
Paradoxes, from Your Coffee to Calculus - yarapavan
https://www.wsj.com/articles/paradoxes-from-your-coffee-to-calculus-1532532886
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bena
The article is also just fluff.

The central premise is that paradoxes allow us to change our way of thinking.

Some examples: can't find your glasses because you can't see without them;
can't make coffee because you need coffee to wake up in order to make it; how
can you be intolerant of intolerance etc.

They then describe the barber paradox and some of Zeno's paradoxes. How the
barber paradox informs us how important it is for us to define things and set
limits. And how Zeno's paradoxes led us to calculus.

They then say that they resolve their paradoxes by having a place they put
their glasses, setting up the coffee machine the night before, and hating the
sin, not the sinner.

And that's pretty much it. Over a thousand words to say that she's a tolerant
person who hates intolerance.

~~~
s-shellfish
How is what you do any different?

Paradoxes can change how we reason. Being able to think about them allows
oneself to refine an understanding to a static context of parts. Once that is
complete, a paradox can be resolved by defining a logic of which no paradox
arises, and testing it to ensure that, which is still NP hard to prove but,
for real life, some people just like to make points and feel smart and talk
about things they maybe never got to talk about before.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraconsistent_logic](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraconsistent_logic)

~~~
bena
Huh?

I wasn't really disagreeing with anything, I was breaking down the article for
people who don't have a WSJ subscription, don't want one, and don't want to
bother with the archive link.

I feel the article is mostly pedantic fluff, reiterating a concept that most
people are already familiar with in order to just say what she says in the
final paragraph: That she can be a tolerant person, tolerate _people_ , while
still disagreeing with their viewpoint. Basically responding to the whole "you
can't be tolerant and hate intolerance" canard.

My issue isn't with her stance on paradoxes, it's with the fact that she
doesn't say anything.

~~~
s-shellfish
That's really not fair to women who want to be known as logical thinkers and
are just starting to grow into it externally.

You can call it pedantic fluff, I call it a coupled fear of having one's own
mind appear hypermasculinized while maintaining sensitivity to multiple
perspectives of listening to many individuals without being listened to
directly.

Big picture. The devil is in the details.

Edit: maybe wait a few hours before downvoting next time? at least give me the
opportunity to not see it as being likely to be you

~~~
sokoloff
> maybe wait a few hours before downvoting next time? at least give me the
> opportunity to not see it as being likely to be you

A user cannot downvote a reply to their own comment. (And complaining about
downvoting is never productive.)

------
neonate
[http://archive.is/CeB4C](http://archive.is/CeB4C)

~~~
bena
BTW, this is an archive link to the article that bypasses the paywall.

------
raincom
Paradoxes arise due to our descriptions or understanding or theories we use to
understand a phenomenon. If we keep this distinction betweeen a phenomenon and
its description, paradoxes tell us that we don’t understand the phenomenon
very well.

The other issue is the theory-laden ness of observations. Every observation is
theory laden. Most of the time we don’t even perceive this theory-ladenness
because we see them as some atomic facts.

The trick here is to describe the phenomenon at a lower level when paradoxes
arise at higher level.

------
1996
I believe Wittigstein said it best: philosophical paradoxes (if a tree falls
in forest with no one around to hear it, does it make a noise?) are just word
play, due to the inconsistencies of human language.

Adequate language or computer code makes them go away. You are not blind
without glasses - you can distinguish shapes and remember the shape of the
room and where you may have left glasses and probe with your hand to find
them.

You are not comatose without coffee - you are conscious, and take coffee just
to feel more alert.

And so on, that with the right language (but it is easier to do that with
mathematics or code) the paradox goes away. Like the Zeno paradox with
calculus.

~~~
s-shellfish
No, paradoxes exist for people in real life.

Study zen buddhism, if you want evidence.

~~~
1996
I did study, at length. Maybe too much. But I found no evidence and dropped
many aspect of religion from my life.

Care to give me some examples?

~~~
s-shellfish
[http://flatbedsutra.com/flatbedsutrazenblogger/?p=1714](http://flatbedsutra.com/flatbedsutrazenblogger/?p=1714)

~~~
1996
Not a paradox for a buddhist. Answering will make him open his mouth and lose
his grip. Thinking about answering will cause the want, and the suffering as
he can not answer without forfeiting his life.

The answer is unthinking- as in meditation, clear thoughts from the mind. It
is designed to show how the right answer is no answer, in both senses!

With the proper understanding, there is no paradox. I agree with you that
noticing a potential paradox is sometimes a souce of inspiration to learn,
mostly when you can not show the way and when it must come by self discovery.

I do not know how familiar you are with Buddhism. If you want to keep
learning, ask yourself: if Kyogen was asked 3 times, would he change his
"answer" ?

~~~
s-shellfish
It's hard to unthink a thought when it's transcribed online.

> If Kyogen was asked 3 times, would he change his answer?

Probably depends on some stuff I don't have the awareness yet for.

~~~
1996
Knowing when we lack awareness is knowledge itself, and this is a very correct
answer!

Good luck with your study of buddhism!

~~~
s-shellfish
We always lack some awareness.

Knowing the difference is sometimes not knowing.

------
n4r9
I like the insight about applying set-theoretic, Russell's-paradox-
circumventing thinking to everyday scenarios. Not to detract from that, but I
think the coffee and glasses situations are perhaps better described as
"deadlocks" than "paradoxes".

~~~
kqr
It depends on how you choose to view them. The article chose to use
imperative-sounding wording, but you could just as well look at them as
declarative statements of logic:

(1) Operating a machine implies having been drinking coffee.

(2) Drinking coffee implies having operated the coffee making machine.

