not a unique "correct" way to make these slices it is not meaningful to speak of a "point in time" extended in space. However, this does not prove to be a problem: any way of slicing will do (including no 'slicing' at all), provided that the boundary of the object changes in a fashion which can be agreed upon by observers in all reference frames. Special relativity still ensures that "you can never step into the same river time-slice twice," because even with the ability to shift around which way spacetime is sliced, one is still moving in a timelike fashion, which will not multiply intersect a time-slice, which is spacelike.
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Buddhism
For Madhyamika following Candrakirti replacement paradoxes such as Ship of Theseus are answered by stating that the Ship of Theseus remains so (within the conventions that assert it) until it ceases to function as the Ship of Theseus.
Cultural differences
Understandings of this concept may differ between cultures, with anecdotal evidence indicating that it is not regarded as a paradox in Japan. In his book Last Chance to See, Douglas Adams observed: I remembered once, in Japan, having been to see the Gold Pavilion Temple in Kyoto and being mildly surprised at quite how well it had weathered the passage of time since it was first built in the fourteenth century. I was told it hadn't weathered well at all, and had in fact been burnt to the ground twice in this century. "So it isn't the original building?" I had asked my Japanese guide. "But yes, of course it is," he insisted, rather surprised at my question. The Golden Pavilion in the 21st century. "But it's burnt down?" "Yes." "Twice." "Many times." "And rebuilt." "Of course. It is an important and historic building." "With completely new materials." "But of course. It was burnt down." "So how can it be the same building?" "It is always the same building." I had to admit to myself that this was in fact a perfectly rational point of view, it merely started from an unexpected premise. The idea of the building, the intention of it, its design, are all immutable and are the essence of the building. The intention of the original builders is what survives. The wood of which the design is constructed decays and is replaced when necessary. To be overly concerned with the original materials, which are merely sentimental souvenirs of the past, is to fail to see the living building itself. Douglas Adams,Last Chance to See, p. 149[19]
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Jewish law
In Halacha, a container that was tamei (impure) can lose this status if it develops a hole that would let a pomegranate through, even if it is later repaired. The Gemara (Shabbat 112b) addresses this paradox with regard to a container that had a small hole, was repaired, etc. until, had it not been repaired, it would have let a pomegranate through. This container is tahor (pure, opposite of tamei) because it is no longer considered to be the same container.
References
[1] Rea, M., 1995: "The Problem of Material Constitution," The Philosophical Review, 104: 525-552. [2] Plutarch. "Theseus" (http:/ / classics. mit. edu/ Plutarch/ theseus. html). The Internet Classics Archive. . Retrieved 2008-07-15. [3] Page 89:The Ship of Theseus (http:/ / books. google. com/ books?id=2x2I93Ui9i4C& pg=PA89& lpg=PA89& dq=hobbes+ theseus& source=bl& ots=YOj7nxDdnB& sig=-qrGUti28VPlCWLr8H7AIEwCoXo& hl=en& ei=y1_ZSufEOozIsAPhjKGxCQ& sa=X& oi=book_result& ct=result& resnum=5& ved=0CBQQ6AEwBA#v=onepage& q=hobbes theseus& f=false), Person and Object: A Metaphysical Study, By Roderick M. Chisholm - Google Books [4] Browne, Ray Broadus (1982). Objects of Special Devotion: Fetishism in Popular Culture. Popular Press. p.134. ISBN0-87972-191-X. [5] "Atomic Tune-Up: How the Body Rejuvenates Itself" (http:/ / www. npr. org/ templates/ transcript/ transcript. php?storyId=11893583). National Public Radio. 2007-07-14. . Retrieved 2009-11-11. [6] Bruce Rushton (2008-02-22). "Ax turns out to be Lincoln's last swing" (http:/ / www. rrstar. com/ news/ x1637131140). Rockford Register-Star. . Retrieved 2009-11-11. [7] "Dumas in his Curricle" (http:/ / books. google. com/ ?id=gzWrsYBAsO8C& pg=PA351& dq="Jeannot's+ knife"). Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine LV (CCCXLI): 351. JanuaryJune 1844. . [8] Your Body Is Younger Than You Think (http:/ / www. nytimes. com/ 2005/ 08/ 02/ science/ 02cell. html?ex=1280635200& en=65bd5e6cef9fec79& ei=5088& partner=rssnyt& emc=rss) [9] Volz, Moritz (November 3, 2008). "What your boot colour says about you" (http:/ / www. timesonline. co. uk/ tol/ sport/ football/ premier_league/ article5069094. ece). The Times. . Retrieved 9 June 2010. [10] Washington City Paper: Music Review: In Livid Color (http:/ / www. washingtoncitypaper. com/ display. php?id=34079) [11] http:/ / www. michaelpwolf. net/ NapalmDeath. png [12] http:/ / www. aeibookingagency. com/ Default. aspx?tabid=735709 [13] Graves, Robert (1983). The Golden Fleece. London: Hutchinson. p.445. ISBN0-09-151771-0. [14] Baum, L. Frank (1900). "5" (http:/ / en. wikisource. org/ wiki/ The_Wonderful_Wizard_of_Oz/ Chapter_5). The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Denslow, W. W., illus.. Chicago, New York: Geo. M. Hill. OCLC4051769. . Retrieved 2008-10-28. [15] Life Support (http:/ / memory-alpha. org/ wiki/ Life_Support_(episode)) on Memory Alpha [16] Didymus, Fr 39.2, Dox. gr. 471.4 [17] Plutarch. "On the 'E' at Delphi" (http:/ / penelope. uchicago. edu/ misctracts/ plutarchE. html). . Retrieved 2008-07-15. [18] David Lewis, "Survival and Identity" in Amelie O. Rorty [ed.] The Identities of Persons (1976; U. of California P.) Reprinted in his Philosophical Papers I. [19] Adams, Douglas; Mark Carwardine (1992). Last Chance to See. Ballantine Books. p.149. ISBN0-345-37198-4.
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Paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=487895484 Contributors: 1337 r0XX0r, 134.132.88.xxx, 1exec1, 213.253.39.xxx, 28bytes, 2over0, 5ko, A-giau, A8UDI, Aarchiba, Aaron Brenneman, Aaron Kauppi, Abarry, Abcfox, Abtract, Acegikmo1, Adacore, Aethralis, Afa86, Ahoerstemeier, AiOlorWile, Aitias, Al E., Alansohn, Alephhaz, Alerante, Alfie66, Alison, Allstars101, AlsatianRain, Amcbride, Amcfreely, Ameerr, Andeggs, Andre Engels, Andrejj, Andrew D White, Andrij Kursetsky, Andrzej0k, Anijen21, Anon5791, Anonymous Dissident, Antandrus, Anthony, Anville, AproposLesser, Arab Cowboy, Arkuat, Arminale, Arvindn, ArwinJ, Athf1234, AugPi, Autismo, AxelBoldt, Az Butterfield, Azn king28, Azraelcrimson, B9 hummingbird hovering, BD2412, BL, Baa, Bachrach44, Bacteria, Badger151, Batmanand, Beavis of Nazareth, Beeblebrox, Ben-Zin, BenRG, Bequw, Bevo, Big Brother 1984, Blake Burba, Blanchardb, Blarghmaster, Bmag7, Bmorton3, Bobo192, Bonelayer12864, Bongwarrior, Bookandcoffee, Booyabazooka, BozMo, Brandon5485, Brian Kendig, Britmax, Brusegadi, Bryan Derksen, Bryan pidgeon rap blc, Byrial, CRGreathouse, CWenger, Caesarjbsquitti, Calypso, Camembert, Can't sleep, clown will eat me, Canderson7, CanisRufus, Canon, Captain Wacky, Cars99, Casellaqui, Catgut, Causa sui, Celada, Cgingold, Chris Roy, Chronulator, Chuck369, Computerjoe, Conversion script, Cretog8, Crosbiesmith, Cutler, Cyan, CyclePat, Cyrius, D, DamianFinol, Dandrake, Daniel Quinlan, Daniel111111, DanielLC, Danski14, David Gerard, DavidCBryant, Davidkazuhiro, Dbenbenn, Delldot, Delta1989, Denisarona, Derek Ross, Dina, Discospinster, Doc Tropics, Doctorfluffy, DomM999, Dominus, Dpbsmith, Draon uk, DreamGuy, Dsmith9 99, Dysprosia, ERcheck, Eaefremov, EddEdmondson, Ellisonch, Eloquence, Em3ryguy, EmbraceParadox, Emmyzen, EncMstr, EntmootsOfTrolls, Entropy, Erutuon, EscapingLife, Eubulide, Evil Monkey, Ewlloyd, Exigentsky, Fang Aili, FastLizard4, Fawcett5, Fengguang, Fool, Fred Bauder, Fubar Obfusco, Furrykef, F, GDonato, GabrielF, Genius101, Geoffw1948, Gerhardvalentin, Giftlite, Gilliam, Gioto, Gogo Dodo, Golbez, Grafen, Graham87, Gregbard, Grumpyyoungman01, Gunmetal, Gurch, Gwernol, Hadal, Hairy Dude, Halidecyphon, Haoie, Hazzzzzz12, Hdt83, Hellotoast, Henrygb, Hoo man, Hrld11, I-LIKE-PIE-I-LIKE-PIE, INic, Iguy513, Intheeventofstructuralfailure, Inuit7, Iranway, Iridescent, IronGargoyle, IronSwallow, J heisenberg, J.delanoy, JForget, JRR Trollkien, JYolkowski, Jack Bowen, JakeVortex, Jamesooders, Jarvisunit, Jason Quinn, JayW, Jbergquist, JediMaster362, Jeff G., Jeffrey O. 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Palmen, Kdau, Ke4roh, KeeperC, Keilana, Kgaughan, Khoikhoi, Kiltman67, King of Hearts, Kingturtle, Koavf, Komencanto, Korath, Kronecker, Kuru, LC, Lacrimosus, Lakefall, Lampman, Landroo, Lectonar, Lee Daniel Crocker, Leibniz, Leondumontfollower, Liberal Saudi, Liface, Liko81, LilHelpa, Limulus, Lindsay658, Liquidsoft, Localh77, Looxix, Lorenzo Martelli, Loudcolors, Lulz57, MARQUIS111, MGTom, MZMcBride, Macrakis, Madacounto, Malhonen, Marcika, Marek69, MartinHarper, Maurice Carbonaro, Mav, Mdob, Mentifisto, Mernen, Merritttttt, Michael Hardy, Michaelkourlas, Mikeo, Mir123456789, Miranda, Modernist, Mohammadgani, Monguin61, Moniker42, Moonglade, Morwen, Mschel, Mumiemonstret, Murder1, Murray McDonald, Mustafa saad 2006, Nanobug, Narsil, Nascar1996, Nathan Ladd, Neil916, NellieBly, Nerd, Neutrality, No Account, Noe, Noisy, Nolamatic, NonChalance, Nsaa, ObiWanBillKenobi, Okiefromokla, Oli Filth, Orange Suede Sofa, Orthopteran, Oskar Sigvardsson, Oxinabox, Oxnard27, PBS-AWB, PL290, Packman744, Pairadox, Pakaran, Paradoctor, Party, Patrick, Paul A, Paul Stansifer, Peterdjones, Petunia1354, Pgk, Pharaoh of the Wizards, Philip Trueman, PhilipMW, Phoenixpaw, PiPhD, Piano non troppo, Piewalker, Pilaf, Pilchard VIII, Pinethicket, Pjacobi, Pjrich, Playclever, Plexust, Polentario, Polimerek, Poneh, Poor Yorick, Populus, Porcher, Positron 123, Promethean, Promythyus, Puckeylut, Quantumor, Qwfp, RDBury, RadioFan, Raul654, Rdsmith4, ReaperParadox, Rfc1394, RhunWarrior, Rhyfelwr, Rich Farmbrough, RichardMills65, Riki, Rm1271, Rmhermen, Rnewson, RobertG, Robinh, Robnpov, Robo37, Rocky13579, Rondeau kidd, Ronhjones, Roregan, Roy Brumback, Ruakh, Rumping, SM1991, SQGibbon, Salix alba, Salvio giuliano, Samohyl Jan, Samuelsen, SamuraiClinton, Sarkar112, Schmiteye, Sdorrance, Sechegaray, SeoMac, Seraphimblade, Sethmahoney, Shabidoo, Shadowspike, Shammack, Shanes, Sky Attacker, Slim42nd, Slowking Man, Smsarmad, Snalwibma, Snoyes, Soler97, SpNeo, Spambit, Spartan-James, Spearhead, Special-T, Spencer, Splintercellguy, StAnselm, Stephenchou0722, Stevietheman, Stw, Subtank, Sumchody, Sunny256, Susurrus, Tagishsimon, Takima, Tarquin, Tayste, The Anome, The Interior, The Master of Mayhem, The Random Editor, The Thing That Should Not Be, TheKMan, TheWeakWilled, Thehotelambush, Thenimaj, Thomas T Howard, Tide rolls, Tim Ivorson, Tim Peterson, Titoxd, Tmartin, Toastermaster, TogTogTogTog, Tommy2010, Toowise, TopAce, Tosha, Tothebarricades.tk, Troy1578, Ttwaring, Ucce2, Uirauna, Uncle G, Unschool, Unyoyega, Ustas, VanishedUser314159, Ventura, Verbal, Villianboy, Vina, Viper93088, Vlad1, Vranak, Vuara, Vuo, Vzbs34, Washburnmav, Well, I'll give you a taco., West.andrew.g, Wik, Wiki alf, Wile E. Heresiarch, Willking1979, WinterSpw, Wojit, X96lee15, Xact, Xaosflux, Yarko Brachini, Yekrats, Yumyumpuppies, ZS, Zachary Gibbons, Zamesfond, Zenithfel, Zeromaru, Ziusudra, Zodai Tora, Zundark, Zzuuzz, , 1009 anonymous edits List of paradoxes Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=488595615 Contributors: @pple, A:-)Brunu, ALE!, AMuseo, Aaron Rotenberg, Aaronak, Aceofspadesx11, Acroterion, Action Jackson IV, Afa86, Agamemnon117, Aidan MacLean, Albmont, Alderbourne, AlexHOUSE, Amatulic, Ambuj.Saxena, AnaxMcShane, Andrejj, AndrewWTaylor, Animum, Anomalocaris, Anonymous Dissident, Anonymous101, AntiochCollege, April8, Arno Matthias, Asdfazerty, AstroHurricane001, Ayda D, Baccyak4H, Batmanand, Bennerhingl, Bensondaled, Bharasiva96, Bility, Billy huge, Billyoneal, Bjalmeida, Blahber, Blainster, Bogdan Preunca, Bogey97, Brassmouth, Brianne the Freak, Brix., Brizimm, Btyner, CRGreathouse, Calvin1221, Camzabob, Can't sleep, clown will eat me, Capricorn42, Carlangas, Ceilican, Charles Merriam, Chinju, Chris G, Chrislk02, ClassA42, Cmbalin, Cosmic Latte, Cretog8, Crowsnest, Cstella23, Cstorm15, Cubbi, CumbiaDude, Cyan, D.H, D2B, DMacks, DVdm, Daimanta, Daniel111111, Darry2385, David Rolek, Davilla, Dawn Bard, Dbenbenn, Dcoetzee, Defender 911, Delimute, DerHexer, Djk3, Dmcq, Dollyknot, Dominiquedoandd, DrDentz, DragonflySixtyseven, Dsmith9 99, Ducknish, Dylan Quint, E. Fokker, EagleEyes, Ed Poor, Eddynorton, Eelco de Vlieger, Eli7675, Eliazar, EmbraceParadox, Eminence Grise, Emurphy42, Eouw0o83hf, Epbr123, Eroshiyda, Eternal th33v, Eubulide, Falcon8765, Fartknocker, FayssalF, Feldgrau, Feong changer, Firsfron, Flewis, Flightx52, Flying Leukemia, Foreverprovence, Free Bear, Frogular, Fshen11, Gabbbbby, Gageisgreat38, Gene Ward Smith, Geoffw1948, GeorgeLouis, GeorgeMoney, Giftlite, Grahamrichter, Gregbard, Grud1872, Gryllida, HEL, Hammersoft, Hazard-SJ, HelpMeChooseAUsername, Henrygb, Hessamnia, Hilltoppers, HovisM, Hqb, Ht686rg90, IIBewegung, INkubusse, Igny, Ijbond, Iluvmarchingband, Immmmmsocool, Incubatorfunk, Isabelle1220, Ishvara7, J.delanoy, JVPiano, Ja 62, Jake Rilko, Jeff3000, Jeffrey O. Gustafson, Jemfinch, Jhon montes24, Jigsy, Jmc6171, JocK, Joerg Kurt Wegner, Joriq, Joris Gillis, JormungandrWorm, Jr.lizardking, Julianhall, Justavo, KSchutte, Karada, Karmos, Katharineamy, Kay Dekker, KeeperC, Kgashok, Kiatipis, Koavf, Konamiuss, Kopaka649, Korako, Kortaggio, LakewoodBrian, Lambiam, Lanthanum-138, Leon01323, Leon7, Liamdaly620, LightSpectra, Lishanchan, Littleherby2412, Loadmaster, Loginks, LucasBrown, Lunakeet, Mach Boy, Machine Elf 1735, Mack-the-random, Mandarax, Mangojuice, Manu4manu, Marcus MacGregor, Mashiah Davidson, Master of philosophy, MathStatWoman, Matzeachmann, Melesse, Michael C Price, Michael Hardy, Michael13567, Michas pi, Mike Rosoft, Mild Bill Hiccup, Minimac, Mysdaao, N5iln, Nblschool, Necropedal, Neparis, Neviaser, Nlu, Novangelis, OlEnglish, OlenWhitaker, Omnipaedista, Otvaltak, Paradoctor, Paradoxcontained, Paulginz, Pcb95, Pdfpdf, Perspeculum, Peytonbland, Pheticsax, Pokipsy76, Polarfire, Pollinosisss, Prettehkitteh9, ProfessorParadox, Proofreader77, Quarl, QuasiChameleon, Qwyrxian, RQJ, Realitycheck4seven, Reinyday, Retired username, Reyk, Reywas92, Rgclegg, Richardmaximillioncooper, Robertgreer, Robinson weijman, Rohitbd, Root4(one), RossPatterson, Rwald, Ryou419, SMcCandlish, ST47, STyx, Salem, Salirp, Salix alba, Sammmttt, Sao123, Sapslaj, Sarathklal, Scarlet Lioness, Sciurin, Scoobynshag, Seelum, Serendipodous, Seresin, Shadowjams, Shanman7, Shantavira, Sjakkalle, Skizzik, Skorpion87, Slightsmile, Snalwibma, Soccerman90, Soler97, Somerset219, Spambit, Spedster777, Spencerk, Stephenchou0722, Storkk, Subsolar, SunCountryGuy01, Sunik.lee, Superm401, Surajt88, Svkanade, Swpb, Sylent, Takethemeatbridge, Tauolunga, Tayste, Tbhotch, Team.chaotix, Ted87, Teorth, Teutanic, The 13th 4postle, The Anome, The GoldenAge, The wub, TheClerksWell, TheTechieGeek63, Thehotelambush, Thewebb, Thewhyman, Tiger Khan, Tired time, Tjfloyd, Toke Beard, Tommy2010, Torag22, Toran61, TriBulated, Trovatore, Trumpet marietta 45750, Tubbsybaby, TwoTeasChris, Ucanlookitup, UncleZeiv, Urbane Legend, Watson edin, Wavelength, WhatsHisName, WhiskeyDiet, Whosasking, Why1991, WikHead, Wiki13, WilliamThweatt, Wingspeed, Wormhole0512, Wysprgr2005, X Legende x, Xzex, Yakushima, Yintan, YouMoo!, Zarcadia, 652 anonymous edits Paradoxical laughter Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=471959872 Contributors: Arcadian, AstroHurricane001, Grey Wanderer, Hjweth, JoeHenzi, Kongr43gpen, Markaspden, Ost316, Paradoctor, Penbat, Woohookitty, 3 anonymous edits Abilene paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=483806585 Contributors: Adrian J. Hunter, Altenmann, Ardonik, AstroHurricane001, Badger Drink, Bryan Derksen, Cholling, Cretog8, Deagle AP, Dennis Brown, Dpr, Dweiss, Eequor, Emeraldcityserendipity, Eustress, Evercat, Father Goose, Fredericks, GJeffery, Geh, George Church, Hadija, JALockhart, Japanese Searobin, Jean-Louis Lascoux, Jn, Karada, Kralizec!, Kuru, Lowellian, Memobug, Mion, Morgan Hauser, Mydogategodshat, Netoholic, Northamerica1000, Nyttend, Obuibo Mbstpo, Osubuckeyeguy, Paul August, Paul Stansifer, PegArmPaul, Plastikspork, Pm67nz, Pragmaknowledge, Quidam65, Reywas92, Rjwilmsi, Rolypolyman, Ronz, Run!, Sam Hocevar, Samw, Sergeygw, Shureg, Taak, TeamCoachingNetwork, Teratornis, Timo Honkasalo, Unmerklich, VeryVerily, Vzbs34, Wikinstone, Y2kcrazyjoker4, Yamamoto Ichiro, Yknok29, 25 , anonymous edits Chainstore paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=474313297 Contributors: Aaron Brenneman, Agamemnus, Anomalocaris, Bellemonde, Clubmarx, Crazycomputers, Cretog8, Daisky, Draicone, Fioravante Patrone en, Insignia1983, Iridescent, JCUK83, Jameshcroom, Jhamner, McGeddon, MrHen, PMLawrence, Paradoctor, Plm209, Primergrey, Raghuinc, RenaudBray, Rich Farmbrough, Rodhullandemu, RoyBoy, That Guy, From That Show!, Xezbeth, Zzyzx11, 17 anonymous edits Exchange paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=443884114 Contributors: A2rael, ABaraov, Andeggs, AndrewWTaylor, AzaToth, Baccyak4H, BenFrantzDale, Bender235, Betrunkener Affe, BlackStarling, Blotwell, Bodhi.root, CaAl, Catgut, Chameleon, Chocolateboy, Corpania, CptCutLess, Curb Chain, DLetourneau, DMacks, Dacium, Dagme, Dcljr, DharmakayaClarity, Dicklyon, Dilaudid, DudeOnTheStreet, Enemyunknown, Eyal Lev, Father Goose, Feinoha, Gerhardvalentin, Giftlite, Gill110951, Gwern, HaeB, Hamaryns, INic, J04n, Jak86, Jeekc, Joefromrandb, JohnTheSecure, Johnbibby, Kaslanidi, Khazar2, Kitsunegami, Ladislav Mecir, Lowellian, Mangoe, Manning Bartlett, Marina T., Markjoseph125, Martin Hogbin, MartinPoulter, Matt81523, McSly, Melcombe, Metaphysicist1, Michaelnikolaou, Mike Rosoft, Monguin61, Mr randy watson, MrOllie, Mv240, Nagytibi, New Thought, Niceguyedc, Noe, OdedSchramm, Oleg Alexandrov, P64, Partyzan XXI, Pascal666, Pennbrook, PhysPhD, Piperh, Pokipsy76, Prochron, R'n'B, Radagast83, Richard001, RiskAverse, Rmessenger, RockMFR, Rsrikanth05, Rm, STyx, Slendle84, Snalwibma, Soler97, Spottydog3, TedPavlic, TheFreeloader, Tkircher, Tmartin, Tomixdf, Uniqueuponhim, Untrue Believer, Username12321, WAS 4.250, Wenga66, Wiggles007, Yuzta, Zvika, 209 anonymous edits Kavka's toxin puzzle Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=455521794 Contributors: Abu-Fool Danyal ibn Amir al-Makhiri, Banno, Bender235, Bpeps, Calm, Carlo.Ierna, Charles Matthews, GregorB, Icarus3, Interiot, Jaymay, Jeff Silvers, Jimtlucy, JoshuaZ, Joule36e5, JustinBlank, Kaid100, Karada, Kenb215, Localh77, Marcika, Neurolysis, Nick123, Rich Farmbrough, Roman Spinner, Shaggorama, Sirdook3d, SocratesJedi, Susvolans, Vary, 52 anonymous edits Necktie paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=457498433 Contributors: Andeggs, Brookie, CBM, Dacium, Gill110951, Gsi curtis, INic, Iitywybmad, JNW, Jlg4104, Linas, McGeddon, Melcombe, MetroMask, Michael Hardy, Nabav, Personman, Radagast83, Rasmusdahl, Richard001, SigPig, Violetriga, Wafulz, Walthamolian, Xaosflux, Xs935, 24

anonymous edits Allais paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=480599500 Contributors: 3mta3, ArnoldReinhold, Atlastawake, Bahar101, Bender235, Bob Hu, Bobblewik, Crasshopper, DGG, DominicOdom, Eleather, EmbraceParadox, Fish and karate, Forich, Grumpyyoungman01, Imersion, John Quiggin, Lambiam, Leranedo, Melcombe, Michael Hardy, Nutcracker, Pomme apple apfel ringo, Quaque, Quiddity, Rajah, Rdavout, Run!, Ruud Binnekamp, Senarclens, SlamDiego, Smmurphy, Stern, Storm Rider, TedPavlic, The Gnome, Uvenkata, Volunteer Marek, Wmahan, Zvika, 42 anonymous edits Arrow's impossibility theorem Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=486739222 Contributors: A poor workman blames, AMH-DS, AaronSw, Abd, Akriasas, Alighodsi2, Arnob1, Arrrgggument, Ashley Y, AxelBoldt, Bongomatic, Bromskloss, Bryan Derksen, CRGreathouse, Cancan101, CanisRufus, Carl.bunderson, Cconnett, Colignatus, Commadot, D6, DaGizza, Dan Wylie-Sears 2, DanKeshet, David Eppstein, Dclo, Delikedi, Derek Ross, Dissident, DocGov, Dr. I .D. A. MacIntyre, Draicone, Eberhard Wesche, Edward, Elmju, Enchanter, Euchrid, Frango com Nata, Gartogg, Geoffrey, Geoffrey.landis, Giftlite, GreatBigCircles, Gregbard, Grick, Guanaco, Gwern, Hairy Dude, HalfDome, Henrygb, Homunq, HorsePunchKid, Icairns, Infovarius, JRR Trollkien, JRSpriggs, Jdlh, John Price, John Quiggin, Joriki, Josh Cherry, Jsnx, KSmrq, Karada, Kelson, Kevin, Khazar, Kukkurovaca, LC, LamilLerran, Laurusnobilis, Liftarn, Liko81, Lussmu, MarkusSchulze, MartinHarper, Masterpiece2000, Mateo SA, Matt Gies, Matt me, Matthew Woodcraft, Maurreen, Melchoir, Mezzaluna, Miranche, Mousomer, MrOllie, Mschamis, Natnatonline, Nbarth, NeilTarrant, Neilc, NilEinnoc, Oliphaunt, Osndok, Pace212, Paladinwannabe2, Patrick, Paul Stansifer, PhilipMW, Punctured Bicycle, RDBury, Rangek, Rhobite, Rl, Rmharman, RobLa, Rspeer, Ruakh, Sararkd, Sbyrnes321, Scott Ritchie, Sdalva, Sf talkative, Shreevatsa, Slipperyweasel, Smmurphy, Solarapex, Spacethingy, Spot, Strake, Svick, TUF-KAT, Tbouricius, Tenmei, Teply, Tesseran, The Anome, Theorist2, Thomasmeeks, Thumperward, Tiger Khan, Tim Ivorson, TittoAssini, Tom harrison, Unweaseler, Vadim Makarov, Villarinho, VoteFair, Waisbrot, Wclark, Wikiborg, Wikidea, William Avery, Wknight94, Wmayner, X1011, Y2y, Zanaq, Zarvok, Zundark, Zvika, 181 anonymous edits Bertrand paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=473390340 Contributors: Adcock1689, Aftermatt, Alem, AngoraFish, Bender235, BinaryTed, Bunthorne, CRGreathouse, Cretog8, Deville, EnumaElish, GregorB, Henrygb, Kzollman, Mattbrundage, Maurreen, Migrant (usurped), Omnipaedista, Pakaran, Pete.Hurd, Pmanderson, Poccil, Rjwilmsi, Rocafella, Ryanmcdaniel, Sharkford, SimonP, Spambit, Spatch, Tamfang, The Anome, VictorAnyakin, , 24 anonymous edits Demographic-economic paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=473451090 Contributors: AnonMoos, Ashesat, AtikuX, Auno3, Awesomebillfromdawsonville, Bender235, Bianca1975, Brusegadi, Cybercobra, Demmo, Denial, EgraS, Emmanuelm, Featherlessbiped, Fumitakamy, G.Tenzing, Geremia, Glloq, Graham87, Grahamec, Jameswilson, John D. Croft, Joseph Solis in Australia, Julia Neumann, Knowledge-is-power, Lysine23, Malleus Fatuorum, Mikael Hggstrm, Misteror, Msrasnw, Orangemike, Outercell, Pharaoh of the Wizards, Pondle, Procrastinator supreme, R'n'B, Rjwilmsi, Rklawton, Soap, TheArmadillo, Theadept, Thomasmeeks, Tormillini, Tthheeppaarrttyy, Ufwuct, Vision Thing, Volunteer Marek, Will Beback, Wsiegmund, Xcentaur, Ytrottier, Zero g, 22 anonymous edits Dollar auction Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=438186721 Contributors: Acroterion, Aliasad, Alta-Snowbird, Bender235, Canned Soul, Capricorn42, Cmdrjameson, Comet Tuttle, Coppertwig, Cretog8, DMCer, Ddstretch, Dejan Jovanovi, DropDeadGorgias, Ejwong, ElectricRay, Ettrig, Happyhappyallhappy!, J.delanoy, Kent Wang, Kzollman, Lambiam, Mtjaws, NawlinWiki, Oerjan, OneWeirdDude, Parhamr, Payam prz, Pete.Hurd, Philwelch, R'n'B, Rasmus Faber, Rufasto, SURIV, Scorpion451, Sebastark, Turkeyphant, Vahe Kharazyan, Volunteer Marek, Whosasking, Xaosflux, 34 anonymous edits DownsThomson paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=484463220 Contributors: Adityaku, DeFacto, Edward, Fratrep, Good Olfactory, Greglocock, GregorB, Grubel, Mariojalves, Mix321, Omnipaedista, Rlew234, ScottJ, SunCreator, 4 anonymous edits Easterlin paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=466736763 Contributors: Beland, Benyon3, Bodnotbod, Buergerbeck, Bultro, CapFerret2011, Daisystanton, FrankTobia, GirasoleDE, Gustavocarra, HertzaHaeon, JaGa, James Haughton, Jimboss123, John Quiggin, Jsnx, Ofol, Ott2, Piano non troppo, Quanticles, Rich Farmbrough, Seglea, Sked123, Smohin, Uncle Milty, Wanderingstan, Whitepaw, YechezkelZilber, 28 anonymous edits Ellsberg paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=480743197 Contributors: 223fms, Anil1956, Btyner, Capedia, Chealer, Crasshopper, Cretog8, Dratman, Econmath, Eric Forste, Ettrig, Fish and karate, Fool, Funandtrvl, Hariraja, Hgmichna, JamesBWatson, Jaysweet, Jessemerriman, Joerg Reiher, John Newbury, John Quiggin, Joriki, Kzollman, Lambiam, Maurice Carbonaro, Maurreen, Melcombe, Michael Hardy, Mind my edits, Nbarth, Nhoward, Nutcracker, OllieFury, Paulginz, Plunge, Pomme apple apfel ringo, RDBrown, Rainwarrior, Ruud Binnekamp, Samw, TedPavlic, Unmet, Volunteer Marek, Xx236, Ybenhaim, Zvika, 58 anonymous edits Green paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=478319535 Contributors: AxelBoldt, Bearcat, Hysteria18, Komischn, Luchame, Pascal666, Svaarder, Wavelength, 9 anonymous edits Icarus paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=449330575 Contributors: Attilios, Blanchardb, BlueNovember, Carn, Mannafredo, Miracle Pen, Paradoctor, Robofish, RockMFR, Tabletop, Wikidemon, 2 anonymous edits Jevons paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=485746735 Contributors: Aetheling, Ayvengo21, BenKovitz, Bender235, CRGreathouse, Carlossuarez46, Colonel Tom, Crawfose, Cretog8, Cybercobra, Derek Ross, Ehusman, Ernestfax, Finetooth, Flatline, Gribeco, Grundle2600, HGB, Half Sarah, Hooperbloob, Hyad, Jaganath, Jasperdoomen, Javabarbarian, John187, Johnfos, Jonathan Kovaciny, Jrsnbarn, KI9357, Koavf, Ktlynch, L33tminion, Lawrencekhoo, Lwnf360, Malleus Fatuorum, Mathish, Michael Hardy, Molten tofu, Mr3641, Nerfer, Owen, OwenX, P. S. Burton, Papa November, Pfhenshaw, Phoenix-forgotten, Premiumxc, R'n'B, RGwp9473, Rejs, Richard001, Rjwilmsi, Robinh, Romeconprof, Scepticc, Seegoon, Ssri1983, SteinbDJ, Tedkidd, Tharenthel, Tom Radulovich, Unyoyega, Vsmith, Zen-master, 84 anonymous edits Leontief paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=482414555 Contributors: A8UDI, Armbrust, Bkwillwm, Charles Matthews, Creet, Demi, Dylan Lake, FrankTobia, Jeffrey Mall, John wesley, Katharineamy, Schi, Tree Biting Conspiracy, Verne Equinox, Vinograd19, Volunteer Marek, Waseem7, Wolfgang Ihloff, Wragge, Zaledin, 22 anonymous edits Lucas paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=450113287 Contributors: Buldri, Delirium, Harry, Headbomb, J.howard251, Jonkerz, Khazar, Lachambre, Perceval, Smarton2346, Thinking of England, Vroman, 6 anonymous edits Metzler paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=443695200 Contributors: Bastin, Bender235, Grochim, L Kensington, Omnipaedista, Themightyrambo, 1 anonymous edits Paradox of thrift Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=471680306 Contributors: AaronSw, Androidodnetnin, Angloguy, AnonMoos, Arthena, Arto B, Beacon515L, Billcourtney, Blah99, Byelf2007, Cretog8, Crosbiesmith, Cybercobra, Dark Charles, Demosta, Edward, Ewlyahoocom, Gary King, Gugganij, Henrygb, Hroulf, Isaac Dupree, Johngelles, LenBudney, Ligulem, Mansoorkhan114, Maurreen, Meco, MiNombreDeGuerra, Mnemeson, Mrmuk, Nbarth, Nunquam Dormio, Oneeyedguide, Oparadoha, Paradoxsociety, PaulHanson, Pearle, Pfalstad, Reagle, Reinyday, Renaissance Man, Rich Farmbrough, Rjwrobel, Samswit, Scott Burley, ShaunMacPherson, Shinjodenn, Surturz, That Guy, From That Show!, Trbdavies, Vonkje, Woundedknight, Yakushima, Yoctobarryc, 53 anonymous edits Paradox of value Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=487393678 Contributors: Alienus, Anarcho-capitalism, AnaxMcShane, Andeggs, Arvand, BrokenSegue, Byelf2007, Crosbiesmith, DBigXray, Dullfig, Dylan Lake, Economizer, Elm, Forich, Hibernian, Jack Upland, Jeff3000, Jgoard, Joe54897415, John Quiggin, Julia Rossi, Karada, LaszloWalrus, LenBudney, Mais oui!, Ministry of random walks, Nikodemos, Nirakka, Originalwana, Peter Grey, Que, Red Deathy, Reinyday, Renaissance Man, Rjwilmsi, Smyth, Sonjaaa, Spencerk, Talented Mr Miller, That Guy, From That Show!, TheIndividualist, Tony1, Txomin, Ultramarine, Weaklygodlike, ZantTrang, 66 anonymous edits Productivity paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=476955344 Contributors: Alansohn, Bequw, CRGreathouse, Caiaffa, Cybercobra, Dani.gomezdp, Gioto, Grillo, Hmains, JLaTondre, Jbrowning100, Jgrinste, John Quiggin, JohnCD, KHLehmann, Kesla, Mandarax, MaxEnt, Michael Hardy, Miss Madeline, Mnyaseen, Mushroom, Niceguyedc, Phmoreno, Protonk, Radagast83, Rainwarrior, Rich Farmbrough, Robma, Saibo, Sepsaar, Subsume, TimBentley, Tuntable, Wferranini, Whosasking, Yakushima, Yorambauman, 36 anonymous edits St. Petersburg paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=484983645 Contributors: Aaron Schulz, Ais523, Albmont, Altenmann, ArnoldReinhold, Astronautics, Avraham, AxelBoldt, Barticus88, BenFrantzDale, Bfinn, Bhugh, [email protected], Bkell, Blotwell, CaAl, Cablehorn, Calculust, Chancemill, Chealer, Chris3145, Ciphergoth, Clathe, Cretog8, Curps, Cutler, Cyan, Cybercobra, Db099221, Delmorebarry, Dennbruce, Destynova, DimaDorfman, Dmitry123456, Dominus, DropDeadGorgias, EAKugler, Eebster the Great, Enisbayramoglu, Fioravante Patrone en, FrankTobia, Gerry D, Ghirlandajo, Hans Adler, Hunter 152, INic, Indosauros, J04n, Jasper, Jeffq, Jick, Jnestorius, K kisses, KEK, Karada, Karl-Henner, Knights who say ni, Lambiam, Landroni, Madmardigan53, Matchups, Matt Crypto, Melchoir, Melcombe, Mhartl, Michael Hardy, Midiangr, Milandesai, Nabav, Nbarth, Noisy, Nutcracker, Nybbles, OHmanEARTHBOUND, PGScooter, Paul Stansifer, Peregrine981, PhilBradley, Philopedia, Pokipsy76, Qblik, Quiddity, Remy B, Reywas92, Rickhev1, Rieger, Rjwilmsi, Root4(one), Rundquist, Ruud Binnekamp, SCMore, SS2005, Sadanand Kasargod, SlamDiego, Slawekb, Smyth, Soler97, Spoon!, Studboro, TaisukeMaekawa, TheGhostOfAdrianMineha, ThomasNichols, Tweetlebeetle367, Unyoyega, Westsider, WestwoodMatt, Whitepaw, Xiaoshan Math, Zaslav, Zigswatson, 109 anonymous edits All horses are the same color Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=473298282 Contributors: A.K.A.47, Action Jackson IV, Andeggs, Angr, Arctic-Editor, Arvindn, Autiger, AxelBoldt, Bmorton3, Breed Zona, CBM, Chameleon, Dan East, Dhanak, Dracon viceroy, Elwikipedista, Gazpacho, Giftlite, Gwern, Hairy Dude, Hi878, Hyad, Hyphz, Imasleepviking, JRM, JVPiano, Jao, Jitse Niesen, Josh Parris, Kaibutsu, Karada, Keahapana, Khendon, Koavf, MartinHarper, Mets501, Michael Hardy, Monkeysyodel, Namin, Oleg Alexandrov, Paddu, Paradoctor, Perey, Prosfilaes, Reedy, Rich Farmbrough, Ryan Prior, SimonP, Sjakkalle, Smyth, Sonett72, SonicBlue, TexasDex, 56 anonymous edits
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Barbershop paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=482203199 Contributors: 84user, AManWithNoPlan, Aaron Kauppi, Alexrexpvt, Banno, Bender235, Callowschoolboy, ChKa, Darkspartan4121, Dee-Dee, DrDentz, E1st3in, Ettrig, Flipping Mackerel, Fratrep, Furrykef, Gregbard, HeirToPendragon, Hyphz, Keenan Pepper, Lesnail, MJPotsy, Paradoctor, RJFJR, Radgeek, Robertd, Shepherdsona, Slaporte, Smidragon, Syzygy, Tmhand, Whitepaw, 30 anonymous edits Carroll's paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=425723042 Contributors: AndrewWTaylor, Charles Matthews, Cmdrjameson, Davilla, Dbenbenn, Dromioofephesus, Iswyn, Light current, Melchoir, Robinh, Unara, Venny85, 17 anonymous edits Crocodile Dilemma Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=467120849 Contributors: Afa86, Afterlife120, Alsims, Anonymous Dissident, Avicennasis, Gregbard, Hm29168, Mattg82, McKaot, Quantumelfmage, Recognizance, Vicki Reitta, , 18 anonymous edits Drinker paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=473958787 Contributors: Acid Ammo, Andeggs, AndrewWTaylor, Anguis, Anna Lincoln, Anomalocaris, Bearcat, Bonniemylove, CRGreathouse, Chris3145, Dmcq, ESnyder2, Eubulide, Gregbard, JRSpriggs, Jamesrmeyer, Jaxad0127, John Moore 309, Kaustuv, Koavf, Malcolma, Michael Hardy, Miquonranger03, Paradoctor, Qwerty Binary, RJHall, Robertd, Sawomir Biay, TJRC, Tkuvho, Tonywalton, Whitepaw, Zickzack, 48 anonymous edits Infinite regress Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=486530801 Contributors: AManWithNoPlan, AdamDeanHall, Ahruman, Airbag190, Banno, Bart Versieck, Blainster, Coelacan, Dale Hay, DeepSkyFrontier, Doctorfluffy, Dragon's Blood, E235, Emufarmers, GVOLTT, Gennaro Prota, Gregbard, Hans Adler, Hdeasy, Howcheng, Meco, Mgiganteus1, Michael Hardy, Ms2ger, NSLE, Neelix, Quajafrie, Randian, Robnpov, Scott12837, StAnselm, Thebestofall007, Tomisti, Urthogie, Wireless Keyboard, 48 anonymous edits Lottery paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=476983567 Contributors: 5thfloorlattimore, Andeggs, Bbik, Bjenks, Brizimm, DeftHand, Deleet, Doctorem, Dominus, Drowne, Exteray, Gregbard, Heqwm, Jaymay, Kyle1278, Paradoctor, SigPig, The Anome, The Haunted Angel, Tom Morris, 24 anonymous edits Paradoxes of material implication Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=480923375 Contributors: 7&6=thirteen, Alansohn, Andy Fugard, Arthur Rubin, Ben Standeven, Chalst, Cwchng, Cybercobra, Danust, Dhanyavaada, Faustnh, Gregbard, Haifromb, Howard Landman, IncidentalPoint, Paradoctor, Phiwum, Pragmaknowledge, Pyrospirit, Ruy thompson, Soler97, Xodarap00, 29 anonymous edits Raven paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=485211736 Contributors: 130.94.122.xxx, AceMyth, Ambuj.Saxena, Amnond, Andeggs, Andres, Anonymous Dissident, Axlrosen, Backtable, Banno, Berserkerus, Billjefferys, Bolddeciever, Brion VIBBER, Craig Baker, Cyan, DAGwyn, Danielkwalsh, DavidLevinson, Dawdler, Deor, Derek Ross, Drew R. Smith, Elano, Enochlau, Fadeblue, GManNickG, Geekdiva, Giftlite, Gregbard, GregorB, Gwern, Hyphz, Ian Moody, Itai, Jamankowitz, JeremyA, Jimmy Pitt, Jonathandubois, Karada, Kevin Saff, Koutheir, LC, Lab-oratory, Latexallergy, Liface, Mabisa, Matt Yeager, Mouzie, Pagrashtak, Paradoctor, PierreAbbat, Porcher, Reftext, Reywas92, Rjwilmsi, Rlpowell, Robkinyon, STyx, SamuelScarano, Sceptre, Simoes, Sioraf, Snoyes, Sophia100, Storkk, Swaq, Swpb, TJRC, Taw, Timo Honkasalo, Tktktk, Turkeyphant, Unyoyega, Whitehawk julie, Wik, , 72 anonymous edits Unexpected hanging paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=483135145 Contributors: Action Jackson IV, Andeggs, Anomalocaris, Anonymous Dissident, Arichnad, AxelBoldt, Axl, Barticus88, Bender235, Bfinn, Billgordon1099, BradBeattie, Bryan Derksen, Burn, Caulde, Charles Matthews, Chryzoumas, Conical Johnson, Cralize, DVdm, Danger, Daveofthenewcity, Dfeldmann, Dipakgoyal, Dogah, Drz, Dusk Orchestra, EdJohnston, Edderiofer, Em3ryguy, Eric119, Ettrig, Falcor84, GGano, Ghost420, Giftlite, Gioto, Hetar, Hyphz, Iae, Ihope127, Ilya Voyager, J heisenberg, Jengod, Jmackaerospace, Jnestorius, Juror 8, Justdig, JustinRosenstein, Kaaphi, Karada, Keenan Pepper, Khromegnome, Kmhkmh, LC, Laurusnobilis, Lawrencekhoo, Lee Daniel Crocker, LittleDan, LunaticFringe, MBlume, Maelin, Magnus, Marudubshinki, Nabav, Nairobiny, Nalvage, Nathan Ladd, Nehrams2020, NoahTye, Nortexoid, Oli Filth, OneWeirdDude, Paradoctor, Pokipsy76, Quendus, Ravikiran r, Reil, Reyemile, Reywas92, Rich Farmbrough, Ripounet, Robinh, Seb az86556, SimenH, Simetrical, SiobhanHansa, Stoive, Tabletop, Texture, The Earwig, Thefightmaster, Tim Retout, Tregoweth, Unyoyega, Vibritannia, Wik, Wilfried Elmenreich, Woggly, Zfishwiki, Zhu rongji, 143 anonymous edits What the Tortoise Said to Achilles Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=484811219 Contributors: Aaron Kauppi, Accelerometer, Ace Frahm, Ahoerstemeier, Alan Canon, Aleph4, Algorithm, Andeggs, AnonMoos, AugPi, AxelBoldt, Bawm79, BenRG, Cfortunato, Charles Matthews, Cretog8, Czrisher, David Shay, DrDentz, Dromioofephesus, Enchanter, Everyking, Favonian, Hans Adler, Hisarmwasherleg, JPG-GR, Jenks24, KSchutte, Llygadebrill, Magnus Manske, Mais oui!, Marc Venot, MeekSaffron, Narayan, Paul Stansifer, Porcher, Pyrosim, Radgeek, Rxtreme, Ryguasu, Saric, Savant1984, SunCreator, Superm401, TKD, ThirdParty, Tim!, Toby Bartels, TriniMuoz, , 47 anonymous edits Accuracy paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=461158461 Contributors: Balloonguy, Charles Matthews, Den fjttrade ankan, Keenan Pepper, MartinZwirlein, Melcombe, Nick Number, Paradoctor, R'n'B, Ralf Klinkenberg, SimonP, Sledgeas, Tilmann, YK Times, Zvika, 4 anonymous edits Apportionment paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=437636804 Contributors: Ahkond, Akriasas, Andre Engels, Arvindn, CRGreathouse, Chick Bowen, Digitat, Dissident, Doradus, Dthomsen8, Efenna, Eksortso, Foofighter20x, GoldRingChip, Hirudo, Jnestorius, Karada, Lincolnite, Lord Don-Jam, Mdotley, Michael Hardy, PhilipMW, Quidam65, Reywas92, Rumping, Run!, Tamfang, Tklalmighty, Whosasking, 14 anonymous edits BanachTarski paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=487090577 Contributors: 213.253.39.xxx, ABCD, Andres, Andrewbadr, Andrewbt, Andrey Petrov, Ankurdave, Arcfrk, ArnoldReinhold, Arthena, Arthur Rubin, AxelBoldt, Bdesham, Bender235, BeteNoir, Byelf2007, Bytesmythe, C S, CBM, Cconnett, Cdibuduo, Chalst, Charles Matthews, Conversion script, Crasshopper, Creolteno, Curps, Damian Yerrick, David Eppstein, Dbenbenn, Dcoetzee, Dogah, Doncram, Dori, DrIdiot, Dreadstar, Dysprosia, Earthengine, Eclecticos, El C, Enonx1, Eric Kvaalen, Eric119, Fropuff, Fubar Obfusco, Gadykozma, Gaius Cornelius, Gandalf61, Garygoh884, Gazpacho, Giftlite, Gigacephalus, Gogobera, Graham87, Grayscale, Grouchy Chris, Headbomb, Hydraton31, Hypercubist, IceKarma, Ilya (usurped), Jaan Vajakas, Jacj, JanBielawski, Joe Decker, John Cross, John Newbury, Jon Awbrey, Joriki, JuPitEer, KSchutte, Karada, Karl Palmen, Kocio, Kylemcinnes, Lambiam, LeaveSleaves, Likebox, Loisel, Lowellian, Lupin, Lysdexia, Lysy, M a s, MK8, Maechler, MarSch, MathMartin, Mct mht, Mekong Bluesman, Michael Hardy, Michael Slone, Neithan Agarwaen, Nihonjoe, Nnemo, Ohconfucius, Ott2, Patrick, Paul August, Perstar, Peruvianllama, Pfortuny, Phiszle, Pleasantville, Point-set topologist, Psychonaut, RDBury, Randomblue, Revelation60, Rgdboer, Rjwilmsi, Roadrunner, Robert K S, Rogerbrent, Ross Fraser, Schmock, Shakeer, Shanth phy, Sir Dagon, Stevenj, Suisui, Taxman, TechnoFaye, Teorth, Tetracube, Thorne, Timrollpickering, Timwi, Tkuvho, Tobias Bergemann, Toby Bartels, Tosha, Trlkly, Trovatore, Twilsonb, Ukexpat, Vanished User 0001, Vargenau, Villarinho, Warren Dew, Xnn, Ytr3wq, Zaslav, Zundark, Zyqqh, 157 anonymous edits Berkson's paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=473078420 Contributors: Alexjohnc3, Baddstats, Cajolingwilhelm, Charles Matthews, Corvette3791, Den fjttrade ankan, Edward, Giftlite, Henrygb, Lou.weird, Melcombe, Nbarth, Omnipaedista, Paradoctor, Pseudomonas, Rumping, 5 anonymous edits Bertrand's box paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=486698919 Contributors: 2toon2fast, Ameerr, Antaeus Feldspar, Arno Matthias, Arrkhal, Brighterorange, Brookie, Calebegg, D'Agosta, DRosenbach, Dcoetzee, Ekantis, Flying Hamster, GregorB, Headbomb, IanOfNorwich, J.delanoy, JeffJor, Johnbibby, Koolabsol, Loadmaster, Marc van Leeuwen, Matt Deres, Maurice Carbonaro, McGeddon, Melchoir, Menschenfresser, NameIsRon, Oleykin, Open4D, Petersburg, Phiwum, Pmanderson, Qwertyus, Rafi Neal, Shadowjams, Shorelander, TheHYPO, 26 anonymous edits Bertrand paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=484932045 Contributors: Altes, BenFrantzDale, Blotwell, Classicalecon, Cybercobra, DMY, Davilla, Doradus, EdC, False vacuum, Giftlite, GrahamN, GregorB, Hanspi, Headbomb, INic, Jason Quinn, Jimbowley, Kaksikolme, Martynas Patasius, Michael Hardy, MrVoluntarist, Noe, Pmanderson, Quiet photon, Qwfp, Rjwilmsi, Run!, STyx, Sakurambo, SamuelRiv, Sandgem Addict, Saxbryn, Tardis, The Anome, Timecop, Tired time, Tomixdf, Wile E. Heresiarch, Yardcock, 25 anonymous edits Birthday problem Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=486865420 Contributors: Ae7flux, Agricola44, Alansohn, Ale And Quail, AlistairMcMillan, Alorkoi, Ams80, AnOddShaman, Andrew Maiman, Andries, AngelOfSadness, Arbitrarily0, Arc-, Army1987, Arnoldlcl, Arpingstone, Arvindn, Ascnder, Asmeurer, Audiovideo, Avoided, AxelBoldt, BasinField, Batmanand, Bdoserror, Bhadani, Binary TSO, Binksternet, Bkell, Blodhgarm14, Bneely, Boredzo, Calebegg, Callidior, Calmer Waters, Can't sleep, clown will eat me, Centrx, Chaddasaurus, Charterhouse, Chutzpan, Coladie, Comatose51, Constructive editor, Crd721, Cretog8, Daniel Quinlan, Darkstar949, David Joffe, DavidFarmbrough, Dcoetzee, Dean Wormer, Deathawk, Dhanak, Diannaa, Djmitche, Dkasak, Don Quixote de la Mancha, Dorftrottel, DragonflySixtyseven, Dratman, Drew194, Dumelow, Durin, Eb Oesch, Ed g2s, EdC, Edinwiki, Edward Z. Yang, Egil, El C, Ender2101, Ericoides, Eurleif, Everyking, Evil Monkey, Exe, ExportRadical, Flamingcow66, Flewis, Flex, FlyingToaster, Frap, Frencheigh, Furrykef, Gamall Wednesday Ida, Garik 11, Gauge, Giftlite, Ginsengbomb, Glane23, Gmaxwell, Golbez, Gonzalo Diethelm, Grandeuro62708, Graue, Greeniweeni, Gregcaletta, Gremel123, Grick, Grover cleveland, Gxti, Habeebperwad, Haham hanuka, Hammer21445, Hannes Eder, Hbent, Headbomb, Henrygb, HiDrNick, Humanperson0, Hyphz, ISTB351, Imran, Iridescent, Iwaterpolo, Izno, J.N., JA(000)Davidson, Jaardon, JakeVortex, Jared, Jeff G., Jeffq, Jimfbleak, Jkt, JoakimBjornander, Johnny06man, Johnuniq, Jonnty, Jono4174, Jr.lizardking, Justin Mauger, KSmrq, KaiKemmann, Karada, Kaslanidi, Kbk, Keenan Pepper, Keeves, Kennethpc, Khargas, Klparrot, Krakatoa, KurtSchwitters, LAX, Lambedan, Lambyte, Lanogaid, Lanoitarus, Lanthanum-138, Lee J Haywood, Leon7, Liface, Likebox, LindsayH, LittleDan, Lkesteloot, Luk, Luqui, Lysdexia, MC10, Ma Baker, MajorHazard, Majorly, Malyctenar, Mandarax, MarSch, MartinHarper, Matsw, Matt Crypto, Matt Gies, Matthew Desjardins, Meestaplu, Melcombe, Metric, Mgiganteus1, Michael Hardy, Mindmatrix, Mintleaf, Mmernex, Monkey13, Mortalsoul2, MrOllie, Mssmith02, NeoUrfahraner, NeonMerlin, Neshatian, Neverquick, Ninjagecko, Noe, Nolamatic, Norpan, Ojcit, Oleg Alexandrov, Paddu, Pagrashtak, Pakaran, Paul August, PaulGarner, Peruvianllama, Pfunk42, Pgan002, Phoenixrod, Pimlottc, Pinball22, Pinethicket, PizzaMargherita, Pooryorick, Populus, Psora, Qe2eqe, Qqqqqq, RJASE1, Rajkiran g, RealWorldExperience, RetiredUser2, RexNL, Richard Tuckwell, Richard W.M. Jones, RichardS1234, Rmac, Robma, Rockin291, Ronniebrown, Roregan, Rothorpe, Rpkrawczyk, Rracecarr, Rrw, Rspence1234, Ruakh, Rupert Bates, Ryan Reich, Rygir, Rm, SMP, Sagqs, Salgueiro, Saxbryn, Schwallex, Shinmawa, Shreeneewas, Skorpan, Sleske, Slicing, Smurrayinchester, Smyth, Snoyes, Sopoforic, SpeeDemon, Spitzl, Sreeakshay, StAnselm, Stefanau, StewartMH, Storkk, Superm401, Sawomir Biay, Tapir Terrific, Tarquin, TheEternalVortex, TheRegicider, Thiseye, Tim bates, Timwi, Titanium Dragon, Tom Lougheed, TomViza, Toobaz, Trappist, Trusilver, Ummit, Useight, Velvetron, Vladimir Baykov, Voidxor, Wafulz, Warpzero, Wassupwestcoast, Whkoh, Wikedcoder, Wolfram.Tungsten, Wzwz, Yahoolian, Ytfc23, Zudduz,
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571 anonymous edits BorelKolmogorov paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=471985438 Contributors: 3mta3, Angela, Citrus Lover, Coffee2theorems, Cyan, Davilla, Eclecticos, Giftlite, Hammerite, Headbomb, Henrygb, Jmath666, Jonzim, Karada, Lenthe, Lunch, Michael Hardy, Oleg Alexandrov, Quadell, RockMagnetist, Solarapex, Trovatore, 18 anonymous edits Boy or Girl paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=485350376 Contributors: ASmartKid, AaRH, Abhilasha369, Acarina331, AceMyth, Afa86, [email protected], Ameerr, Andreba, Andrewrp, AndyBloch, AnmaFinotera, AnonMoos, ArielGold, Arthur Rubin, Averykins, Axcelis555, BD2412, Baccyak4H, Beamathan, Bfinn, BillFlis, Blotwell, Bn, Chris the speller, CombinationPermutation, Createangelos, Cretog8, Cronholm144, Crossmr, Diego Moya, Dorftrottel, DreamGuy, EdJohnston, Erdnuess, Fitzburgh, Fmagnet19, Fnielsen, Fox Walker, G Colyer, Graham87, Gryftir, Hgilbert, Hurricane111, INic, Inklingstar, It Is Me Here, Italus, J4V4, JDHeinzmann, Jac16888, JeffJor, Jimmyeatskids, Jingyu.cui, Johntex, Jon513, JosephSharif, Josephers, Jovianeye, KevYale, Kunal6dl, Lambiam, Mandarax, MartinDK, Melchoir, Melcombe, Metropolitan90, Milkshakeiii, Mini-Geek, Moondigger, Mqduck, Myles325a, Nilfanion, Noah Salzman, Noe, Oconnor663, Oleg Alexandrov, Oraculador, Padillah, Philosophyclass HSOG, PrimeHunter, Rblackard, Replysixty, Rick Block, Rjwilmsi, Rp, STyx, Shythylacine, Silasthecat, Smyth, Snalwibma, Snielsen, Soap, Socrates2008, State of Love and Trust, Tanyakh, Tassedethe, Tauolunga, The Anome, Thesoxlost, Thiseye, Tktktk, Tomi, Twas Now, VectorField, Versus22, Wickethewok, WikiZorro, Xoloz, Z9z8z7, 160 anonymous edits Burali-Forti paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=473003550 Contributors: Aarondude919, Albmont, Apokrif, Arthena, Blotwell, Charles Matthews, Chinju, Dysprosia, Elias, Fibonacci, GregorB, HannsEwald, Herbee, JoshuaZ, Karada, Kismalac, MathMartin, Mellum, Mets501, Mhss, Michael Hardy, Patrick, R.e.b., Randall Holmes, Spayrard, Tony1, Tulkolahten, VladimirReshetnikov, 22 anonymous edits Cantor's paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=485039502 Contributors: Albmont, Blotwell, CBM, CRGreathouse, Charles Matthews, Chinju, Cybercobra, Ft1, Geicocouldsave, Giftlite, Hairy Dude, Know-edu, KyleGJoseph, Lethe, Lorenzo Traldi, Lyondif02, Mets501, Mhss, Oleg Alexandrov, Phyte, Ryan Reich, Tetracube, Tkuvho, Trovatore, Twp, 26 anonymous edits Coastline paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=469748388 Contributors: Andrew Rodland, Avala, Blotwell, CBM, CRGreathouse, Cgingold, Chrislk02, Cntras, Cobaltcigs, Cryptic C62, Euthydemos, Goethean, Good Wolf, Hmains, Hogne, Hosszuka, Kane5187, Karada, Michael Hardy, Nimur, Orangemarlin, Pfly, Skookum1, Spiffy sperry, Thumperward, WriterHound, Wwwwolf, 18 ,. anonymous edits Cramer's paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=488551478 Contributors: Encyclops, Giftlite, ILikeThings, Michael Hardy, Myasuda, RDBury, , 3 anonymous edits Elevator paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=464407193 Contributors: A.Ward, Aaronbrick, Abscissa, Alan Peakall, Anthony Appleyard, Bequw, BigglesPiP, Brettpim, CBM, Charles Merriam, Citicat, Davilla, Finlay McWalter, Giftlite, Graham87, Gregknicholson, Grendelkhan, Hopfrog, Id711, Inferno, JayKeaton, Johnleemk, Kappa, Karada, Lemon-s, Michael Hardy, MisterMorgan, Nbarth, NoSalt, OleMaster, Pakaran, Pigsonthewing, QuiteUnusual, Shreevatsa, Stavia, The Anome, TheSku, Toobaz, 14 anonymous edits False positive paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=444241310 Contributors: Craigacp, Cybercobra, EoGuy, Jeodesic, John of Reading, LilHelpa, Melcombe, Michael Hardy, Ocaasi, Remember, Scratchdawg, Wragge, 15 anonymous edits Gabriel's Horn Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=486695689 Contributors: Ackasa, Alex Peppe, AndrewWTaylor, Anonymous Dissident, Audiovideo, BCKILLa, Badseed, Bdesham, BitJam, Booyah 007, Bt8257, Burn, C S, Calle, Carnildo, Cdion, Charles Matthews, Comrade009, Corwin8, Corydalus, Crayolacrime, DARTH SIDIOUS 2, DragonflySixtyseven, Draicone, Dysprosia, EoGuy, Farside, Gandalf61, Gavia immer, GeeJo, Geh, Giftlite, Goldencako, Good Olfactory, Gordon Panther, Hamiltondaniel, Henrygb, Hitman012, Hyacinth, Ixfd64, Jerzy, Jludwig, Joshuaaaahhhh, KTo288, Karada, Kmhkmh, Lastplace, LilHelpa, Linas, Lionboy-Renae, Lir, LittleDan, Loadmaster, Mark.Howison, Maxal, Melchoir, Michael Hardy, MrFish, Mugen890, NYKevin, Neonumbers, Noca2plus, Nocat50, Obradovic Goran, OlEnglish, Oleg Alexandrov, Olli Niemitalo, Peak, Pleasantville, Pseudoanonymous, Pskocik, Qwertyus, RDBury, Robertd, Romanm, Rumping, Ryan Reich, SGBailey, Salix alba, Search4Lancer, Septegram, Sonty567, Tcnuk, Toon81, Yakovy, Yworo, Zain Ebrahim111, Zureks, 77 anonymous edits Galileo's paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=473367865 Contributors: Andeggs, Ascidian, Asztal, Biscuittin, CBM, Charles Matthews, Dandrake, Dogah, Dominus, Dysprosia, Ejosse1, Furrykef, Grutness, Halmstad, Jeffq, JerroldPease-Atlanta, Liempt, Michael Hardy, Nk, Oleg Alexandrov, Quantpole, The Anome, TheLaeg, Thue, William M. Connolley, 29 anonymous edits Gambler's fallacy Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=487921890 Contributors: 2004-12-29T22:45Z, 2005, AKGhetto, Aaron Kauppi, Alex W, Alksub, Aly89, Andeggs, Andyroo316, Antarctic-adventurer, Aoxiang, Areldyb, Ashley Pomeroy, Aveekbh, Avirunes, AxelBoldt, Baccyak4H, Badger Drink, Barklund, Bender235, Bfinn, Bigturtle, Bkell, Blue Tie, Brad78, Bryan Derksen, Bush6984, CSTAR, Cablehorn, Calair, Camaj, Camw, Cgwaldman, Cjrcl, Cmglee, CobaltBlue, Constructive editor, Conversion script, Courcelles, Cyclist, D o m e, DanielCD, DavidDouthitt, DavidWBrooks, Day viewing, Dcoetzee, Den fjttrade ankan, Deor, DocWatson42, Doniago, Donnaidh sidhe, DragonHawk, E090, Edward, Electricbassguy, Emurphy42, Enric Naval, Eurosong, Evanreyes, Father Goose, FeatherPluma, Feezo, Fosterd2, Fr, Furrykef, GDstew4, GVnayR, Gayasri, Gazpacho, Giftlite, Gonzalo Diethelm, Grace Note, Graham87, GreenReaper, Gregbard, Grumpyyoungman01, Gwern, HAGADAG, Headcase88, Heron, 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Xanzzibar, 187 anonymous edits Gdel's incompleteness theorems Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=488221060 Contributors: .mau., 136.206.42.xxx, 4pq1injbok, 9258fahsflkh917fas, APH, ASKingquestions, Aatu, Abecedare, Ad88110, Ademh, Admiral Norton, Ajoykt, Aleph4, AmirOnWiki, Amoss, Ancheta Wis, Andre Engels, Andris, AndySimpson, Andycjp, Anetode, Antandrus, Apokrif, Arthur Rubin, Asbestos, AshtonBenson, AugPi, Aunin, Avaya1, AvicAWB, AxelBoldt, Baccyak4H, Beeblebrox, Beland, Bender2k14, Bergsten, BeteNoir, Bethenco, Bevo, Biedermann, Bijuro, Bkell, Blaisorblade, Blue Tie, Bovlb, Brick Thrower, Bryan Derksen, BuzzB, Byates5637, C17GMaster, CBM, CBM2, CRGreathouse, Cacycle, Cal 1234, Camembert, CaptinJohn, CasualUser1729, CeilingCrash, Celendin, CesarB, Chalst, Charles Matthews, Charles Moss, Chenyu, Chinju, Chris the speller, Clickheretologin, Conversion script, Crisfilax, D14C050, D6, DDSaeger, DFRussia, DG, Dan Gluck, Danny, Davebuehler, David Eppstein, David.Monniaux, 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SarekOfVulcan, SaxTeacher, Scouto2, Selfworm, Sgutkind, Shaun.mk, Sigfpe, SimonP, Simplebrain, Simplifier, Siroxo, Smyth, SolarMcPanel, Sopoforic, Sptzimas, SpuriousQ, Srnec, Stan the fisher, Standardfact, Steel, Suisui, SunCreator, Sundar, Sysy, TXlogic, TakuyaMurata, Tamalet, Tarquin, Tedickey, The Anome, The Rhymesmith, Third Merlin, ThirdParty, Thoreaulylazy, TicketMan, Tim Retout, Tim Starling, Timwi, Tkuvho, Tnxman307, Tobias Bergemann, Tosha, Toytoy, TravisAF, Trifon Triantafillidis, Trovatore, Turkeyphant, Twiceuponatime, Utcursch, VKokielov, Valeria.depaiva, Vibritannia, Vishnava, VladimirReshetnikov, Waldir, Waltpohl, Wapcaplet, Warut, Wavelength, Wfructose, Wikid, Wikidsoup, Wikiwikifast, WoodenTaco, Wtmitchell, Wvbailey, Xamce, Xelloss, Yousou, Ytcracker, Zchenyu, Zero sharp, jlfr, , 563 ,. anonymous edits Interesting number paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=475333908 Contributors: 28bytes, A:-)Brunu, Aaron Rotenberg, AgentSteel, Altenmann, Anonymous Dissident, Anthony, Anythingapplied, Arichnad, Arvindn, Bender235, Bevo, C S, CRGreathouse, Charles Matthews, CharlesC, Chi Sigma, Colapeninsula, Crisco 1492, Cyde, Decora, Derek farn, Dfranke, Dionyziz, Dirac1933, Djfiander, Dominus, Dr bab, Dwarf Kirlston, Eequor, EverGreg, Fredrik, Fuhghettaboutit, Geeoharee, Giftlite, Gypsydoctor, Infovoria, Isomorphic, Jackson, Jim Henry, Jimp, Jjamison, Joefromrandb, JohnBlackburne, JokeySmurf, Jorend, Joriki, Jre, Kaid100, Kingdon, LandruBek, Laurusnobilis, Marek69, Matt Gies, Matt Yeager, Mattbuck, Melchoir, Michael Hardy, Michael Slone, Michgrig, Mike Young, Noe, Personman, Pichote, Pmanderson, RMFan1, Rasmus Faber, Rick Block, Robofish, Rursus, S0rC3r3r, SDaniel, Sade, Samohyl Jan, Sarregouset, SimonTrew, Sjorford, Slashme, Soap, Sverdrup, Sysy, Tbjablin, Template namespace initialisation script, Thatguyflint, The Anome, The Cunctator, Thrashbarg, Timwi, Trivialist, Twilsonb, Wik, Worrydream, Zero sharp, , 41 anonymous edits KleeneRosser paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=467393963 Contributors: Beland, Bender235, C. A. Russell, CBM, CapitalSasha, Daniel5Ko, DmitriyZotikov, Dorftrottel, Falcor84, Lambiam, Leonard G., Linas, Marc van Leeuwen, Michael Hardy, Mike Schwartz, Neuralwarp, Paradoctor, Pcap, Rich Farmbrough, Seanmclaughlin, Spug, William Avery,
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Zero sharp, 17 anonymous edits Lindley's paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=486862818 Contributors: 3mta3, ChangChienFu, Coffee2theorems, Den fjttrade ankan, Dycotiles, Edward, Linas, Melcombe, Michael Hardy, The Anome, Whosasking, 25 anonymous edits Low birth weight paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=480134250 Contributors: Andeggs, Anomalocaris, Arlen22, AxelBoldt, Clicketyclack, DabMachine, Dar-Ape, Den fjttrade ankan, Diberri, Frozenport, Gary Cziko, Gdr, Gene Nygaard, Jfdwolff, Jun-Dai, Karada, LauraineCrafts, Lou.weird, Mack2, MrsBucket, Nbarth, NeonMerlin, Netkinetic, Noe, Nul, Paradoctor, Quidam65, Schutz, Sittingduck123, Smyth, Tarek, Tarquin, Tomlee2060, Tony1, Una Smith, UrsaFoot, 12 anonymous edits Missing square puzzle Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=486771231 Contributors: 041744, ALE!, Aarchiba, Aldaron, [email protected], Alvesgaspar, Art LaPella, Ayda D, Aymatth2, Bigup sim, Bjankuloski06en, Charles Matthews, Chaseed530, Cleverdie, Cw.pondering, DVdm, DavidRF, Ed Poor, Evercat, Gphoto, Gribozavr, Hadal, Herbee, Hydrargyrum, Jjron, Kaganer, Kapow, MCBastos, MTHarden, Michael miceli, Minesweeper, Nachra, Nebogipfel, Noe, Nomalas, Omicronpersei8, PTSE, Piledhigheranddeeper, Pro bug catcher, Rahatf, Reaper Eternal, Reywas92, Salgueiro, Stratadrake, Tide rolls, Tired time, Traxs7, Trekky0623, Victorrocha, WTM, Wfisher, Whosasking, WikiLaurent, Yvesnimmo, Zirland, 69 anonymous edits Paradoxes of set theory Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=470954256 Contributors: AndrewWTaylor, Anonymous Dissident, AuburnPilot, CBM, CRGreathouse, Chas zzz brown, DavidCBryant, DreamGuy, Eigenlambda, FAQAsker, Geoffw1948, Giftlite, Gregbard, Hippias, IPonomarev, Jalanpalmer, Justavo, Lambiam, Loadmaster, Mathemaduenn, Michael Hardy, Nick Number, Oleg Alexandrov, Paradoctor, RJChapman, RJGray, Rdmabry, Regards, WM, Sole Soul, Tesseran, Tobias Bergemann, WLior, 75 anonymous edits Parrondo's paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=484905540 Contributors: [email protected], Ambuj.Saxena, Bjenks, Camerafiend, Chetvorno, Deletedx55x, Dquixote, Educuncas, Edward, Elwikipedista, Evansmike14, GTBacchus, Gimmetrow, JEH, Kzollman, Lambiam, Mathninja, Melcombe, Michael Hardy, Mstutzer, Mushroom, Noe, Objective3000, Porkolt60, QueenCake, Rich Farmbrough, Rjwilmsi, Rustinterry, Sentient238, Spud Gun, StAnselm, Steamturn, Sunny vd, Svick, That Guy, From That Show!, Tkpmep, Urhixidur, Zippedmartin, 36 anonymous edits Russell's paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=487752723 Contributors: 1010011010, Adrionwells, AgadaUrbanit, Alan Pascoe, Alexg, Altenmann, Andres, Andrewa, Andrewbadr, Andrewtp21, Anonymous Dissident, Ap, Argyrios Saccopoulos, Artoasis, Arvindn, Ashera, AxelBoldt, Behnam, Bendono, BertSeghers, Bjarki S, CALR, CBM, CRGreathouse, Cal 1234, Causa sui, Charles Matthews, Chinju, Chocolateboy, Chuck Adams, Clive Jones, Cobra libre, ColdFeet, Colonel Warden, Concerned cynic, Conversion script, Cybercobra, Cyde, Daniil Teplitskiy, Danman3459, David H Braun (1964), Delirium, Derek Ross, Dfeldmann, Dhanak, Diggers2004, Discospinster, Dominus, Dongbags, DonkeyKong64, Doops, Dosilasol, Dranu, Drbreznjev, Duffman, Ed g2s, EdC, Edonovan, Eduardoporcher, Eric119, EthanOConnor, Factitious, FlashSheridan, Four Dog Night, Frytvm, Fwappler, Gakmo, Gershwinrb, Giftlite, Gilliam, Glacier9, Godsoflogic, Graham87, Grahamec, Gregbard, Grover cleveland, Gtrmp, Gutza, HappyCamper, Heron, Hugo999, ILIKENOTHING43217, Iccruz, J heisenberg, JHCC, Jacobharold, Jaraalbe, Jefu, Jersey Devil, Jleedev, Joseaperez, Junaidas, KSchutte, Karl E. V. Palmen, Kdau, Know-edu, Ks0stm, Ksnortum, Kzollman, LC, La goutte de pluie, Lambiam, Landroo, Leibniz, Linas, Livajo, Loadmaster, Loginks, LtCmdrData, Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters, M11101, Madir, Madmardigan53, MarcelB612, MartinHarper, Matt Crypto, Meldor, Michael C Price, Michael Hardy, Michaelpb, Mild Bill Hiccup, Milt, Mineralogy, Minesweeper, Modster, Mormegil, Neilc, Obradovic Goran, OttoMkel, Pace212, Paradoctor, Paul August, Pegship, Phc120, Philogo, Pmanderson, Pomte, Porcher, Pyrospirit, R'n'B, RDF-SAS, Rainwarrior, Randall Holmes, Rasmus Faber, RedWordSmith, Renamed user 4, Reywas92, Richard L. Peterson, Richmond96, Root4(one), Rory096, Roy W. Wright, Saga City, Salix alba, Sam Hocevar, Sapphic, Sarregouset, SimonTrew, Skizzik, Snoyes, Spandlingford, Stemonitis, Sukolsak, Sumchody, Sundar, Sunny256, TexasAndroid, The Anome, Tim Retout, Tomchiukc, Trovatore, Uranium grenade, Usacfg, WadeSimMiser, Web-Crawling Stickler, West Brom 4ever, WikiDao, Wikiljw, Wotnow, Wvbailey, Yossarian, Yworo, Zero over zero, Zero sharp, 221 anonymous edits Simpson's paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=488134907 Contributors: Achalootoo, Aetheling, Alansohn, Anandcv, Arthena, Arvindn, AstroNomer, AxelBoldt, BAxelrod, Baccyak4H, Barabum, Barrylb, BenFrantzDale, Boffy b, CL, Carbuncle, Charles Matthews, Chris the speller, Chris3145, Cmglee, Conversion script, CowboyBear, Cyberjudge, Czmilner, Dadadaddyo, Dan Rayn, Dandrake, Dandv, Dave.Dunford, DavidWBrooks, Davilla, Dbenbenn, Delldot, Den fjttrade ankan, Derek Ross, Destynova, Duoduoduo, Echo927, Emurphy42, Erianna, Exponentiate, Extratooth2, FF2010, Fnielsen, Gdr, GenericBob, Graham87, Greenharpoon, Grj23, Guybrush, Hydrox, It Is Me Here, Ivanleung95, Jbrotobball, Jersyko, Jim.belk, Johnleemk, JokeySmurf, Karada, Keeves, Kvihill, Kzollman, Lambiam, LauraineCrafts, Leonbloy, Linnormlord, Lirelyn, Lou.weird, MC10, MarkHudson, Markjoseph125, Mattbuck, Melcombe, MichaelFriendly, Miltopia, Mindmatrix, NTownsend, Nbauman, NeonMerlin, Noe, Nonerds3, Obscuranym, Occultations, Paine Ellsworth, Paolo.dL, Pascal.Tesson, PatrickFisher, Paul Stansifer, Paulmeisel, Pawyilee, Pgan002, Philip Trueman, Pointers12, Qitaana, Qwerty Binary, Qwfp, R.e.b., Rainwarrior, Rfl, Rich Farmbrough, Richard Keatinge, Rjwilmsi, Ronnyk, Ryan Reich, Salix alba, Schutz, Scottanon, Securiger, Shanes, Sikon, Stefan Pantiru, Stevage, Surajt88, Tarquin, Teeteetee, The Anome, Thesilverbail, Thorwald, Thric3, Tide rolls, TobyK, Tomi, Tomscambler, Tyrrell McAllister, Villaonisland, Whisky drinker, Whosasking, Wik, Zundark, Zven, , 173 anonymous edits Skolem's paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=483813827 Contributors: 4v4l0n42, Aquishix, CBM, CBM2, Charles Matthews, Chinju, Chris Pressey, Dmcq, Gdm, Giftlite, Graue, Hans Adler, History2007, Hugo Herbelin, Imz, Joriki, Joshtrimble, Joth, Leibniz, Loadmaster, Magidin, Maltelauridsbrigge, Mdd, Mhss, Michael Hardy, Mrwright, Myasuda, Noosphere, Nortexoid, Oshanker, Phiwum, Pjacobi, Porton, R.e.b., Renamed user 4, Rjwilmsi, Sophus Bie, Spambit, TakuyaMurata, Tijfo098, Tkuvho, Tobias Bergemann, Tosha, Trovatore, Unzerlegbarkeit, Vaughan Pratt, Wvbailey, Xzungg, 31 anonymous edits Smale's paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=488047629 Contributors: Achowat, ArnoldReinhold, AugPi, Balabiot, BiT, C S, CRGreathouse, Charles Matthews, Dratman, Dysprosia, Giftlite, HorsePunchKid, Kevinthe23rd, Korg, Lee M, Loadmaster, Mattbrundage, Maurice Carbonaro, Maxx.T, Michael Hardy, MichaelMcGuffin, Nbarth, NeonMerlin, Pjacobi, PoiZaN, Point-set topologist, R.e.b., Rainwarrior, Rausch, Sabbut, Silly rabbit, Tano4595, Tosha, Waldir, WriterHound, Zero sharp, Zundark, 17 anonymous edits Thomson's lamp Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=479972710 Contributors: A Softer Answer, AlfieNet, AnonMoos, Bkonrad, Bram28, Burn, Cammoore, Chadernook, Chetvorno, Chinju, Christian75, Dan Gluck, Double sharp, Dra1001, Edward, Eequor, Epbr123, GordonRoss, Gregbard, Hamiltondaniel, J04n, JimWae, Justlettersandnumbers, Marudubshinki, Melchoir, NeonMerlin, OlEnglish, Paul G, Pseudospin, Rjwilmsi, Roland Longbow, Sasuke Sarutobi, SimonP, Sligocki, Tesseran, Thomas Veil, Vincent Russo, William Pietri, 45 anonymous edits Two envelopes problem Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=487767737 Contributors: A2rael, ABaraov, Andeggs, AndrewWTaylor, AzaToth, Baccyak4H, BenFrantzDale, Bender235, Betrunkener Affe, BlackStarling, Blotwell, Bodhi.root, CaAl, Catgut, Chameleon, Chocolateboy, Corpania, CptCutLess, Curb Chain, DLetourneau, DMacks, Dacium, Dagme, Dcljr, DharmakayaClarity, Dicklyon, Dilaudid, DudeOnTheStreet, Enemyunknown, Eyal Lev, Father Goose, Feinoha, Gerhardvalentin, Giftlite, Gill110951, Gwern, HaeB, Hamaryns, INic, J04n, Jak86, Jeekc, Joefromrandb, JohnTheSecure, Johnbibby, Kaslanidi, Khazar2, Kitsunegami, Ladislav Mecir, Lowellian, Mangoe, Manning Bartlett, Marina T., Markjoseph125, Martin Hogbin, MartinPoulter, Matt81523, McSly, Melcombe, Metaphysicist1, Michaelnikolaou, Mike Rosoft, Monguin61, Mr randy watson, MrOllie, Mv240, Nagytibi, New Thought, Niceguyedc, Noe, OdedSchramm, Oleg Alexandrov, P64, Partyzan XXI, Pascal666, Pennbrook, PhysPhD, Piperh, Pokipsy76, Prochron, R'n'B, Radagast83, Richard001, RiskAverse, Rmessenger, RockMFR, Rsrikanth05, Rm, STyx, Slendle84, Snalwibma, Soler97, Spottydog3, TedPavlic, TheFreeloader, Tkircher, Tmartin, Tomixdf, Uniqueuponhim, Untrue Believer, Username12321, WAS 4.250, Wenga66, Wiggles007, Yuzta, Zvika, 209 anonymous edits von Neumann paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=477489515 Contributors: Crowsnest, Eric Kvaalen, Geometry guy, Hmains, Jokes Free4Me, LilHelpa, Michael Hardy, Tobias Bergemann, Zundark, 3 anonymous edits Bracketing paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=443122491 Contributors: Angr, Bbik, Chrislk02, CyborgTosser, Dugwiki, Kyoakoa, Maurice Carbonaro, McGeddon, Rmalouf, VanishedUser314159, 1 anonymous edits Buridan's ass Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=488437918 Contributors: Alienus, AnonMoos, Anwar saadat, Arcadianrefugee, Arthur Rubin, Astrowest, Borbolia777, Brewcrewer, Carlj7, Chetvorno, Cholling, Cyberchimp, D-Rock, Dino, Dismas, Dshin, Ebitnet, Emurphy42, Ethaniel, Ewulp, FeanorStar7, Fefogomez, FiveColourMap, GeorgeDishman, Gnomz007, Grutness, Helixblue, Icairns, Isokrates, Jag123, Jarry1250, Jason.grossman, Jasperdoomen, Jessemckay, Kaldari, Karada, LelosObserves, LindsayH, Loopy48, LoveMonkey, Malik Shabazz, Mark Dingemanse, Matthewamol, Maurice Carbonaro, Mavaddat, McGeddon, Murtasa, Nbarth, Nealparr, Nk, Obradovic Goran, Ontoraul, Oreo Priest, Philoyonder, Quackking, Quelqu'un, Qwertyus, RDBrown, Roadrunner, Rob T Firefly, Samohyl Jan, Schmei, SoCalAlum, Superm401, TJRC, Tavilis, The Anome, Thumperward, WereSpielChequers, Wikiuser100, Woohookitty, Ybbor, 74 , ,anonymous edits Buttered cat paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=488188625 Contributors: .mau., 5 albert square, 5theye, AVRS, Allefant, AnnaKucsma, Arthena, Aunt Entropy, Auric, Aziraphael, Badcalculon, Baylink, Ben Tibbetts, Bfigura, Brian G. Crawford, BrookMiles, Can't sleep, clown will eat me, CesarB, Chowbok, Clarityfiend, ClovisPt, Cmichael, ContiAWB, CronoDAS, CyberSkull, Cyfal, DTRY, Dagonet, Daniel Brockman, Deanlaw, Dougie monty, Dylan Lake, ESkog, Edward321, Efitu, Feezo, Felyza, Firsfron, Fourohfour, Frogskin9, GDallimore, Gamkiller, Gargaj, Gohst, Grafen, Graham87, Grapplequip, Greghaspants, Guru Larry, HeteroZellous, ISD, Iamsvengali, JDoorjam, Jared Preston, Jimp, JohnChrysostom, JoshuaZ, Kukini, Kyle Barbour, LAX, La Syd, Lathama, LewisHamiltonTR, Lineplus, Lordalpha1, Mailer diablo, Malinaccier Public, Mareino, Marin M., MasterA113, Matthiaspaul, Method8malta, Mgiganteus1, Michaelas10, Midnighterbh, Mindmatrix, Neon Fox, Nightstallion, OhanaUnited, Oknazevad, OlEnglish, Otterathome, Paul Pogonyshev, Pengo, Petter Strandmark, Phall28, Phil Boswell, Pilchard, Pixelface, Pixeltoo, Querl, Quidam65, Rdsmith4, Rjwilmsi, Rory096, Ruud Koot, Scyldscefing, SkyMachine, Slicing, Spinningspark, Suntag, Swaddon1903, TheNobleDuke, TheSun, Tjt1012, Toddst1, Tzler, Ulflund, Ultracoco, VanishedUser314159, Wafulz, WhisperToMe, Whodyacryem, Wisl, Wonk619, Zepheus, Zobango, 160 anonymous edits
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Lombard's Paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=469453679 Contributors: Amalas, Arcadian, B^4, Bachrach44, Caerwine, Cristobal carrasco, DrHawkeye, Eep, Epanalepsis, Gregbard, John, Kappa, Omnipaedista, Penbat, Pie.er, Refulgentis, Stefan, Swpb, Thiseye, 7 anonymous edits Mere addition paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=485443246 Contributors: Alecbings, Anakrin, Buzybeez, Byelf2007, C mon, Chealer, Cholling, Common Man, DDSaeger, Dclayh, DenisDiderot, DougDante, Dspradau, EmbraceParadox, Evercat, Fairychild, Feco, Karada, Kripkenstein, Larklight, LittleDan, Michael Hardy, Monguin61, Mvaldman1, ObsessiveMathsFreak, Pseudospin, Richard001, Selinide, Sir Paul, Tesseract2, TheDarknessVisible, Tired time, Upsidown, 49 anonymous edits Navigation paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=466356483 Contributors: 1ForTheMoney, AvicAWB, Bearian, CambridgeBayWeather, DexDor, Eugene-elgato, Iiar, Intersofia, Miss Madeline, Pb30, Puro pt, Rpatlovany, Rsiano, Updatehelper, Xeno, 8 anonymous edits Paradox of the plankton Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=486949652 Contributors: Axl, BarroColorado, Epipelagic, GregorB, Jessemv, Paradoctor, Plumbago, Robinh, 3 anonymous edits Temporal paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=481785782 Contributors: AnonMoos, Conty, Dcarac, Dendodge, Download, Filip em, Firsfron, FunkMonk, Jbrougham, Koavf, Maias, Miss Madeline, Mozzyepic24, Ozraptor4, Postdlf, Pterosaurus, Spotty11222, Steveoc 86, Toh, 10 anonymous edits Tritone paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=479408397 Contributors: 7&6=thirteen, AnotherOnymous, Assianir, Barticus88, Benjaminong, CryptoDerk, DanielLevitin, Delirium, Dianadeutsch, Epolk, Fuzzbox, Graham87, Hyacinth, Jemiller226, JerryFriedman, Jtir, Just plain Bill, Labeloccura, LilHelpa, Paradoctor, Thenthorn, 5 anonymous edits Voting paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=467606189 Contributors: 204.96.33.xxx, A poor workman blames, Achituv, Ashley Y, Atemperman, CBM, CRGreathouse, Conversion script, Daniel Mietchen, Delikedi, Dissident, Eberhard Wesche, Graham87, GregorB, Ictlogist, Iota, JamesMLane, Janlo, Jmkim dot com, Karada, LC, Lee Carre, Llamabr, Magister Mathematicae, MarSch, MarkusSchulze, Matt Gies, Maurice Carbonaro, McGeddon, Michael Hardy, Mikola, MushroomCloud, Paul Stansifer, Qetuth, RobLa, Robofish, Sean r lynch, Shamrocked, Smjg, Tamfang, Taw, Telso, The Anome, Theorist2, Thomasmeeks, VoteFair, Welsh, Zundark, Z da Silva, 26 anonymous edits Fitch's paradox of knowability Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=469435832 Contributors: Chalst, EmbraceParadox, Gamewizard71, Gregbard, Hyphz, Infinito, John, Kabelsalat, Kzollman, Quietly, Robindch, Rodasmith, Stephen Patrick, TheDean, Walton One, 6 anonymous edits Grandfather paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=478699004 Contributors: ***Ria777, 041744, 1Winston, ATD, Abomasnow, Abrech, Abu badali, Acalamari, Acthompson, Adam keller, Adam9812, Addihockey10, AdjustShift, Adoniscik, Aerie124, Ahoerstemeier, Al E., Ale jrb, Alexius08, Amcfreely, AnonMoos, Antepenultimate, Arctic.gnome, Are You The Cow Of Pain?, Arichnad, Ashmoo, Atomsmasher86, Auric, AxelBoldt, Backstabb, Barkingdoc, Beam022, Ben 10, BerserkerBen, Bfinn, Bhig3, Bob A, Bolddeciever, Braindigitalis, Brianski, Bryan Derksen, Burnside65, CPRdave, Cactus Wren, Calabraxthis, Calamari, Calhobs23, Caltas, Cambalachero, CanadianLinuxUser, Candent shlimazel, Captain Wacky, Captain-tucker, Cat's Tuxedo, Chicagorob1, Chris 42, Cmdrjameson, Coanda-1910, ComaVN, Consumed Crustacean, Coollettuce, Coralmizu, Corvun, Cybercobra, DAGwyn, DHBoggs, DV8 2XL, Daniel J. Leivick, Darkwind, David Levy, Dayewalker, Dcamp314, Delicious carbuncle, Demon Lord 302, Deniskrasnov, Densus, Dermeister, Dfeldmann, Digamma, Doczilla, DoktorDec, Dominic subkey, Drat, Dstebbins, Dudegalea, Duggy 1138, EVula, Eeekster, Efflo74, El Cubano, Elwood00, EncMstr, Enigmatical, Enochjli642, Eugene-elgato, Everyking, Ewlyahoocom, Finog, Fiona CS, Foreverprovence, Furrykef, Fusionmix, Futuresuperstar scw, GUllman, Garda40, Gezman, Giant89, Giftlite, Gioto, Goldfritha, Gorank4, GrahamHardy, Graue, Greenodd, Gsp8181, Gunnar Guvararson, Guthrie, Gvimalku, Gyohng, Halcyonhazard, Hello32020, Henryodell, Heslopian, Hibana, Histrion, HovisM, Hq3473, Ht686rg90, Hu, Hughesdavidw, Humanist92, Hydrargyrum, Hypnosifl, I.am.lost, Icyisamu, Igoldste, Imagine Wizard, Imagine me2, Ineedrevelation, Ixfd64, Ja 62, Jakeyb33, Jamelan, JasonAQuest, Jitterro, John Darrow, John254, Jok2000, Jon Ascton, Jonny-mt, Josiah Rowe, Jpk, Jpmccord, Junyor, Jushi, JustAGal, K-twist808, K69, Kameraad Pjotr, Kanonkas, Karada, Karl E. V. Palmen, Katalaveno, Kdau, Kent28, Keraunos, Khaosworks, Kmarinas86, KnightRider, Koro Neil, KrytenKoro, Kwinki, Lab-oratory, Lambiam, Lashiec, Lazzzzze, Letranova, Ligulem, Lilwik, Loadmaster, Lord E, Luiz48, MJ94, Mablanco, Maian, Majorclanger, Mallanox, Man It's So Loud In Here, Marc Weil, Marc pasquin, Martarius, Matharvest, MattManic7325, Mattbuck, Mattmanp, Max Jetzer, Maximus Rex, Maxis ftw, Mbell, Midasminus, Mike Peel, Mike4ty4, Milesnfowler, Mkuehn10, Mnemo, Modus Ponens, Monkeycheetah, Montgomery '39, Morven, Morwen, Mr. Garrison, Mranostay, Mritaly1000, Mrmets26, Mthteh, Mustangwill, Mwboyer, Myscrnnm, Mythsearcher, Nakon, Nalvage, Nate1481, Nenva, Netsnipe, New Age Retro Hippie, Nhandler, Notshabti, Nyttend, Obi2Kenobi, OffsBlink, Olathe, OldRight, Oliver Pereira, OneWeirdDude, Oren0, Orville Eastland, OsirisV, Paliku, Paradoctor, Patar knight, Paul A, PaulLev, PcGnome, Peruvianllama, Petaseakittenarmy, Peter.C, Phil Boswell, Philip Trueman, Pictureuploader, Pikawil, Platypus222, Plrk, Prasadbeeraka, PsychoJosh, Pupster21, Quadratic, Quercusrobur, Qwyrxian, Raiki15, Razasyed, Reformparty82, RememberMe?, Rewop777, Rgrg, Rich Farmbrough, Richard001, Riffsyphon1024, Rjwilmsi, Rob T Firefly, Robertd, Robofish, Rphb, Rundquist, Ryan Postlethwaite, SDaniel, SJK, SYSS Mouse, Sam Hocevar, Sanchom, Saric, Sastra Manurung, Saswann, Schneelocke, SchuminWeb, Sega381, Segagman, Senjuto, Ser Amantio di Nicolao, Shaen, Shahid1618, ShaneCavanaugh, Shawn81, Shawnallen, Shell Kinney, Sherqnill, Shreevatsa, Signalhead, SimonLyall, Simonfielder, SingCal, Sith Lord 13, Skwinch, Smartyllama, Soccerluke22, Soumya92, SpaceFlight89, SpecialAgentUncleTito, St Fan, StAkAr Karnak, Staffwaterboy, StarDigian, Stardust8212, Steel, Stephen P. Merchant, Stephenb, Stephenchou0722, Stevertigo, Strength rune, Superbiate, Superm401, Swwright, THATSBETTER, TKD, Taragui, Tasc, TehPhil, Tempshill, TerrorBite, The Monster, The Rogue Penguin, TheAnimus, TheChancellor, Thegline, Thewiki userxd, Thinkr, Thrashmeister, Tkgd2007, Tony Sidaway, Tregoweth, Trer, Trovatore, Trusilver, Tyler8779, UTSRelativity, UltimatePyro, VanishedUser314159, VasilievVV, Vhbelvadi, Vicki Rosenzweig, Viewdrix, Vinodkotiya, Voldemore, WDavis1911, Waldir, Wampa Jabba, Wannablessedbe, Wayne Slam, WereSpielChequers, Wereon, Wikidmage, Wikieditor1988, Wikipelli, WillMak050389, Witteafval, Wraithdart, Writelf, Wulf eng, Wwcsa, Yobmod, Zafiroblue05, Zundark, 594 anonymous edits Liberal paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=457158917 Contributors: Akriasas, Akshayaj, Andreas Carter, Audiovideo, Austinecon, Bart v M, Beefman, Bkessler, Blanchette, BrianAsh, CRGreathouse, Countchoc, Daniel Mahu, DaraParsavand, Drmies, Earth, Edward, El otro borges, Enchanter, Euyyn, Giancarlodoria, Hairy Dude, Headbomb, Henrygb, Hires an editor, Inebrio, Jsnx, Kingboyk, Knotwork, Leobold1, Michael Hardy, N419BH, Night of the Big Wind Turbo, Obscuranym, Preisler, Rebeccanicely, Remuel, Richiez, Rjwilmsi, Rl, Ronbtni, Rumping, Sango123, Stirling Newberry, TabooTikiGod, Thecinimod, Thecurran, Thomasmeeks, Toby Bartels, Voorlandt, WilliamKF, 35 anonymous edits Moore's paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=484808963 Contributors: Adrian J. Hunter, Alf, Andres, Anomalocaris, Beala, Bender235, Beno1000, Bfinn, Cmlittlejohn, Coffee2theorems, CoolMike, Cybercobra, Djinn112, EmbraceParadox, FT2, George100, Gregbard, Grud1872, Gwern, Haoie, Heyitspeter, JForget, JaGa, Jtle515, Karada, Knuckles, Larklight, Lucubrations, Maurice Carbonaro, Megatronium, Nk, Noosphere, Novangelis, Omnipaedista, Paradoctor, Paul A, PrecisNugator, RedWolf, Reinis, Rich Farmbrough, Rjwilmsi, Root4(one), Salasks, SeL, Sixsous, SkpVwls, Snowboardpunk, Tarotcards, The Anome, Velho, WAS 4.250, Xrchz, Ynhockey, Zach99998, Zamkudi, Zhu rongji, 50 anonymous edits Moravec's paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=457436447 Contributors: AnonMoos, CharlesGillingham, Gregbard, Retama, Simeon, Tassedethe, Vroman, Wbeek, 20 anonymous edits Newcomb's paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=485843724 Contributors: .:Ajvol:., Abyaly, Amerinese, AnaxMcShane, AxelBoldt, Bender235, Bensaccount, Blahber, Blubro, Bradtem, Brokenfixer, Bryan Derksen, CharlesHBennett, Count Iblis, Crasshopper, CronoDAS, DabMachine, Danielykeren, Dante Alighieri, Dcoetzee, Derek Ross, Diberri, Disavian, Dissident, Dobermanji, Download, DreamGuy, Eighty, Exeunt, FF2010, Fnorp, Fronkey, Garyzx, Geh, Geoffw1948, GoingBatty, Goodralph, GregorB, Gwern, Haham hanuka, Headbomb, Heron, Homunq, J heisenberg, JHunterJ, JJL, Joriki, Just H, Kaikaapro, Karada, Kiekeben, King Mir, Kpeatt, Kripkenstein, LC, Loren Rosen, Los3, M, Mackan, McKay, Mcherm, Mdob, Michael Hardy, Mmm, OneWeirdDude, Pcb21, Peak, RG2, Radford Neal, Rasel10, Rich Farmbrough, Richard001, Robertd, Ron Aharoni, Rossami, Schaefer, Semantic Paradox, Senjuto, Serpent's Choice, Singularity, Slartoff, Star General, Stephen, Sunshine14angel, Suslindisambiguator, Timwi, V. Szabolcs, VeryVerily, Wragge, Zedmelon, 88 anonymous edits Omnipotence paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=488514224 Contributors: 2046, A bit iffy, A.Z., ABCD, Abhingeorgegodwin, Adolphus79, Agateller, Aghast, Ajkr925, Ajsh, Akari no ryu, Albrozdude, Alsandro, Amalas, Amodio11, Amxitsa, AnOddName, Anaptyxis, Andrew Levine, Anomalocaris, Antandrus, Anthony on Stilts, Antimatt, Anville, Aquatiki, Arb, Arendedwinter, Article6, Atchius, Athanasius1, Auric, Avoided, Axem Titanium, Ayla, BD2412, Back2back2back, Bacteria, Baristarim, Bcasterline, Behemoth01, Ben Babcock, Beowulph, Bertrc, Bevo, Bhadani, BjrnEF, Bkell, Blainster, Bmorton3, BoNoMoJo (old), Bob A, Bob0the0mighty, Bobblewik, Boing! said Zebedee, Brandmeister (old), BrianH123, Brianmccormick, Brighterorange, BrokenSegue, Brusselsshrek, Bryan Derksen, C. M. Harris, Cambalachero, Camipco, Carl.bunderson, Carnildo, Charles Matthews, Chinju, Chochopk, Cholling, Christofurio, Christopher Parham, Chuck Carroll, Colonel Cow, Corvus, Cowman109, CptCutLess, Cybertooth85, Cyde, Dabomb87, Danmcn12, Danny, DannyMuse, Darklilac, David aukerman, Dbachmann, Dbkliv, Dcljr, Dea13, Descendall, Dgilman, Dianelos, DividedByNegativeZero, Dmlandfair, Doc glasgow, Docbillnet, Doccolinni, Dozols, DragonflySixtyseven, Drunken Pirate, Dwo, Dylan Lake, ESkog, Ed Brey, Edward Z. Yang, Ekrenor, ElfWaltR, Epinheiro, Erik, Evercat, F105ThunderJet, FalseSyllogism, Favonian, Fel64, Flange the Flee, FluxFuser, FrankWilliams, Fratrep, Freakofnurture, Gabbe, GaelicWizard, Gaius Cornelius, Georgy Tsikhiseli, Ghais, Giftlite, Gijreb, Good Intentions, Gorank4, Gorillasapiens, Gracenotes, Gregbard, Grenavitar, Grosscha, Gurubrahma, Gwernol, H2g2bob, Habbit, Haham hanuka, Hairy Dude, Hamsterlopithecus, Hargrimm, Haukurth, Hdante, Henrygb, Hofer, Hopfrog, Ht686rg90, Ikiroid, Indopug, Infinity0, Iownwikipedia, Isaacsurh, ItsZippy, Iwalters, Jackcsk, Japanese Searobin, Jaranda, Jaxl, Jchthys, Jeffrey O. Gustafson, Jiohdi, John W. Kennedy, Johnmarkh, Jon513, Jonathan.s.kt, JoshuaZ, Jusdafax, Justin Eiler, JustinWick, Kaihsu, Karada, Karl Dickman, Karl E. V. 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Sluzzelin, Some jerk on the Internet, SomeStranger, Somerset219, Special Creature, Sprazizi, Srleffler, Srnec, StAnselm, Steevven1, Sturgeonslawyer, Suicidal mongoose, Suslindisambiguator, Swirlix, Taibhse169, Terrifictriffid, Tgeairn, TheIndifferent, TheMadBaron, TheUnionBlood, Thomas Gilling, Thorwald, Tijuana Brass, Titoxd, Tmansbridge, Tony1, Torsrthidesen, Treisijs, Trifon Triantafillidis, Tristessa de St Ange, Truffaut, Trumpet marietta 45750, Tuckerj1976, Ucla1989, Ummit, Usw., Vassyana, VegaDark, Velella, Viper Daimao, Vizcarra, Vzbs34, WLior, Wannger27, Wayward, Ween14, WeniWidiWiki, WereSpielChequers, Weregerbil, WhiteC, Wiki alf, Wikihw, Wikiphilia, Wmahan, WotherspoonSmith, Xaosflux, Xariskai, Yamamoto Ichiro, Zafiroblue05, Zsinj, 578 anonymous edits Paradox of hedonism Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=428736046 Contributors: AnaxMcShane, Angela, Angelastic, Angelbo, Animum, Badger Drink, Ben101001, Bill3000, Binho Gomes, Brinticus, Bryan Derksen, C mon, CRGreathouse, Catslayer, Charles Matthews, Chealer, Common Man, Cybercobra, Dan Polansky, Dave Runger, Deepblackwater, Dhidalgo, Djr36, EIFY, Eduen, Erntab72, Frecklefoot, Ghost420, Grow60, Guanaco, Hadal, JRR Trollkien, Jds10, Jubileeclipman, Karada, Keenan Pepper, Keith Cascio, Ketsuekigata, Legotech, LoreMiles, MagnesianPhoenix, MartinHarper, Michael Hardy, Micru, Mohan1986, Noe, OneWeirdDude, Recognizance, Rich Farmbrough, Ringhloth, Root4(one), Roykptrsn, RubyQ, RyanHoliday, Shlomi Hillel, Spencerk, Svunt, Swwarmuth, The Anome, Tim Ivorson, Ym2mandym2g, 64 anonymous edits Paradox of nihilism Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=486926236 Contributors: Chealer, Geeoharee, LilHelpa, Paradoctor, 4 anonymous edits Paradox of tolerance Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=487505123 Contributors: A Stop at Willoughby, Andycjp, Avanu, Aymatth2, Eldamorie, FarzanehSarafraz, Hilltoppers, MrBell, Paradoctor, Pollinosisss, Rjanag, 10 anonymous edits Predestination paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=488022893 Contributors: A plague of rainbows, ACSE, AMK152, AdmiralMemo, Adonator, Aitias, Alistair P, Alivine, Alvis, Amoffit, Andrei Cvhdsee Brazil, Angela, Angeldeb82, Anon126, Anville, Apetc, Arjayay, Astavats, AtticusX, Autobogg, BanyanTree, Bart133, Bartekmajewski, Beeblebrox, Bennydigital, BillC, Binadot, Binx, Bks1209, Blasfamous, BobThePirate, Bonalaw, Brian Olsen, Bryan Derksen, Btyner, Burnside65, Calhobs23, Cambalachero, Cameron Scott, Cat's Tuxedo, Chasingsol, Chookmeister, Chris1219, Clem cowsie, Clockwork Angel, Colonies Chris, Conti, Corvun, Crackpottheorist, DBrane, DabMachine, Daibhid C, Daniel Benfield, Dantheman531, Darksun, David Gerard, Dayewalker, Delicious carbuncle, Denny, Derktar, Desertmonk, DoctorWho42, DonQuixote, Download, Drat, Dreamafter, Dstebbins, Dudegalea, Dyolf Knip, Emurphy42, Eric Burns, Etacar11, Everyoneandeveryone, Evil saltine, ExoTiger, Festivewombat, FlashpointDFW, Flyte35, For An 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Connolley, Wong, Woohookitty, Xiner, YouMoo!, Zedmelon, 592 anonymous edits Zeno's paradoxes Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=487441086 Contributors: .mau., 041744, 100110100, 134.39.212.xxx, 777sms, A E Francis, AJR, Aa2-2004, Alansohn, Albert2810, Alexnye, AlterBerg, Andre Engels, Andreas Kaufmann, Anonymous Dissident, Ansgarf, Antonrojo, Aphid360, Aprogressivist, Archibald Fitzchesterfield, Arthena, Artichoker, Asbestos, Ash, Atraxani, AugPi, Auntof6, Avnjay, AxelBoldt, AzaToth, Bass fishing physicist, Bcasterline, Bdesham, Belg4mit, BenFrantzDale, Bert Carpenter, Bignose, BillFlis, Bjcairns, Bkpsusmitaa, BlackAndy, Blotwell, Bolddeciever, Borgx, Brad7777, Breno, Brews ohare, CBM, CWii, CYD, Cage, Light in Shadows, Can't sleep, clown will eat me, Canned Soul, Carados, Cardamon, Catgut, Centroyd, Chalnoth, Chetvorno, Chris the speller, ChrisHodgesUK, Christian List, Cjmnyc, Clifton Ealy, Closedmouth, CommonsDelinker, Conversion script, Crasshopper, Cratylus3, Creidieki, Cryptic C62, CubicStar, Cyan, D o m e, DARTH SIDIOUS 2, DJ Clayworth, DJBarney24, DVdm, Dakirw8, Dan Gluck, Danielt, Dave Runger, Dbtfz, Debresser, Decumanus, Dekimasu, Deli nk, Demiurge, Demonkey36, Deor, Destynova, Dhawkins1234, Dogah, Domitori, Dra1001, DropDeadGorgias, Dsmith9 99, Dysmorodrepanis, Ed Poor, Eequor, Egendomligt, Ekem, ElectricValkyrie, Elsweyn, Emelpy, Epbr123, Eusebeus, Evercat, Fabulous Creature, Faithlessthewonderboy, FilipeS, Flagman7, Flockmeal, FlyinLow5, Forlornturtle, Fortesfortuna, Foxo103, Francis Gevers 18, Francis Gevers 2, Fru1tbat, Funnyguy555, Furrykef, GCord52, Gabbe, Gaius Cornelius, Gandalfe, Geometry guy, Georg Muntingh, Georgiabiker, Gerardbeirne, Giftlite, Gilliam, Gimmetrow, Gomi no sensei, GordonRoss, Graham87, Grorland, Gunnar Hendrich, Gut Monk, Hadal, Hairy Dude, Hamiltondaniel, Harvest day fool, Hasenj, Hellno2, Henrygb, Henrysot, Herostratus, Hgilbert, Historyofmadness, Histrion, Hrafn, IGTHORN, Ian Page, Iohannes Animosus, Isokrates, Isopropyl, Itub, J.delanoy, JKeck, JMK, Ja 62, Jafet, Jafeucht, Jasperdoomen, Jbergquist, Jfliu, JimWae, Jimmy da tuna, Jiohdi, Jizzpus, JohnnyHom, Jonathan.s.kt, Jrcassar, Junkyardprince, Justlettersandnumbers, Jwfearn, KFP, Karada, Karmos, KearnsyK, Keenan Pepper, Kenmayer, Kesuari, Khukri, Kijana11, Knucmo2, Koavf, Kzollman, LGB, Lapasotka, Le Blue Dude, Lee M, Liongold, Lizard617, Loadmaster, LokiClock, Lord Kyler, Lordrichie, Lordvolton, LostLeviathan, Lotje, Lucas(CA), MC10, MSGJ, Machine Elf 1735, Mackinaw, Mad031683, Magioladitis, Majorsheisskopf, Martarius, MartinHarper, Maurits, Maxim, Mburdis, Mdwh, Michael Hardy, Michael Snow, MichaelExe, Mike Rosoft, Miles, MisterDub, Mladifilozof, Moink, Monkey 05 06, Morwen, Mpcarter, Mr Elmo, Mr Freud, Mr T Experience, Mr2b, Msanta800, Mschlindwein, Munford, Nachiketvartak, Nasser Ali Khan, Newbyguesses, Nikthestoned, Ninja Wizard, Noe, Oilstone, Oreo Priest, Ortho, Oskar Sigvardsson, Oxnard27, Paine Ellsworth, Paradoctor, PatrickFisher, Patrickjamesmiller, Paul August, Paul Murray, Pcap, Peterdjones, Pfagerburg, PhilHibbs, PhilipMW, Pichote, Pleasantville, Praveen pillay, Profitoftruth85, Pseudospin, PxT, Qetuth, QmunkE, QuantumEleven, R'n'B, RB972, RMFan1, Raerae42n8, Raiden09, Raiden10, Raknarf44, Rasmus Faber, Raven4x4x, Rdsmith4, Recentchanges, Reiisi, Resistance futile, Reywas92, Rich Farmbrough, Rick Norwood, RickK, Rima8, Rjwilmsi, Rob T Firefly, Robinh, Rogper, Romit3, Rsg, Ruakh, Ruanov, Ryan.vilbig, SMcCandlish, Sabalka, Saccerzd, Salsa Shark, Sam metal, Sanders muc, Sapphic, SchmuckyTheCat, Scottcmu, Shane mc glinchy, Shikeishu, Shikexue2, Sibidiba, Sikon, Simetrical, Skomorokh, Skyshot, Slashme, Snalwibma, Spidern, Ssge, Steaphen, Stephen Bain, Steve Pucci, Su huynh, Syncategoremata, Taffer9, Tarquin, Telewatho, Terence, Tety, Tgoodwil, Thaurisil, The Sage of Stamford, The Thing That Should Not Be, TheMolecularMan, Thedarkestclear, Thegeneralguy, Thingg, Thomas Veil, Tim Starling, Timneu22, Timo Honkasalo, Tommy2010, Tony Sidaway, Topbanana, Trezatium, Twonex, Tyrenius, Unyoyega, Uriah923, Velella, Vikreykja, Wereon, Wideshanks, Wiki alf, Wiki13, Wikid77, Wikisquirrels, Wikky Horse, William M. Connolley, Woody, Wormholio, Ww, Xaoyin, XuetaoSweden, Yone Fernandes, Yufeilu, Zenosparadox, Zhou Yu, 819 anonymous edits Algol paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=447615840 Contributors: BD2412, Epbr123, Inordinate, Nechung, Nominality, Paradoctor, RJFJR, 4 anonymous edits Archimedes paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=488049639 Contributors: 4Jays1034, Action Jackson IV, Bejnar, Elonka, Emurphy42, Firien, Grahamrichter, I.aditya, Malcolma, Michael Hardy, Niri.M, Nixeagle, Quatloo, Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ), Rjwilmsi, Solipsia, Stephenchou0722, 9 anonymous edits Aristotle's wheel paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=475596073 Contributors: AnonMoos, Habitmelon, Henrygb, Ilmari Karonen, Jitse Niesen, Lenthe, Loadmaster, Mairi, MarSch, Melchoir, Mereda, Mhaitham.shammaa, Mysid, Oleg Alexandrov, Paine Ellsworth, Pleasantville, Psiph, Snailwalker, UkPaolo, Wareh, Willdude123, Wolfling, 4 anonymous edits Bell's spaceship paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=485969583 Contributors: 2over0, Action Jackson IV, Alfa137, AndrewWTaylor, BillinSanDiego, BlueZenith, D.H, DS1000, Dfrg.msc, Donniah1234, Downwards, Edward, Ems57fcva, Evanh2008, Fcy, F, Gregory Merchan, Hamiltondaniel, Harald88, Headbomb, Hillman, Jack Beijing, Jaykov, Joeshields, Kelly Martin, Klaser, Kpeeters, Lantonov, Loren.wilton, Mako098765, Martin Hogbin, Mpatel, Ordage, Patrick0Moran, Pearle, Pervect, Pjacobi, QuantumOfHistory, Rod Ball, Rracecarr, Thiseye, Urhixidur, Varano, Wolfgangbeyer, 86 anonymous edits Bentley's paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=472983601 Contributors: Dukey42, Hjweth, Jovianeye, Pakaraki, Paradoctor, Patchy1, RJHall, Wknight94, 4 anonymous edits Black hole information paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=481153733 Contributors: 2over0, A Nobody, A. Parrot, AaronEmi, Achaeus, Acrotatus, Action Jackson IV, Acusilaus, Aeropus II of Macedon, Agasicles, Agasides, Agateller, Anetode, Banno, BenRG, Bergerj, BillC, Bkell, Bsadowski1, CalebNoble, CarlHewitt, Carnildo, CaroleHenson, Catgut, Celarnor, Christopher Thomas, Chronulator, Cogiati, DanielCD, Darkstar949, David Eppstein, Davidhorman, Dom316, Dr mindbender, Dstebbins, Dude1818, Dupz, Dv82matt, Dzenanz, Dugosz, E23, Edward, Eep, EmeraldElement, Entropy1963, Eric Shalov, ErkDemon, Eyu100, Faethon, Faethon11, Faethon36, G a adams, Gary King, Goodnightmush, Greg L, GregorB, Gscshoyru, HEL, Hairy Dude, Hamiltondaniel, Headbomb, Henning Makholm, Histrion, Humblefool, Hypnosifl, Iron Condor, Isaacsurh, JB Gnome, Jafet, Jaimie Henry, Jedikaiti, Jehochman, JelloPiranha, JocK, Joke137, Karl Leibrecht, Knowledge Seeker, Lue3378, Maurice Carbonaro, Maury Markowitz, Mccready, MedeaMelana, Melamed katz, Michael Hardy, Misterstark, Mpatel, Munkeegutz, Nihonjoe, Oblivious, Omegatron, Opaqueice, Orionsyndrome, Ossipewsk, Paragon12321, Particle hep, Pauli133, Phil Boswell, Pjf, PseudonympH, Pt, Pydos, QFT, Quarkgluonsoup, R'n'B, Raidr, Rich Farmbrough, Roadrunner, Ronhjones, Shivan Bird, Shizhao, Shmuel, Shredder 187, Sjakkalle, SocioPhobic, Solipsist, Solver, Staffwaterboy, Stephan Schneider, Styrenemace, Sverdrup, Swastassijns, Swatjester, Taxonrath, Tediouspedant, Telso, The wub, Theleftorium, Tim Shuba, TimothyRias, Timwi, Tobias Bergemann, Ujjwol, Urvabara, VanishedUser314159, Vipinhari, Waleswatcher, WolfmanSF, Zqudlyba, Zundark, 143 anonymous edits Braess's paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=473060659 Contributors: Andthorn, Anomalocaris, Bovlb, Brunonar, CaliforniaAliBaba, Charles Matthews, CombAuc, Cretog8, Dbesse, Diogenes00, Dklionsk, Dlohcierekim, Dondegroovily, EAderhold, Emurphy42, Grondax, Hazmat2, Headbomb, Henrygb, Jbolden1517, Jholdn, Jitse Niesen, Madmardigan53, MarcoTolo, Mariojalves, Marqueed, Mattbrundage, Michael Hardy, Oleg Alexandrov, Paradoctor, Piet Delport, Reywas92, Rjwilmsi, Sgeo, SiobhanHansa, Sjabeyta, SteveLoughran, Supernet,
487

Synergy, Tobiaskunz, UnitedStatesian, Urhixidur, Volunteer Marek, Wruz6, Yopai, 64 anonymous edits Cool tropics paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=470560503 Contributors: Alan Liefting, Chris the speller, Daniel Case, Edward, MisfitToys, PMLawrence, Plastikspork, Smith609, Soap, WolfmanSF D'Alembert's paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=480417989 Contributors: !jim, AugPi, BlatantHeroics, BoH, C S, CRGreathouse, Crowsnest, David Eppstein, Dimacq, Dobromila, Dolphin51, Dysprosia, EdJohnston, Egbertus, Fnfal, Fubla, Gaius Cornelius, Giftlite, Hacktivist, Hammersoft, Headbomb, JaGa, Jitse Niesen, Joseph.slater, Karada, Lear's Fool, Linas, Matthew Yeager, McGeddon, Michael Hardy, Moxfyre, Mu, Nickptar, Ohconfucius, Rjwilmsi, Rolo Tamasi, Salih, Shell Kinney, Snoyes, Tompw, VanishedUser314159, Visitor22, Visitor222, , 31 anonymous edits Denny's paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=486794367 Contributors: AndrewWTaylor, AvicAWB, Charles Matthews, Keenan Pepper, MajorRoads, Robinh, Saga City, SimonP, The Anome, Uranium grenade, Wolfkeeper, 4 , anonymous edits Ehrenfest paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=483567246 Contributors: Alphachimp, Brews ohare, Buntje, Charles Matthews, Chris Howard, Coder Dan, D.H, DFRussia, Ems57fcva, Fibonacci, Foobarnix, Geschichte, Goldenrowley, GregorB, Harald88, Headbomb, Hillman, Hirak 99, Hongooi, Jake Spooky, JohnBlackburne, KSmrq, Keraunos, Mboverload, Michael Hardy, Petri Krohn, Pjacobi, Reyk, Rod Ball, Rolphing, Romannikov, Saihtam, Scoty6776, Sergiacid, Stijn Vermeeren, Thorseth, Trekphiler, Vcantoni, Wnt, XJamRastafire, 50 anonymous edits Elevator paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=395285883 Contributors: Davilla, Ezeu, Graham87, HEL, Heron, Kablammo, Kbdank71, Scientific29, Viperist, 4 anonymous edits EPR paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=486894564 Contributors: -- April, .:Ajvol:., 207.171.93.xxx, 2over0, ASCWiki, Agge1000, Agger, Alan McBeth, Alkivar, Amakuha, AmarChandra, Andejons, Apoc2400, Ark, Arpingstone, Astrofan7, AxelBoldt, B4hand, Ballhausflip, Bevo, Bigbluefish, Binksternet, Blauhart, Bob K31416, Brews ohare, Brianga, Brrk.3001, Bryan Derksen, CSTAR, CYD, Camrn86, Canadian-Bacon, Carbuncle, Cardmagic, Caroldermoid, Caroline Thompson, Chas zzz brown, Chjoaygame, Chris 73, Chris Howard, Clarityfiend, CobbSalad, Complexica, Cortonin, CosmiCarl, Cpiral, Craig Pemberton, Crowsnest, Cspan64, D0nj03, DAGwyn, DBooth, Darktaco, DaveBeal, David R. 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Heresiarch, William M. Connolley, WillowW, XJamRastafire, Xgrrr, Xnquist, YUL89YYZ, Yill577, Zeycus, Zootm, , 301 anonymous edits Faint young Sun paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=488092972 Contributors: Adam McMaster, Andycjp, B.d.mills, Bender235, Bryan Derksen, Charles Matthews, Christopher Thomas, Ckatz, CrizCraig, DRTllbrg, Dragons flight, Dual Freq, Eleassar, Eroica, Flying fish, Gloriamarie, Guycucumber, Headbomb, Hisingen Erik Svensson, John of Reading, Knowledge Seeker, Lugnuts, Maxim Razin, Nabuquduriuzhur, Nick Number, Northfox, PMLawrence, Polentario, Proxima Centauri, Puzl bustr, RJHall, Reyk, RingtailedFox, Rjwilmsi, Roberto Mura, Rogermw, SSJ 5, Sir48, Spinningspark, The Thing That Should Not Be, The way, the truth, and the light, TimVickers, Tommy2010, Vokesk, Vsmith, Vyznev Xnebara, William M. Connolley, William Ortiz, WolfmanSF, 33 anonymous edits Fermi paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=488250236 Contributors: .digamma, 100110100, 213.253.39.xxx, 24.93.53.xxx, 3starhunter, 8digits, A bit iffy, A purple wikiuser, AGTMADCAT, AKismet, ANTIcarrot, AarCart, Aarondude919, Abpotato, Acdx, AdamRetchless, Aduthie, Alai, Albert.a.jackson, Alessandro57, Alexjohnc3, Alpha Quadrant (alt), Althai, Amicianthony, Amikake3, Andre Engels, Andrewhayes, Andy Smith, Andy120290, Andycjp, Anlala, Ant, Anthony, Arb, Arkuat, ArnoldReinhold, Arpingstone, Art Carlson, Arthena, Arthur Hal, Ashmoo, Attilios, Auric, Avsa, AxelBoldt, Axl, Aymatth2, Babbage, Bakabaka, Bakkster Man, Baqu11, Barbara Shack, Baroquesmguy, Ben Jos, Bender235, Beowulf314159, Berek Halfhand, BernardZ, Bernat mussons, Bigger digger, Billranton, Bizso, Bkell, BlackAndy, Blackspotw, Blair P. 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Heat death paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=472982633 Contributors: Aef711, Airplaneman, Chris 73, Crater Creator, Dhollm, Michael C Price, Nabla, OlEnglish, Paradoctor, Pearle, Polyamorph, RJFJR, SemperBlotto, Thumperward, Treelzebub, 6 anonymous edits Irresistible force paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=487297761 Contributors: Achangeisasgoodasa, Action Jackson IV, Addshore, Aeusoes1, Alan.m.russell, Alethiophile, Andrevan, Andrew Maiman, AndrewWTaylor, Andy Farrell, Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The, Anville, ArcticViper, Ballchef, Barticus88, Benny Pollok, Bkell, Blaine Westwood, Bluemoose, Bud0011, Bullzeye, CSWarren, Captain Screebo, CleckleysProof, CoJaBo, Coppertwig, DH85868993, Dabigkid, Dabomb87, Dbachmann, Derekleungtszhei, Discospinster, Doubious, Dr.K., DragonflySixtyseven, DuncanPed, ERK, ESkog, Ektoric, Fastily, Firien, Gamemaster0082, Gorank4, Gregfoxgregfox, Gurch, Guru Larry, HA HA HA HA!, Hmains, ILKhanate, Infophile, JMBrust, JacobLime91, Jagun, Jheiv, Jim1138, Jojhutton, Jokeri, Kamin 978, Keahapana, Kevinb9n, Khatru2, Kinitawowi, L Kensington, Leon..., Lllzzzttt, ManaCorp, Martbigz, McGeddon, Meneth, MpITTI, MusicMaker5376, NawlinWiki, NickBush24, Nicola79, Nikki311, Nof20, NuclearWarfare, Oolongy, Opheicus, Pablo-flores, Paradoja, Passionless, Pathoschild, Peruvianllama, Pharaoh of the Wizards, Philip Trueman, PhrozenRose, Plasticup, PowerUserPCDude, RMFan1, RadioFan, Rehan.haider, RogueNinja, Rurigok, Ryulong, Sacredtrails, Samwaltz, Sandgem Addict, Sertrel, Simeon24601, Skakkle, Smartyllama, Smurfy, SpacemanAfrica, Stv12888, Sumple, Tevildo, The Joker Hee Hoo Hoo!, The Joker Returns 10, The Proffesor, The undertow, TheFreeloader, TheMadBaron, TheSandwhichWriter, Thedesktop, Toa Nidhiki05, Tony Sidaway, Torgo, Trisar, Tv316, ULTIM8 Unicorn, VanHelsing23, Wafulz, Widefox, WikHead, Wikky Horse, WildstormSong, Wuhwuzdat, XV DEaD ShOT xV, Xeno666, XxAvalanchexX, Xyzzyplugh, Yansky, Ydam, Yoji Hajime, Zaharous, Zerokitsune, 269 anonymous edits Ladder paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=486600760 Contributors: Aturzillo, Ben Standeven, Brews ohare, Charles Matthews, Cmdrjameson, D.H, DonQuixote, DreamGuy, ErkDemon, EverettYou, Fredrik, GregorB, Hairy Dude, Hamiltondaniel, Harald88, Hillman, JaGa, Jheald, KSmrq, LOL, Lantonov, Life of Riley, MatrixFrog, Michael Ross, Number36, PAR, Prezbo, RainyShadow, Rich Farmbrough, Speedplane, Spinningspark, Spiral5800, Spoon!, Tarotcards, Teorth, TerryW475, That Guy, From That Show!, VanishedUser314159, YellowMonkey, 50 anonymous edits Loschmidt's paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=472083831 Contributors: 2over0, 4Jays1034, Acalamari, Airplaneman, Bcrowell, Bporopat, Cacycle, Charles Matthews, Crosbiesmith, Dan Gluck, Danc, Denevans, Dhollm, Doctor joshi, Eequor, Enormousdude, Fnfal, Gcsnelgar, Hypnosifl, Jheald, JocK, Karada, Leibniz, Linas, Lysdexia, Mbell, Michael Hardy, Mike Peel, Mjec, Nbarth, PC78, Phys, Pjacobi, Robertd, Salih, Sasoriza, TakuyaMurata, Was a bee, WebDrake, 13 anonymous edits Mpemba effect Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=483440501 Contributors: 2over0, Ahoerstemeier, Amatulic, Andrs D., Arthena, Asbestos, AtmanDave, Auntof6, AxelBoldt, Babbage, Barak Sh, Blood sliver, Bongwarrior, Bsmith2414, BullRangifer, Cacycle, Causa sui, Christian75, Ckwood, Cmdrjameson, Creation7689, Curious1i, Cutler, DaveEngineer, Dcoetzee, Denisarona, DerHexer, Dhollm, Digfarenough, Discospinster, Dmitri Yuriev, Dougweller, DragonflySixtyseven, Drgao, Drjamesaustin, Druzhnik, Dysprosia, Edinburgh Wanderer, Emitozzi, Eng.ahmed.m.ali, Eptin, Ethomsen, Ewlyahoocom, Faerengol, FireHorse, Furrykef, Gabriel Kielland, Gobonobo, Grafen, GrahamDo, Greenguy1090, Gulliveig, Hard Raspy Sci, Headbomb, Hede2000, Henrygb, Hephaestos, Heron, Iantresman, Icairns, Ignoscient, Isnow, Ivan tambuk, JForget, JackofOz, Jbyersjcox, Jeanb., Josephfrazier, KJS77, Karada, King of Hearts, Kjknohw, Kvng, L Kensington, L'omo del batocio, Laurenxxx189, Libb Thims, Lukys, Malleus Fatuorum, Martin Chaplin, Master mack, Mattwc04, Maury Markowitz, Michael Hardy, Momojeng, Mrwriter, Nbarth, Noirum, Nolanus, Nsaa, O'Dea, Ogno, Omnipaedista, PMG, Pmcm, Quadparty, RaseaC, Rich Farmbrough, Richard A Muller, Riki, Rjwilmsi, Rklisowski, Robinh, Rspeer, Rumping, Rxnd, Sciurin, Sentewolf, Sheepech, Shiggity, Shii, Shot info, Some jerk on the Internet, Sophia, Staka, Superbeecat, Suppafly, Svick, Syncategoremata, Syndicate, The Anome, The High Fin Sperm Whale, The Thing That Should Not Be, The Tutor, The sock that should not be, Toytoy, Tregoweth, Trilobitealive, Undecided, Van helsing, VanishedUser314159, Vrenator, Vsmith, Vuo, Wdcf, Wentu, William M. Connolley, YixilTesiphon, Zetawoof, Zompenguin, 245 anonymous edits Olbers' paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=485547507 Contributors: 216.254.9.xxx, 2over0, Agge1000, Aldaron, Alem Dain, Alfio, Ancheta Wis, Andeggs, Andre Engels, Atakdoug, AxelBoldt, Barak Sh, Ben Standeven, BenBaker, Bernardoni, Blainster, Brandmeister, Bryan Derksen, Calair, Christopher Cooper, Coemgenus, Conversion script, Cragwolf, Cyclopia, DOSGuy, Damian Yerrick, David-Sarah Hopwood, Davidhorman, Dbenbenn, Dcatalyst, Dinojerm, Dismas, Dr. Submillimeter, Drrngrvy, Egil, El C, Ellsworth, Exidor, Filiocht, Geoffrey.landis, Gerbrant, Giovanni33, Graham87, Hamiltondaniel, Headbomb, Heckledpie, Hereticam, Heron, HkQwerty, Hogghogg, Hrundi Bakshi, IVAN3MAN, Icairns, Irrbloss, Jasonphysics, Jessemerriman, Johnson Lau, Jonathan Silverlight, JonathanD, Jordgette, JorisvS, Kaldari, Karada, Karol Langner, Kazvorpal, Kelisi, Kiminatheguardian, King Hildebrand, Kiran Gopi, Kmarinas86, Knowledge Seeker, Kubigula, Kurtan, LDHan, LilHelpa, Looxix, MEJ119, Magickair, Marvinandmilo, Marysunshine, Matthew Woodcraft, Med, Meisam, Mhdkandil, Michael C Price, Michael Hardy, Midnightdreary, Mjb, Moopet, Murtasa, Nareek, Natalia.missana, Nicapicella, Obankston, Oren0, Paine Ellsworth, Pakaran, Pdn, Personman, Pisspaws, Pol098, Pomte, Pwjb, RDBury, Rainwarrior, Rangerdude, Rasmus Faber, Reddi, Reedy, Rentier, Rjwilmsi, Rnt20, Robma, Roentgenium111, Romanm, Sakkura, Salsa Shark, Scoutersig, Shimmin, Silly rabbit, Simetrical, Smallweed, Smellsofbikes, Srleffler, Stormymountain, SubSeven, Taochanger, Tarquin, Tempshill, Tjmayerinsf, Tnxman307, Touchatou, Tristan robbins, Tuntable, User2004, UtherSRG, V1adis1av, VanishedUser314159, VeryVerily, Wdfarmer, Will, Wolfmankurd, WookieInHeat, Wrongfilter, Yahastu, 190 anonymous edits Ontological paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=403049078 Contributors: 18-Till-I-Die, 1ForTheMoney, 9258fahsflkh917fas, Aaron Bruce, Ahpook, Ajsh, Alexjohnc3, AndrewTJ31, Another Believer, Arielkoiman, AtaruMoroboshi, Auric, Autobogg, Bearcat, BillC, Bisqwit, Bolddeciever, Brandov, Bronzethumb, Bryan Derksen, Bstepp99, Btyner, Burnside65, Calhobs23, CatherS, ChibiKareshi, Chintan 1988, Chris the speller, ChrisCork, Clerks, Cljohnston108, Conspiration, Crissyman, Ctjf83, Daniel Benfield, David Gerard, Deadlyops, Diego, Diet, DiogenesNY, Doczilla, Dodger, DonQuixote, Dpmuk, Dream of Nyx, Droidguy1119, Drpickem, Dstebbins, Duggy 1138, Ehsteve23, Eliyak, Elsan, Emurphy42, EoGuy, Epbr123, Fiasco229, Frecklefoot, Frotz, Gamer 2k4, Geeked, Godsoflogic, Gundersen53, Gzuckier, Hamiltondaniel, Harry Mudd, Hhliao, Histrion, Hotwire379, Hu, Hvn0413, Imnotoneofyou, Int3gr4te, ItsZippy, JaGa, JackSparrow Ninja, James J. Rowland, JasonAQuest, Jasonfward, Jbgreen, Jcarroll, Jdkasper, John Darrow, John0309, Jon1104, Joncnunn, Jourell, Ju gatsu mikka, Juansmith, Kamikaze28, Keeves, Keycard, Khaosworks, Khazar, Kizor, LFaraone, Lambiam, Lazyteen542, Lhopitalified, Lisa mynx, Loadmaster, Lowellian, Lrj27, Luigifan, Lukeluke112, Lyonsbane, MWielage, Madmardigan53, Magioladitis, Mandarax, Marcus Brute, Markcpeck, Martarius, Mattbuck, Mboverload, MichaelGranados, Michaelpremsrirat, MidNiteBlade, MightyJAK, MightyWarrior, Milesnfowler, MileyDavidA, Mini-Geek, Mithcoriel, Mrquizzical, Muchness, NYKevin, NeonNero, New User, NonNobisSolum, Nutster, ObiWanBillKenobi, Oceanwind, Off2Explore, Oknazevad, Onslaught262, Overlord11001001, OwenBlacker, Paddu, Paradoctor, Pigsonthewing, Pikawil, Plushpuffin, ProtegoMaxima, Pseudo-Dionysius, Psyblade42, Quigonkenny, R-RockMan.EXE, Rainwarrior, Raven's Crux, Rev Sysyphus, Reywas92, Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ), Richard001, RichardKleiner, Richiau, Rjwilmsi, RonConescu, Ruby2010, SchfiftyThree, Sega381, Serendipodous, Sgeureka, ShadowUltra, ShaleZero, Shawn [email protected], Shay Guy, ShelfSkewed, SiegfreidZ, Squids and Chips, Stansfield, Steverapaport, Subtlecoolness, Supernerd170, TCHJ3K, Tad Lincoln, Tassedethe, Tavdy79, Tbmorgan74, TeamCoachingNetwork, The Big L, The Light6, The Rogue Penguin, The Yeti, TheDJ, TheFarix, Thisisausernameok, Titoxd, Toad of Steel, Tobetheman, Tonyrex, Traxs7, Tristanaustin, Trysohard, Tustin2121, Tzfat Mystic, UK Bakosi, Ulric1313, UltimatePyro, Uroshnor, Valley2city, Verin Sedai, VolatileChemical, Waldir, WaysToEscape, Wellspring, Westacular, Wikichao999, Wikieditor1988, Wikignome0529, Wild ste, Wlmg, Wolfram.Tungsten, ZPM, ZZninepluralZalpha, , 483 anonymous edits Painlev paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=438933320 Contributors: Bernard.Brogliato, Gene Nygaard, GregorB, Headbomb, Innerproduct, Michael Hardy, WurmWoode Physical paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=484933394 Contributors: 1dragon, Acdx, Angelastic, Bbartlog, Bryan Derksen, Btyner, Christianjb, Crystallina, David Sneek, Deville, Dr Greg, DragonflySixtyseven, Gwernol, HEL, Haemo, Harald88, Headbomb, Hillman, HorsePunchKid, Hypnosifl, Icairns, IceKarma, Jeff3000, JocK, Jonnabuz, Jwanders, Karada, Karol Langner, Kirbytime, Matthew Yeager, Mbell, Mbeychok, Mccready, Michael C Price, Michael Hardy, Msridhar, OlEnglish, OoberMick, Paine Ellsworth, Paradoctor, Pdcook, Phil Boswell, PoccilScript, Reaper Eternal, Reyk, Rgclegg, RobinK, Rory096, Safalra, Sam Hocevar, Sasoriza, SchreiberBike, Seth Ilys, Skoban, Someone42, SpaceCaptain, Srleffler, That Guy, From That Show!, Timwi, Vald, VanishedUser314159, Veraladeramanera, Wikimaus, X96lee15, 45 anonymous edits Quantum pseudo-telepathy Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=482018208 Contributors: 0x0077BE, BorgQueen, Boston, Crisco 1492, Dream of Nyx, Estudiarme, IRP, JocK, Josiah Rowe, Jschnur, Lycurgus, MC10, Maurice Carbonaro, NE2, Paulcmnt, Prezbo, Quinxorin, Revolving Bugbear, Rjanag, RobinK, Robma, Sabri Al-Safi, TJSwoboda, Thingg, Victuallers, Vyznev Xnebara, Wingedsubmariner, 16 anonymous edits Schrdinger's cat Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=487646227 Contributors: -jmac-, .:Ajvol:., 100110100, 198, 24.93.53.xxx, 64.12.104.xxx, A. di M., A2326xyz, ABCD, AEdwards, AVJP619, Abtract, Access Denied, Adashiel, Adpete, Af648, AgadaUrbanit, Agamemnon2, Agge1000, Albanharrison, Aleenf1, Alfredr, Amakuru, Amcbride, Amorymeltzer, AnOddName, Andrewjlockley, Andrewpmk, Angr, Angry Lawyer, Anonymous Dissident, Antandrus, Anupamsr, Anville, Aperisic, Asbestos, Ashley Pomeroy, Ashmodai, AstroNomer, AussieLegend, Avb, Bakkster Man, Beeblebrox, Benhocking, Bensmith53, Betterusername, Bhoch14, BigFatBuddha, Bill Spencer5, Bjdehut, Bmicomp, Bob K31416, Bob toben, BobKawanaka, Bobby D. Bryant, Bobbydowns, Bobo192, BookgirlST, Borisblue, Bovineone, Brews ohare, Brion VIBBER, Brookston, Broski, Brusegadi, Bryan Derksen, Bth, Bubba hotep, Bucephalus, CShippee, CYD, Calvinkrishy, Camembert, Canadian Paul, CanadianLinuxUser, Canterbury Tail, Capricorn42, Carbuncle, Catbag, Catgut, Ccscott, Centrx, Cgay88, Chaos, Charlesrkiss, Chase2032, Chemguy2, Chetvorno, Chitomcgee, Chris Longley, Christofurio, Ciphergoth, ClockwrokSoul, Closetsingle, Cmsreview, Cohesion, Colincbn, Commonbrick, Complexica, Comrade009, Conversion script, Corporal Tunnel, Cpl Syx, Craw's Revenge, Crazynas, Crosbie Fitch, Crystallina, DAGwyn, DAID, DJ Clayworth, DJIndica, DV8 2XL, Danlibbo, Darkwhistle, Darth Panda, David R. Ingham, David R. Ingharn, David.Monniaux, Davidizer13, Davidpdx, Dc987, Deanlaw, Den fjttrade ankan, Dennisthe2, Derwyk, Dfhussey, Dhatfield, Dicklyon, Discospinster, Djpadz, Dmoulton, Doorag1, Dr.Gonzo, Dr.K., Drmies, Drunkenmonkey, Dspradau, Eaglizard, Ebehn, Eblingdp, Ed Cormany, Eeekster, El C, Elation, Ennerk, Epbr123, Eric Shalov, Escape Orbit, Evil Monkey, Falcon8765, Famousdog, Faseidman, Faseidrnan, Feldspaar, Fenway4201912, Fetchcomms, Fibonacci, Fieldday-sunday, FlamingSkullComics, Floria L, FlorianMarquardt, Foobar, Forai, Francis Ocoma, Free Bear, FriendlyRiverOtter, Gabbe, Gagueci, Galaxiaad, Gavin.perch, Gawaxay, Giftlite, Giggy, Gilly3, Glacialfox, Gore Physicist, Graham87, Greenleaf, Gregbard, Greudin, Grunt, Gruntree, Gurch, Gz33, HDarke, HPRappaport, Haakon, Hadal, HaeB, Hamiltondaniel, Harkleroad, Harry, Hasek is the best, Headbomb, Henning Makholm, Heracles31, Heron, Hillbrand, Hires an editor, Hmhur, Holylampposts, HorsePunchKid, Hovden, Howellpm, I am a Wikipedian, IAmAndrewSoul, IRP, Identity99uk, Intelligenttheorist, Ixfd64, J.delanoy, JE, JIP, JPX7, Jack Mickkelson, Jaganath, Jayden54, Jblatt, Jcfolsom, Jeltz, Jim Birkenshaw, Jim McKeeth, Jim1138, Jivecat, Jjamison, Jncraton, Joao, John, JohnArmagh, JohnSankey, Johnvdenley, Jordgette, Josh Grosse, Jtmichcock, JustAddPeter, K, KagakuKyouju, Kanthoney, Karl, Kevin aylward, Khalid Mahmood, Khazar, KittySilvermoon,
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Anderson, Stevertigo, Sumsum2010, Sweetser, TUF-KAT, Tabster0000, Taejo, TaintedMustard, Tannkrem, Teflon Don, Teutonic Tamer, The Cunctator, The Monster, The Rambling Man, The Thing That Should Not Be, The wub, TheSun, Theendofgravity, Thorncrag, Tide rolls, Timotheus Canens, Timwi, Tobias Bergemann, Tom Morris, Tom Peters, Tommy2010, Toytoy, Tregoweth, Trevor MacInnis, Trusilver, Tufflaw, Twas Now, Typobox, Ujjwol, Ukcreation, Ukexpat, Uogl, Useight, Vadim Makarov, Val42, VanishedUser314159, Varuna, Veghead, Versehalf, VincentCalci, Violetriga, Virogtheconq, VolatileChemical, WCFrancis, WMdeMuynck, Wandall Schwartz, Wapcaplet, Waterfall117, Wenli, Weregerbil, Wereon, Wetllama, Whitehorse1, Whoop whoop pull up, Whosyourjudas, Wik, Wikiliki, Wikimancer, Wikipelli, Will2k, Wind-up Spirit, Wisq, Worthawholebean, Wwheaton, XJamRastafire, Yamamoto Ichiro, Yar Kramer, Yeezil, Yngvarr, Ytrewq05, Yvwv, Zakhebeone, Zeerak88, Zenosparadox, ZeroOne, Zginder, ^demon, 799 , anonymous edits Supplee's paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=483567698 Contributors: Chewyrunt, Cmdrjameson, Gaius Cornelius, Galoubet, Hairy Dude, Hillman, Linas, Neparis, Rainwarrior, Robinh, TechPurism, VanishedUser314159, Vsion, 8 anonymous edits Tea leaf paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=470297005 Contributors: Apoc2400, Bruce1ee, Catslash, Cosmic Latte, Dabomb87, David Eppstein, Elison niven, Frietjes, Giftlite, Leandrod, MichaelScottRoberts, Molestash, Spinningspark, StAnselm, Svick, UpstateNYer, 4 anonymous edits Twin paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=487142189 Contributors: .:Ajvol:., 213.253.39.xxx, Aanghelescu, AaronSand, Acdx, Adam Keller, Alai, Alan Hill, Algebraist, Alpertron, Andrei Stroe, Andyjsmith, AngelOfSadness, Angelo Michael, Anna Lincoln, AnnabelBuxton, Ati3414, Auspex1729, Avana, AxelBoldt, Bartosz, Benarrob, Bencherlite, Bender235, Bernardbet, Blanche of King's Lynn, Brews ohare, BryanD, Bubba73, CBM, CSSberk, Carbuncle, Carnildo, Cburnett, Cfulcher, CharlotteWebb, Chenyu, Chinju, ChrisCork, Cinkcool, Clarityfiend, Cleonis, Complexica, Conversion script, Cpcjr, CrypticBacon, D.H, D.T.Thom, D99figge, DGG, DS1000, DVdm, Dabuek, Dbachmann, Der alte Hexenmeister, DingleGhost, Dissident, Downwards, Dr.K., DrBob, DynamoDegsy, Dugosz, E4mmacro, Edgar181, Eeekster, Email4mobile, Emiellaiendiay, Ems57fcva, EoGuy, ErNa, Erdelyiek, EvanTPeoples, Fresheneesz, Froth, Geometer, GeorgeMoney, Giftlite, Gloumouth1, GraemeL, Greg park avenue, GregorB, Gregory9, Gscshoyru, Gulmammad, Hairy Dude, Hajhouse, Harald88, Headbomb, Hillman, Hizoomi, Hypnosifl, IDK112, Icairns, Inala, Inextremis35, Introvert, Izabela Furjan, Jaarspohl, JabberWok, Jagged 85, Javalenok, Jeffrey O. Gustafson, Jfg284, JoanneB, Jok2000, Jvs.cz, Jyp, JzG, Kabethme, KaiShengHu, Karada, Karch, Ketans, Kevmitch, Kpengboy, LC, LRC, Lantonov, Ld, Legija, Ligulem, Looxix, Lotte Monz, Lowellian, Loxley, Lumidek, Lumpy27, Mare420, Martin Hogbin, Maurice Carbonaro, Mav, McSly, Menchi, Michael Fontenot, Michael Hardy, Mike R, Mindmatrix, Moroder, Moyerjax, Mscuthbert, Myles325a, Na217253, Nimuaq, Nubiatech, Nwbeeson, O. Harris, Oda Mari, Oleg Alexandrov, Owen, Oxnard28, PStrait, Paradoctor, Patrick, PenguiN42, Pjacobi, Plastikspork, PoccilScript, Pol430, Prezbo, PuzzletChung, Ranveig, Rasmus Faber, Rdsmith4, Ressonans, RexNL, Rich Farmbrough, Richard001, Rjwilmsi, Robinhw, Robma, SCZenz, SURIV, ShaunMacPherson, SheepNotGoats, Siftpodcast, Sillybilly, SlyEcho, Stevenj, Stud9920, SunCreator, Suruena, Susewho, Susurrus, THEN WHO WAS PHONE?, Ta bu shi da yu, Tailpig, TasowyTR, Tedder, Teorth, Tero, That Guy, From That Show!, The Cunctator, Theresa knott, Thermochap, Thivierr, ThomasK, Tim Shuba, Timb66, Tobias Hoevekamp, Tom, Tothebarricades.tk, TreasuryTag, Treknologist, Tripp12345678901, Triwbe, TwPx, Val42, ValentinKostadinov, VanishedUser314159, Voorlandt, W1k13rh3nry, WDavis1911, William M. Connolley, Wknight94, Wolfkeeper, Wwoods, XCelam, XJamRastafire, Yizzerin, Ymblanter, Yonngtian, ZeroOne, Zondor, , 418 anonymous edits Barber paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=485099883 Contributors: Alexg, Andres, Asbestos, AxelBoldt, BigHaz, Breed Zona, CBM, Chuck Adams, Cornellrockey, DesertSteve, Dugwiki, Ex Everest, Ex-act, FauxFaux, Gorillasapiens, Graft, Grendelkhan, Guyd, Head, Hoyt Jolly, Hyad, Improbcat, JakeVortex, Jemmy Button, Karada, Kay Dekker, Koavf, Laubrau, Lethe, MJPotsy, Maurice Carbonaro, Michael Hardy, Michaeln, Mike Rosoft, Mortense, NameIsRon, Neg, Neutrality, Nikai, Nlu, Paradoctor, Paul August, Paul Barlow, Radgeek, RadicalBender, RodC, Rohirok, Rotem Dan, Sam Hocevar, Slightsmile, Sputnikcccp, Sundar, TLOuk, Tabletop, Tarquin, The Anome, Tim Retout, Tom Morris, Uberdroid, Vina, Volarron, Waldir, Welcome To The Jungle, Whitehat, Wile E. Heresiarch, William Graham, Xtraeme, 122 anonymous edits Berry paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=467723679 Contributors: 213.253.39.xxx, Ale2006, AlphaPyro, Andeggs, Andrewjrallan, Anonymous Dissident, Asmeurer, AxelBoldt, BD2412, BenFrantzDale, Berry, Brighterorange, Bryan Derksen, CRGreathouse, CSTAR, Can't sleep, clown will eat me, Cleared as filed, Computationalist, Conversion script, Curtdbz, Cybercobra, Danny B-), Daqu, Deville, Eequor, Eric119, Evercat, Fredrik, Froth, Fvw, Fwappler, Glen Worthey, GoingBatty, Gregbard, Herbee, JVPiano, Jimp, Josh Grosse, Kanenas, Karada, Kdar, Klemen Kocjancic, KnightMove, Lambiam, Lupinoid, Marc K, Marcos, Michael Hardy, Montrealais, MorganGreen, NYKevin, Paradoctor, Philosophy.dude, Pleasantville, Pmdboi, Pokipsy76, Poor Yorick, Prosfilaes, RainbowOfLight, Rich Farmbrough, Ruakh, STyx, SamuelScarano, Saurabhb, Simetrical, Sligocki, Slovakia, SocratesJedi, The Anome, Tim Retout, Tktktk, Tomi, Txomin, WAS 4.250, Weixifan, Yitzhak, Zickzack, 42 anonymous edits Epimenides paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=486539757 Contributors: 203.20.98.xxx, 213.253.39.xxx, 65.66.69.xxx, Andeggs, Andrew Dalby, Andycjp, Anthony, Anthrcer, AxelBoldt, Azzhoe305, Biblioq, Blue Tie, Bryan Derksen, CBM, Catalographer, Conversion script, Damian Yerrick, Darkwind, Delirium, Democritus, Dhanak, Djinn112, DocWatson42, Dodshe, Fredrik, Gaius Cornelius, Gebeleizis, Graham87, Gregbard, Gurch, Hadal, Hairy Dude, Hveziris, Ida Shaw, Imaquiz, Jamelan, Kramden, Kurtmckee, Mav, Mayhap, MichaelGensheimer, Muke, Narsil, Orange Suede Sofa, Paradoctor, Petlif, Philip Trueman, Porcher, Reaper Eternal, RichLow, RiseAbove, Ropers, Roscelese, Roy W. Wright, Schoen, Shanenoonan, Sokkies1969, Spektr, Standardfact, Stevenzenith, Stevepeterson, Tabletop, The Epopt, Twid, Tzetzes, Wile E. Heresiarch, , 80 anonymous edits Exception paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=485646488 Contributors: AB, Andeggs, Bporopat, Coryshrmn, D6, Deepfold, DvK, Eternal Imortal, IanManka, Intgr, Ioannes Pragensis, Laserbeast, MNewnham, Mandarax, Maxis ftw, Maxjaxn, MichaelShoemaker, Molestash, Omnipaedista, Otisjimmy1, Seth denis, Spewin, Stemonitis, Tgr, Thehotelambush, Whosasking, 37 anonymous edits GrellingNelson paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=469669859 Contributors: Ambarish, Andeggs, Argyrios Saccopoulos, AxelBoldt, Azure Haights, Benc, Bkell, Bovlb, Calcutta ferryman, Constructive editor, Cuiusquemodi, DRosenbach, Dicklyon, False vacuum, Freakofnurture, Fubar Obfusco, GTBacchus, Gamewizard71, Goh wz, Grick, Henrygb, Hoary, It Is Me Here, Jobarts, Karada, Koavf, Manning Bartlett, Mgmobrien123, Michael Hardy, Mihoshi, Nbarth, Pakaran, Phil Boswell, Pitke, Pollinosisss, Porcher, Rdsmith4, RevRagnarok, Rich Farmbrough, STyx, Saturnight, Sfoskett, Smyth, Tagishsimon, Tesseran, TheBilly, TheGeekHead, Timwi, Vaughan Pratt, Wetman, Yugsdrawkcabeht, Zundark, 59 anonymous edits Intentionally blank page Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=487109161 Contributors: -Barry-, Abd, Adamfinmo, Adamv88, Aitias, Al E., Alerante, Alexander.stohr, Amorymeltzer, Artaxiad, Arxiloxos, Avatar, Axeman89, Baryonic Being, Bbatsell, Bdb484, Beefandchunky21, Belowenter, Bfinn, BobJS, Brambleclawx, Brian0918, Bwv1004, Caesar89, Calum Slee, Chris the speller, Comte0, Crazytales, Cryptic, CygnetSaIad, DG, Dantheman531, Davewild, DeadEyeArrow, DerHexer, Diego Moya, Doc glasgow, Dysprosia, Eltomzo, Emurphy42, Enochlau, Enviroboy, EurekaLott, Foxj, Fraxtil, Fuhghettaboutit, Fusion, Gadfium, GeeJo, Godlord2, Grawity, Grover cleveland, Harryboyles, Haseo9999, Heron, HighwayCello, Hosszuka, Husond, Iamwisesun, IceHeart, Irangeologist, Ixfd64, Iz Editn ur pg, J.delanoy, JRM, Jan112233, Jeffrey Mall, Jesse's Girl, Jim Henry, Jjhghfvtubgn, JoanneB, Jpmck03, Justpassin, Kallesiukola, Kander, Keenan Pepper, Kevin Steinhardt, Kh80, Khoikhoi, KillerChihuahua, King of Hearts, LFaraone, LHOON, LUUSAP, Lambdalix, Lambiam, Landon1980, Loren.wilton, Lovelac7, LukeTheSpook, Luna Santin, Lyricmac, Macktheknifeau, Madhero88, Mahahahaneapneap, MakeRocketGoNow, Martinultima, Materialscientist, McGeddon, Melchoir, Mikeo, Mikespedia, Million Moments, Mr Rhys, Mr. Lefty, MrDestructo, MusicMaker5376, Nathan Ladd, Naufana, NawlinWiki, Nightstallion, OlEnglish, Ozymandias42, PAUL!!!177,,,,, PHenry, Pakaran, Paradoctor, PeterSymonds, Petri Krohn, Petropoxy (Lithoderm Proxy), Pgk, Pharaoh of the Wizards, Phil Sandifer, Phort99, Phthoggos, Pince Nez, Polyparadigm, Postdlf, Prolog, Qwerty Binary, Rachitnanda, Randommelon, Ray Trygstad, Raymondbittinger, RetiredUser2, Rlest, RocketMaster, Roke, RoyBoy, Rspeer, Ryulong, Salamurai, Salyerbush, Sandstein, Sannse, Sasata, Savidan, Scarecroe, Scott Dial, Secret Saturdays, Seresin, Sethdoe92, Sheogorath, Shrine of Fire, Shultz IV, Sjakkalle, Some jerk on the Internet, Steinsky, Stephen, StuRat, Subsolar, Tassedethe, The Red, The Wiki Priest, Thegreenhorsecowman, Thelastusernameontheplanet, Thumperward, Tide rolls, Timbunny, TravisMunson1993, Tregoweth, Vague Rant, Wernher, Whpq, Wittylama, Xeno, Zzyzx11, 183 anonymous edits Liar paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=485770664 Contributors: 777sms, 879(CoDe), 9mmx19, AS, AThing, AaronSand, Abc-mn-xyz, AceMyth, Acetic Acid, Achowat, Addshore, Advancewars177, Aethralis, Alexf, Alexf96, Alexg, Alsims, Althai, Ameliabedelia546, Amgadpasha, Anagram4819, Andeggs, Andres, Andris, Andycjp, Angela, Angelkat72, AnnaFrance, AnonMoos, Anthony, Anthony Appleyard, Anthonymorris, Arno Matthias, Askewchan, Autrijus, Avb, AxelBoldt, Ayla, BANZ111, Bamos, Beige Tangerine, BenBaker, Benburgis, Brian0918, Brianga, Briantist, BrokenSegue, C h fleming, C.jeynes, CBM, Can't sleep, clown will eat me, Causa sui, Chas zzz brown, Chealer, Chris Roy, Chrisjwmartin, Chrislk02, Comp25, Computationalverb, Conversion script, Countchoc, Cretog8, CubicStar, Cutler, DANNEWS, Dark Lord Revan, David Gerard, Dbkliv, Dcoetzee, Delirium, Diannaa, Dominus, DrDentz, DreamGuy, DrewRobinson, Drlight11, Dryazan, ERcheck, ESkog, Ed Poor, Edgar181, Eliyak, Emurphy42, Epbr123, Eras-mus, Error, Eubulides, Evercat, FMcGady, Feezo, Fermatslasttheremin, Flooey, Flopsy Mopsy and Cottonmouth, FlufflyTheLoveBunny, Freywa, Gabetarian, Geoffw1948, Giftiger wunsch, Glamlex, Gracenotes, Graham87, H, Haham hanuka, Hairy Dude, Henrygb, Heron, Hertz1888, Hmains, Inconspicuous93, InverseHypercube, Issyl0, It Is Me Here, J.delanoy, JIP, JSmith60, Jack who built the house, Jahiegel, Jamelan, JamesBWatson, JasticE, Jay-Sebastos, JayW, Jaysbro, Jcblackmon, Jitse Niesen, Jlblythe, Jokes Free4Me, JonathanDP81, Joshua Issac, Jossi, Jriddy, Jsh726, Justdig, Kachooney, Karada,
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Thehotelambush, Tialla, Tim Retout, Tom Morris, Tompeters, Treborbassett, Troglodyto, Trovatore, Tubestowns13, Twas Now, Unomi, Ute in DC, Vzbs34, W1k13rh3nry, Wahkeenah, West Brom 4ever, Whaiaun, WillNess, William Avery, WinterSpw, WnaStdyEvrythng, Wshun, Xgamer4, Xtra3847, You Can't See Me!, Youngvariety, Your Lord and Master, Z10x, Zgystardst, Zinoviev, Ziqidel, 428 anonymous edits Opposite Day Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=487246977 Contributors: 031586, 54321imawesome, A:-)Brunu, AMK152, AThing, Addshore, Akakkakkakakakuiwui, Albrozdude, Anaxial, Angr, Animedude360, Anonymous Dissident, Armbrust, Arthena, Beland, Benlisquare, Bkgangstapianist, Bluerasberry, Bobber1, Bobbyrayman, Booksworm, Bowsy, Bped1985, BrightBlackHeaven, Bugmenot83, Caldorwards4, Cato Sicarius, Cenestrad, Chensiyuan, Chicdie890, ChildofMidnight, Claudebarlow, Closedmouth, Cobaltbluetony, Codeblue87, Coldplayer, CrazyLegsKC, Crazysunshine, Curps, Cymru.lass, Damian Yerrick, DandyDan2007, DarceeChoco, DarkFalls, Davewho2, Degelh, Denisarona, DennisTheTiger, Docu, DownAirStairsConditioner, Edgr, Eliyak, Emptycanvas, Eniarrol, Enticore, EoGuy, Erachima, Error -128, Ews23, Fakeid1110011, FlyingToaster, Gogo Dodo, Goodvac, Graham87, Groyolo, HammerJD, Hans404, Henrikholm, Hugh Jass, J.delanoy, JForget, JPG-GR, Jac16888, JamesEG, JamesHarrison, Jarrod K, Jay-Sebastos, Jeff Silvers, Jessi1989, Jfeng5, JimVC3, Joedu, Jonathan Drain, Jonathan Haas, Juliancolton, K1Bond007, Kidlittle, Kinu, Kiwi128, Kuamudhan, Landon1980, Lanthanum-138, Lawrence Cohen, Lazulilasher, Lenoxus, LizardJr8, Logan, Losersk91, MMS2013, Makeemlighter, Mark Arsten, Marketing phenom, Markoff Chaney, Martarius, Materialscientist, Mattinbgn, Maxpo, MazeMaster, Mightyzantar, Mike R, Mike Rosoft, Mobius131186, Mpompo, Mufka, NawlinWiki, Nburden, Nihiltres, Nogburt, Nousernamesleft, Oscarthecat, OverlordQ, Owen, Patar knight, Pentasyllabic, Phynicen, Pinethicket, Psychogoatee, RA0808, Ratemonth, Recognizance, Rhope48, Rich Farmbrough, Rkelly peepee, Rspence1234, Ruy Pugliesi, Ryno718, Sceptre, Senjutsu, Serpent's Choice, Skeptical scientist, Skier Dude, SpongeSebastian, Sputnikcccp, Starwiz, Stickee, Sulfis, Supuhstar, Susfele, Sweetness46, TaerkEX, Tavix, TenPoundHammer, The Swagga, Thecrimsonanthropologist, Tide rolls, Tim!, Tlesher, Topher227, Tortillahead, Tregoweth, TrentisFantastic, Triwbe, UberScienceNerd, VegaDark, Voyaging, WesUGAdawg, West.andrew.g, WikHead, Wiki alf, WikiSlasher, Wikipelli, Wiw8, Xaosflux, YgoFan90, Yonskii, Ytic nam, Yworo, , 459 anonymous edits Paradox of the Court Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=467968970 Contributors: 478jjjz, AleeWiki0, Bkell, CoolGuy, Efogoto, HonoreDB, Infovarius, KillKill822, Lesgles, Mtdashti, Nikkimaria, Paradoctor, Phen0m 05, Reyk, Seaphoto, Shentino, ThisIsMyWikipediaName, 14 anonymous edits Petronius Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=486046795 Contributors: AaronCBurke, AlbertSM, Aldux, Amphipolis, Andrew Dalby, Andycjp, Attilios, Azarcon, Bill Thayer, Bob247, Bookwench, CA30057, Cesar Tort, Ciphergoth, Classical geographer, Country Wife, Cwoyte, Cyberpageman, Cynwolfe, Dahn, Dcoetzee, Diiscool, Dimadick, Discospinster, Doug, Eric, Eric Shalov, Error, Everyking, FeanorStar7, Fic-in, Fingonek, FinnWiki, Friendlystar, Fuzheado, Gabbe, Gaiuspetro, GattoRandagio, Geneb1955, GeoWPC, GreatWhiteNortherner, GwydionM, Hisnamewasrobertpaulsen, Hoshidoshi, Howdoesitflee, Hu, Ingsoc, JASpencer, Jabez Bunting, Japanese Searobin, Jaraalbe, [email protected], Jdforrester, Jeffery Weskamp, Jim Henry, Jon Awbrey, Joy, Jusdafax, Jvano, Kay Dekker, Kbdank71, Kitsunegami, Kuralyov, Leuko, Llywrch, LordEniac, Macaddct1984, Magnus Manske, Marnanel, Matthus, MaxwellPerkins, Mezigue, Michael David, Midnightblueowl, Mrubs218, Museo8bits, Nakon, Neddyseagoon, Nickleturtle, Nishidani, Noe, N, Optymystic, Orizon, Panarjedde, Papyromancer, Pearle, Polylerus, Porcher, Quadell, Racooon, RandomCritic, RodC, Securiger, Sirala, Skull33, Spartan22, Stolengood, Template namespace initialisation script, The Singing Badger, TheDJ, TheTrojanHought, Tomisti, Treanna, Treybien, Tzetzes, Udufruduhu, VasilievVV, Weregerbil, WpZurp, Yolgnu, , 81 anonymous edits Quine's paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=473193359 Contributors: Andeggs, AnonMoos, Baccyak4H, Banno, Brianski, Charles Matthews, Danhash, Danman3459, Danny lost, Davidw, Djk3, Dominus, DreamGuy, Emurphy42, EvanHarper, Finell, Frank Romein, Futile Crush, Geoffw1948, Gregbard, GregorB, Jemmy Button, MC10, Mavaddat, OrangeAipom, Reinyday, Roscelese, Smyth, SnowFire, Spontini, Tgr, The Anome, Tsparent, Twas Now, 47 anonymous edits Richard's paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=483632760 Contributors: Accelerometer, Alan McBeth, Aleph4, Alterationx10, Auntof6, AxelBoldt, Bender235, CBM, Cdibuduo, Cispa, Danski14, Daqu, Dominus, Dorftrottel, Dratman, Eequor, Eric Herboso, Estel, Falcor84, Gregbard, Hairy Dude, JRSpriggs, Justavo, Karada, Lee Daniel Crocker, Lupinoid, Marc van Leeuwen, Mathemaduenn, Michael Hardy, Moskvax, Obradovic Goran, Oleg Alexandrov, Paradoctor, Quarl, Rjwilmsi, Roie m, STyx, Sigma-Algebra, Somejan, Varano, Wing, Wvbailey, ZICO, 38 anonymous edits Self-reference Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=482880088 Contributors: 041744, 16@r, 21655, 61.9.128.xxx, Ace9999, AgadaUrbanit, Ahoerstemeier, Ahpook, Al Lemos, Alecmconroy, Alerante, Alex43223, AlexChurchill, AnAj, Anarchia, Anatoly Vorobey, Angr, Anthere, Anthony, AnthonyMartin, Arakunem, Asafox, AstroHurricane001, Atheuz, B9 hummingbird hovering, Baryonic Being, Bevo, Beyond My Ken, BillC, Bmk, Bouket, Boxplot, Brian0918, BrownHairedGirl, Buddy13, CRGreathouse, Cakedamber, Cambrant, Cbuckley, Ceyockey, Chantessy, Chemical Engineer, Chevellefan11, Chocolateboy, Chris the speller, Chris3145, Cjc13, Closedmouth, Conversion script, CortexSurfer, Cricketseven, Curb Chain, DV8 2XL, Danakil, 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Bulten, Johndburger, JohnsonL623, JonHarder, Jonathan Drain, JosefAssad, Jumbolino, Jwestbrook, KYPark, Kakofonous, Karada, Keeves, Kencf0618, Khoikhoi, Khym Chanur, Kindall, King of Hearts, Koreindian, Kyorosuke, Ldo, Loadmaster, Logicbox, Luigi III, LukeSurl, Maghnus, Mandarax, Manning Bartlett, Mapsax, MarkSMann, MartinHarper, Marudubshinki, Massar, MasterPeanut, Matchups, Matt Crypto, MattTM, Matthew Stannard, Matthewmayer, Maurice Carbonaro, Mav, Max Terry, Maximuspryme, Mblub, McGeddon, Michael Hardy, Mikekearn, Mikem1234, Mintguy, Mjpotter, Moeron, MrOllie, Mrrykler, Msauve, Mstroeck, MushroomCloud, Naif, Nbarth, Nerd42, NetRolller 3D, Nightkey, Nihil, Noam, Numbo3, Nycdi, Oddity-, Oliver Pereira, Omegatron, Oneismany, Ophion, Oryanw, Otterathome, Outriggr, P.T.isfirst, Paddu, Palfrey, Paradoctor, Patrick, Paul August, Peterdjones, PhilHibbs, Physis, Pinethicket, Piroteknix, Profero, Pufferfish101, Qwertyus, Rabbitslayer21, Redyka94, RevRagnarok, Rfc1394, Richi, Ritarius, Rjwilmsi, Rootbeer, Rps, Rror, Saforrest, Sasuke Sarutobi, Sbaxt641, SchuminWeb, Seven of Nine, ShawnVW, Shimmera, Shultz III, Singularity2, Sjorford, Skrim, Slogan120, Slovakia, Smiddle, Smokizzy, Sp00n17, Steipe, Stjef, SunCreator, Tassedethe, Tayste, TenPoundHammer, Tezero, Tflynn17, The Anome, TheJames, TheLH, TheTruthiness, Theon, Three-quarter-ten, Tim Retout, Tim Starling, Timo3, Titi2, Titoxd, Tkang, Tktktk, Tregoweth, Trevithj, Trey314159, Uagehry456, Vanished user 47736712, Warreed, Wavelength, Wereon, Wes!, Wikiwikifast, Wildroot, William R. Buckley, Wknight94, WojPob, Worldrimroamer, Xezbeth, Yano, Yashgaroth, Zephyrus11, Zntrip, Zondor, 336 , anonymous edits Socratic paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=477941709 Contributors: Catalographer, Histrion, Koavf, Kolyma, LightSpectra, MasonWilliams, Mythpage88, PaulJones, Philip Trueman, SomeGuy11112, Thumperward, 11 anonymous edits Yablo's paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=485321209 Contributors: Bender235, Ceilican, Lesath, Minisweet12, PMLawrence, Petter Strandmark, 8 anonymous edits Absence paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=483674604 Contributors: Gregbard, Paxse Bonini's paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=454052358 Contributors: 7daysahead, Charles Matthews, Chrislk02, Justin.triplett, Mbawiz, Nbarth, Yotwen, 8 anonymous edits Code-talker paradox Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=450609178 Contributors: A D Monroe III, ArnoldReinhold, Caerwine, Chrajohn, Doc glasgow, Doncorto, Dugwiki, Hmains, JimCubb, Kyoakoa, Megapixie, MrShamrock, Phr, Schneelocke, Shenme, The Anome, Thryduulf, Welsh, Ww, Zyrath, 7 anonymous edits Ship of Theseus Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=487903745 Contributors: 20040302, 4, Abb3w, Albmont, Ali Davoodifar, Andeggs, AngelicaAgurbash, Anomalocaris, AnonMoos, Anthony Appleyard, Anville, Arno Matthias, Arriva436, Arrow740, Ashley Pomeroy, Auric, Axem Titanium, Beatriceblue, Berjangles, Bless sins, Bluebird47, Bogdanb, Bporopat, Bte99, CRGreathouse, Captain Quirk, Cassowary, Catalographer, Chowbok, Chrism, Ckatz, Clevemire321, Cls14, Crowblurt, Cuebon, CyberSkull, Cybercobra, D. Webb, DMG413, DanielCristofani, Dans, Dave Muscato, Davidhorman, Deb, Dhartung, Dienekles, DirkvdM, Dismas, Djrobgordon, Dogcow, Dr.K., Dysmorodrepanis, Earle Martin, Editor at Large, Edward Z. Yang, EelkeSpaak, Ehn, El Alternativo, Elikp, Emurphy42, Endroit, Eponymous-Archon, Ericwag, Error, Etaoin, Exok, Filanca, Freshmutt, Furrykef, GRuban, Gaius Cornelius, Galoubet, General Wesc, Gerbrant, GoingBatty, GregorB, Hallenrm, Heah, Hephaestos, Heshy613, Hilarleo, Hydrargyrum, ImperatorExercitus, Isolani, JAF1970, JETM, Jabberwockgee, Jaggerblade, Jamelan, Jameshfisher, John of Reading, Jpaulm, Jvligsvengelska, KTo288, Ka-ru, Karada, Karl-Henner, Keenan Pepper, KingAlanI, Kintetsubuffalo, Konczewski, Kotukunui, Kuralyov, Kuronue, Lambiam, Life in General, Loadmaster, Lotje, Lysdexia, MBK004, MWAK, MYT, Macl, Magic9mushroom, Marcusscotus1, Martynas Patasius, Matt9090, Matthew Fennell, Melaen, Metageek, Michael Hardy, Mighty Antar, Minipie8, Miserlou, Misha Vargas, Miss Madeline, Mixvio, Mooncow, Mordgier, Mr. Laser Beam, Namangwari, Naraht, Nbarth, Nda98, Nickg, Night Gyr, Nikola Smolenski, Nimur, Noe, Nyttend, Oatmeal batman, Oleg Alexandrov, Omphaloscope, Oop, Oskay, Ozy42, P Ingerson, Patd987, PatrickFisher, Paul G, Pawyilee, Pengo, Pjedicke, Porges, Psymier, R'n'B, Richwales, RickardV, Roisterer, Root4(one), Rps, Ruakh, Salix alba, Salmanazar, Samw, SaniOKh, SchmuckyTheCat, SchuminWeb, Scu98rkr, SeanMon, Septegram, Sfoskett, Shane.Halloran, Shureg, Singinglemon, Sluttymike, Smmurphy, Spiff666, Stan Shebs, Steve M Kane, SteveBaker, Stratadrake, Sturmovik, Supervidin, Switchercat, T-rex, TGC55, Tehslug, Tempest115, Terrasidius, The Anome, Thumperward, Timwi, TotoBaggins, Trivialist, Tverbeek, Twirligig, Unyoyega, Vargenau, Vorn, Wasell, Wearmysocks1611, Wee Curry Monster, WereSpielChequers, Wereon, Wikipelli, WikiuserNI, Wyatt915, Zazaban, 295 anonymous edits
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A. Rogers

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Physics Paradox

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Physics Paradox

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Paradoxes

Situations that seems to defy intuition

Infinity and infinitesimals

Geometry and topology

Applications of the theory

The chain store game

The chain store paradox

Selten's levels of decision making

The imagination level

The reasoning level

The final decision

The economy of decision effort

Introduction to resolutions based on Bayesian probability theory

Foundations of mathematical economics

Controversy among theoretical economists

Extensions to the Problem

History of the paradox

Notes and references

Kavka's toxin puzzle

Kavka's toxin puzzle

Pay-offs (Initial analysis)

Do not drink 100

Kavka's toxin puzzle

Pay-offs (According to Kavka)

Do not drink Impossible 0

Pay-offs (According to Gauthier)

Do not drink Impossible 0

Statement of the Problem

$1 million 11% $5 million 10%

Experiment 1 Gamble 1A Gamble 1B

Experiment 2 Gamble 2A Gamble 2B

Mathematical proof of inconsistency

Arrow's impossibility theorem

Arrow's impossibility theorem

Statement of the theorem

Arrow's impossibility theorem

Formal statement of the theorem

. (Note that unanimity implies non-imposition).

Part one: there is a "pivotal" voter for B

Part two: voter n is a dictator for AC

Part three: there can be at most one dictator

Arrow's impossibility theorem

Interpretations of the theorem

Arrow's impossibility theorem

Approaches investigating functions of preference profiles

Rated voting systems and other approaches

Arrow's impossibility theorem

Demographic-economic paradox and then recovers slightly to replacement rates.[4]

Fertility and population density

The 1 urn paradox

Utility theory interpretation

is your utility function. If

(you strictly prefer $100 to nothing), this simplifies to:

This simplifies to:

Generality of the paradox

Main line of reasoning

Works on the subject

Notes and references

Energy conservation policy

Responses to the paradox