the five kinds of paradox

all errors in this video are my own

If you ask Rick Astley for a DVD of the movie “Up”, he will not give it to you because he is Never Gonna Give You Up. However by not giving you Up, even though you asked for it, he is letting you down. The Astley Paradox.

If I ever get a book published, I'm going to put "none of the errors in this book are mine, the editors are conspiring against me" as the preface

the "irresistable force" rephrasing of the "unstoppable force vs immovable object" paradox was made specifically for me because I thought I was so clever saying the unstoppable force would pass straight through the immovable object without moving it

So to simplify this, if we take a question with two mutually exclusive answers. Type 1: Both answers must be wrong Type 2: Either answer could be true Type 3: The right answer looks wrong Type 4: The wrong answer has a subtly wrong proof Type 5: The scenario is perfectly clear but has been phrased to make it not clear

“You’d expect the bread to land cat side down.” Is a great line out of context.

I love that I know about the preface paradox now. Like without the context of, you know, how books get written and published, I could totally see how one could assume that "all errors in this book are my own" would mean "I checked all the errors in this book and confirmed that they were mine" (rather than what it actually means, which is "I fixed all the errors that I saw, so if any still remain, that's on me"), and then think "why would the author check all those errors but not fix them?" Wild. I love it.

I enjoy the really simple ones. "There's an exception to every rule" is my favorite. There should be an exception to that statement itself, which means there's a rule out there with no exceptions. But, we know that would break the statement. Fun all around.

I love math pranks, because they're either breaking the most subtle, obsure hidden math property to allow something to be true, or are incoherent insane rants about how all horses are the same.

"the number ninety is not rising, it is remaining constant - at ninety" this channel always has something to teach me

I love the quote “Assuming it exists, the universe is very big” 😂

My favourite model for Schroedinger's cat is that, using a more general definition of "observe" as "have any interaction with", the cat is indeed an observer, and collapses the wavefunction, but now the state of cat + contraption is in a superposition. When we open the box, we ourselves enter a superposition relative to anyone who has not yet observed us, with our state being either "saw a dead cat" or "saw a cat that hadn't died yet" The only way to break an unobserved superposition is to interact with it and thus become entangled with it. Either the box is opaque or you're part of the box's universal wavefunction.

The "heap" of sand to me honestly depends on where it is. If it is in my swimsuit, then 1 or 1000 grains of sand and every amount in between or bigger is a heap.

These always remind me of the " i can turn invisible but only as long as if everyone closes their eyes and keeps them shut" thing

Oh god the last category is such a goldmine If you made a sequel to this just listing more "guy got confused" paradoxes I would absolutely love that

I feel like the Fermi paradox would fall under the "unknowable because it's a secret" category. Like, if there are aliens that know about earth, then they certainly know why we don't know about them.

Interesting thing about the ship of Thesius is that it does technically have an answer. The "keel," that long piece on the underside of the ship which serves as the sort of backbone of the vessel, is the only part of a ship that is considered irreplaceable, as to do so would require you deconstruct the entire ship, and then reconstruct it onto the new keel and even then some things might have to be built differently. Thus, the ship of Thesius is the same boat, irregardless of how many parts or crew are replaced, until the moment the keel is replaced. Only then is it considered a different ship.

Never having heard the solution to the "buttered cat paradox" spoken out loud before because, well, nobody wants to be "that guy" that ruins the joke, it honestly felt like a healing experience to hear you explain the actual answer to it after the years of hearing it retold as if it was something clever or funny.

God I hope this categorization scheme really takes off in wider academia so we can finally have a jan Misali Wikipedia page talking about your various unhinged video topics and toki pona translations

I love the crocodile voice so much