Paradoxes

What are some of your favorite paradoxes and why are they relevant in your life/study?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liar_paradox

The Liar Paradox, I mean we have all heard this one. It is comical in the sense, it is like the old opposite day we used to talk about when we were children. I remember one kid telling me it was opposite day and I was like then if it is opposite day then isn't the opposite of opposite day a normal day? Therefore it isn't opposite day. The kid ran away to play on the monkey bars and I continued swinging. (4th grade FTW)

 

But what if tomorrow is opposite day?

Any here's my favorite:
Your mission is not to accept the mission. Do you accept?

 

My favorite is the Banach-Tarski paradox.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banach–Tarski_paradox

It's essentially a set theory argument that given one ball, you can cut it a certain way, and arrange the pieces into two distinct balls.

I also like the grandfather paradox. I find it means either of two things, both important - Either our actions are written, and we have no control over ourselves, or it means that time travel is not possible. However, relativity has already proved time travel is possible. (Not in the sense that you can get into a machine, but in the sense that you can have to things age at different paces.).

This, to me means that either there is something wrong with the theory of relativity... or that we really have no choice in our own futures. - I'm actually going to make a thread on that now.

 

Not debate.

 

A newborn girl named Jane is found on the steps of an orphanage.
She lives her life as a chuld and teen without knowing who she is and where she came from, and gets a job as a waitress.
One day, a drifter comes along. For some reason, Jane is attracted to the drifter.
The drifter and Jane has sexual intercourse and she gets pregnant. But the drifter is already gone, he left Jane.
9 mnths later, Jane gives birth to a baby girl, who is immediately kidnapped on the first day.
Some time later, she falls sick and during a checkup at the hospital, the doctors discover that Jane has both reproductive organs (both pen
Is and vagina) and in order to live, she must have her female organs removed and live her life as a man. Jane agrees to have the surgery and she lives.

Jane, now John is very depressed.
She doesn't know who she is and every bit f happiness in her life has been taken away.
She goes into a bar near her town.

There, he meets a bartender who gives John information about a time machine.
The bartender tells John to go back into the past, find a waitress and have intercourse with and impregnant her. Then, John must take the baby, travel further into the past and leave it on the steps of an orphanage. Finally, he must travel into the future, start a bar near Jane's town, and wait for a man named John, whom he must give informatin about a time machine about.

 

That is the story line to the Robert A. Heinlein story -All You Zombies-

 

I keep seeing the same paradox reappear on 9gag. It's the question that is either 25% or 50%.


Here, I googled it