what paradoxes keep you up at night?

Paradox haze with smokestack

>>9741221
the fact that there is no conceivable explanation for how the universe came to be. Sure you can say something like the big bang theory made the universe, but then the next logical question is what caused the big bang. Some may say got but then once again we reach the question of what created god. No matter what we do we end up with an infinite regression of causality. The only thing I've been able to come up with is that maybe existence and nonexistence are analogous to one another.

>>9741259
What necessitates that the Universe came to be?
Matter can be neither created nor destroyed, only moved, and the Universe as what increasingly appears to be an infinite set, can expand within itself indefinitely. Just so, it can collapse indefinitely with no endpoints. Merely statistically inevitable waves of causally-linked reactions which we interpret over periods of time and measures of space.
Why should there be an end or beginning? We are on a number line, we start counting at 1 and already there are infinitely infinite numbers behind and ahead.

my cock up your ass fag

>>9741259
Came here to say this.
Being itself is the only thing that really baffles me. All paradoxes are subverted by the off fact of existence.

conservatism and capitalism are mutually exclusive

Judegement.

We judge our actions based on how our genetic base has been shaped by our surrounding environment. We start out with a certain predisposition towards certain traits and are put in
effectively random situations where those traits are formed into our wider opinions and judgements about the world. Our ethics, our habits, our feelings towards others are all because of this. But we have no real control, over either how we were born or what happens to us, yet we still regard this as free will.

>>9741221
I like traps
but im not gay.

>>9741500
Nurture>nature

I was wasted one night and ended up with the conclusion that A was not A.
Really don't remember how it happened, but probably was some retarded logical fallacies.

>>9741357
>when you read too much Kaczynski

That all forms of reason and understanding, and the conclusions thereof, operate because they exist in mental systems that allow them to. This understanding is, in itself, part of such a system.

>>9741357
Conservatism sometimes includes some anti-capitalist critique, but its function is always to save the capitalist mode of production

I'm black yet my skin tone isn't 000000.

Achilles and the hare kinda FUCKS with me sometimes

>>9741273
hmm, wouldn't that make you the "fag", assuming OP is not one and you use it as derogatory term.

If OP is a fag, and you're "not"one, then why would your cock be up at night ? Embrace the reality of your desires anon.

>>9741221
Why is /lit/ so unliterary?

>>9741888
Bookcucks must be killed to preserve the sanctity of the red pill.

>>9741574
No paradox here.
Yes you are.

>>9741221
When you understand that all assertions are ultimately self-referential, and your experience of reality is, in effect, a strange loop, then paradoxes will cease to trouble you. They're just the result of two reality tunnels interacting.

problem of evil

save bump

>>9742327
The universe is indifferent towards you. Get over it.

>>9741259
Just because human beings must start and end, doesn't mean that everything else does.

Only by fully embracing materialism can you fully appreciate the social value of idealism

Women, gays, and minorities are stronger and smarter than white men, but white men control society.

>>9741881
>hmm, wouldn't that make you the "fag", assuming OP is not one and you use it as derogatory term.
>If OP is a fag, and you're "not"one, then why would your cock be up at night ?

That was the paradox you fucking queer

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>>9743775

This. If the Melanoids really did land their interstellar pyramid ships in Egypt, how did their white neanderthal slaves end up conquering and enslaving them? Was it sheer decadence, multiculturalism-induced instability, and the lazy weakness encouraged by prosperity? What drove the spirit of the philosopher-kang out of the noble Melanoid people, and reduced them to a degenerate race of illiterate hut-dwelling cannibals? Are black and white a revolving pair of opposites, locked into a constant cycle of mirrored wax and wane? In three thousand years will the Melanoids have resurfaced, and post on 4kan.gz "what happened to the once-mighty Nordid? What reduced him to a forest-dwelling barbarian?"

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 noon, 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.

>>9741259
>>9741273
>/lit/ - Literature

>>9741892
I know this is trolling, but people like this are actually stomping around on this website and its irritating to share boards with insufferable ideological brainlets.

>>9741574
ditto, m8

>>9743761
how can something not start?

>>9743758
Yeah, like, "Eval"; whatever. Problem? You live inside the belly of a deamon who thrives on suffering and gives you a world with modest amounts of good so to allow you to become even more base - and, like, that's a problem how?

>>9742327

Seriously though. The problem is mostly one of good. And whether good is possible without producing the smallest amount of evil. Abort a burdensome baby because it's life will be miserable,or do not kill, and subject it to suffer.

---

I'm pestered by the paradox of the statement that "existence is violence". Beginning with a definition of existence that encapsulates both the infinitely small and the finitely large, or rather, what is possible and what we can speculate on as existing. You define violence, either by a concept that inanimate objects or "nature" or AI or aliens or winter can perpetuate, or rather as an empty vessel of human communication - and the statement becomes false or true.

Does violence exist? Has there ever been an act of violence? Seems like a stupid language game until you watch nature scenes. You jump from an image of deer being pulled down by a bear to the thought that you shouldn't anthropomorphise the scene in human terms, to a speculated earth exploding from some cosmic event. Then you get to that thought: Was the first instance of the universe a destruction or a creation, and, if this is a language game, then how do we describe the first instances of language or communication in general? This is a sidestep, yes, but it's better than a language game because it's more visceral.

Can we equate all violence as communication? Does punching someone in the face become a signal such as the word "don't"? Are we imprisoned by our languages? And what is communication if it is not in here, received, relayed, sent? Is it instead a thing, out there, in a collective conscious that is speaking through everyone? That's babbling, I'm sure. But how does an intelligence on that scale speak? Is their a violence within a word that is uttered without intent?

>>9742297
but seriously tho
if ur not attracted to men but are to traps what are you
(other than a freak)

>>9744246
A gay guy with a specific taste

>>9741270

we do now the Universe came to be almost 14 billion years ago.
the answer to what existed 15 billion years ago is "that question doesnt make sense, because the universe is younger than that"

Why I am considerably intelligent but have fucked up so many things in my life

The principle uniformity of nature

Rokokos basilisk while not a paradox, does keep me up.

Nihilism

And how heavily deductive reasoning relies on induction-that we call black birds crows becuase we have yet to observe a white one. Doesnt mean they don't or can't exist,

>>9743867
>They're paid shills.

>>9744697
I didn't mean to imply anything.

>>9741221
Literally none since I've lived in psychotic states for large amounts of time and since now I'm back to normal any kind of vapid abstract paradox is literally nothing compared to actually being tormented by my mind in some ways I can't even put into words now, solipsism was just the point of the iceberg

>>9744318
Lack of EI.

>>9741221
What does nothing look like?

>man is the measure of things
>"I am not the measure of things"

Paradoxes are a dualist meme. There are too many dualist ideologues in this thread. Get back in your grave, Hegel!
>>9741671
That isn't fallacious, that is accurate.

>>9742327
Non-problem. God is not subject to your petty logic, or ethics, or whatever else. This 'problem' arose from pagans who could not comprehend of nonsystematic love. Worse, they believed in notions of 'good and evil'. God is good and evil; God is notgood and notevil. Good does not exist. Evil does not exist. What exists is God who makes us weep in our attempts to systematize and divide.
>>9743758
Pagan!

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>>9741671
>The Aristotelian logic of the simple syllogism starts from the proposition that ‘A’ is equal to ‘A’. This postulate is accepted as an axiom for a multitude of practical human actions and elementary generalisations. But in reality ‘A’ is not equal to ‘A’. This is easy to prove if we observe these two letters under a lens—they are quite different from each other. But, one can object, the question is not of the size or the form of the letters, since they are only symbols for equal quantities, for instance, a pound of sugar. The objection is beside the point; in reality a pound of sugar is never equal to a pound of sugar—a more delicate scale always discloses a difference. Again one can object: but a pound of sugar is equal to itself. Neither is this true—all bodies change uninterruptedly in size, weight, colour, etc. They are never equal to themselves. A sophist will respond that a pound of sugar is equal to itself “at any given moment”.

>Aside from the extremely dubious practical value of this “axiom”, it does not withstand theoretical criticism either. How should we really conceive the word “moment”? If it is an infinitesimal interval of time, then a pound of sugar is subjected during the course of that “moment” to inevitable changes. Or is the “moment” a purely mathematical abstraction, that is, a zero of time? But everything exists in time; and existence itself is an uninterrupted process of transformation; time is consequently a fundamental element of existence. Thus the axiom ‘A’ is equal to ‘A’ signifies that a thing is equal to itself if it does not change, that is, if it does not exist.

>>9741259
It's a mystery, why on earth would this keep you up at night?

>>9745895
Nothing doesn't exist. Try to wrap your head around that.

>>9744732
>point of iceberg
somebody had traps on the tip of his tongue didn't they/them/quasar.

Euthyphro Dilemma.

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>>9743861
>he still thinks lit is about literature

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>>9746258

>>9744259
What do you call that?

>>9742303
Care to elaborate? I'm interested.

>>9744276
The big bang occurred 14 billion years ago, but didn't expand from nothing. As far as I can tell the universe expands and contracts unceasingly. Perhaps Nietzsche's eternal recurrence wasn't only a helpful metaphor.

>>9741277
meta to the nth degree

>>9741221
Meno's paradox

>>9741574
You're sexually deprived so you turn to the closest thing that resembles a woman

>>9741221
The limits of propositional logic and language and how they relate to reality/truth. Does truth mean anything or is it all just linguistic fuckery? Is there some systemic limit that I cannot think beyond?

How the fuck does all this relate to the mind/body problem and the popular notion of physicalist reality?

>>9741574
You're gay for dicks and not gay for masculinity

Why is this such a big topic

>>9746258
Το τιποτα δεν υπαρχει.

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>>9741221
Münchhausen trilemma. Apparently almost everyone else just pretends it's not a thing.

>>9747981
Ever heard of the term 'axiom'? Fag.

>>9741270
Real infinities are impossible anon desu

>>9744201
I enjoyed your post anon.

>>9748243
Axioms are necessary evil, not a magic stick that solves the problem.

>>9746637

What is that neechee shut the fuck up

>>9746344
What is it about?

Pair of ducks?

>>9746637
>As far as I can tell the universe expands and contracts unceasingly.
How do you know this?

>>9746258
You're just repeating the same concept and is an incomplete statement. Like describing the sky as "blue blue" or someone's action as a "good good".

>>9741500
its true that there are certain forces of unbelievable power deeply rooted in our mind,basic circuits that function from birth to death,certain biological proclivities that are built on years and years of evolution.That being said,you can,to some degree,supress these natural,instinctive inclinations,or even form new ones.That can generally be done at young age,although its quite hard.

>>9743815
good job, I thought this was pasta

>>9746093
>>9746246
The conclusion may be accurate, but the way I arrived there was an actual drunken fit. It wasn't anything profound, but rather me fucking up the Raven or something.

>>9746637
The big crunch is no longer the favored theory for the universes end, modern findings suggest expansion and heat death are more likely, just a big dark nothing.
Unless super massive black holes are in fact big bang seeds as one fringe theory posits, in which case our universe might have a few children.
This theory also suggest the laws of physics might be a universes 'genetic code,' passed down to it's children with slight alterations.

>>9749753
Laws of physics don't exist. 'favored theory' is code for 'big woowoo'

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>>9741221
there are no paradoxes in non-duality.

>>9748603
/lit/ is about not being so fucking pedantic, my man.

>>9741270
matter can't be destroyed but eventually the universe will experience heat death from being too spread out/general entropy

to me this eventual lack of existence of energy implies that maybe there was a lack of energy before the existence of the universe as we know it.

>>9741259
I found it helpful to think of causality as a machine that operates within 'these axiom groups'. The world isn't necessarily objects, and time isn't necessarily as we perceive it.
>event A, then event B
What proof do you have for their order, aside from experience/perception?
Now that we can change our experience with a wide variety of methods, what counts as 'real'? All of them? Then do they compete? Which one wins - or rather, which one is the winner?
>Era
>Habits
>Friends
>Mass Media
>Ads
>Memes
>Psychedelics
>Philosophy
>Religion
>Art
>anti-art
All of them shape us and we shape the world.

>>9742327

The existence of evil doesn't make sense if there's no God.

A lot of people say evil is just "bad things" or "stuff that hurts," but those definitions don't work. Having a cavity filled or being punished for a crime you committed hurt, but they aren't evil. In fact, these are examples of good medicine or good law enforcement. On the other hand, there can be instances of evil that don't cause pain. A man who fantasizes about raping children but never acts out his fantasies doesn't cause pain, but obviously the man has evil thoughts, not good ones. Here's a better definition: Evil is what we experience when things are not the way they are supposed to be.

Rape, murder, cancer, and other bad things are evil because they distort the way the world should be. Sex should be an act of love, not an act of violence. Cells should grow into body parts, not tumors. If evil refers to the way things are not supposed to be, then good must refer to the way things are supposed to be. But if things are supposed to be a certain way, then that means there is both a cosmic plan and a cosmic planner.

>>9749588
I know this is late as fuck, but in simple terms analysis of background radiation shows a wavelike dispersion that could not have begun at what we believe is the galactic center at anywhere near the region of time we now believe the Big Bang to have occurred - looks like it came from roughly the same area but was compressed, and had originated much earlier.

As far as we can tell, the Universe will eventually experience gravity collapse at some unknown point in the future, regardless of heat death (unless the Universe does infinitely expand, but that's unlikely) and all matter will eventually be pulled back towards the singularity state of Big Bang conditions. The resulting extreme physical and quantum physical reactions would then presumably cause a second (nth) Big Bang and activate all that inert matter.

Nietzsche's proposal of the cyclical universe appears to be increasingly correct.

>>9750457

I'm having trouble following. How do you get to 'the universe is cyclic' from the observation that background radiation didn't begin at the center?

>>9750479
It's probably from the 'constricting Universe', rather than the background radiation.
Think in principles.

>>9750495

Can you explain what you mean?

>>9750446

Do atheists even have a response to this? They always talk about evil as being a reason not to believe in an all-good God but this presupposes that evil is even a meaningful concept in a universe without a God. If materialism is true and the only thing that exists is matter then what is evil?

>>9751144
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/magazine/13Psychology-t.html

>>9751291

What are you asking me to read?

>>9751144
Materialism is true and evil is just personal preference. No contradiction.

If God is real then evil is no longer personal preference but is defined as opposition to God which he does not will into existence which is a contradiction. Contradiction => false premise

>>9751393

You've defined evil as a personal preference so how would that be a contradiction to Gods existence? How do you get to evil being a personal preference to evil being in opposition to God? It sounds like you're saying that free will is contradictory to Gods existence.

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>>9741746
conservatism, or any right wing philosophy, is about protecting hierarchy. Capitalism is less hierarchical then fuedalists that is why it was progressives who ushered in capitalism and conservatives who aimed to protect the land owners and the aristocrats.

>>9751393
God is true neutral because they allow individual will to be separate from itself. This isn't a contradiction.

>>9741221
The fact that an infinitely bent line which appears straight is fundamentally different from a straight line of the same length.

>>9741221

>spiders song
>radiohead

the first few bars of the song are chord for chord a ham of the first few sung parts of Pink Floyd's "Nobody's Home" in The Wall

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZkERB6dU_Y

>>9741574
sexuality is a spook

>>9743842
just because the hanging is on a friday doesn't mean it's not a surprise, it's just that the surprise will not ocurr in the moment the guard steps in the room, it will happen att thursday 23:59

>>9747164
Read this part before the thread. Shook me pretty good but after some thought it's not impossible to know concepts and to then try to find a more precise definition of them.

>>9741221
The measurement problem. In other words, Schroedinger's cat.
Does the cat FEEL both dead and alive at the same time? Isn't this the only way the wavefunction can be seen as ontological? But these are two disjunct possibilites- they could not possibly communicate with one another, or merge, UNLESS the two states are not as distinct as we imagine. But if a guillotine chops the cat's head off, it's definitely dead.
It seems that an epistemological approach is the only one that makes sense. I don't know. Or the realism comes in that we can only perceive ASPECTS of what is possible, projections from whatever dimension, onto our four, and each projection is a universe. But then there is the problem of what the projection is on, from, and why it is projected in the first place.
Quantum physics is a fucking mystery.

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>>9741259
>tfw if there's no afterlife you'll never get to know anything about the universe

For fuck's sake.

>>9744376
>Rokokos basilisk while not a paradox, does keep me up.
confirmed retarded
Roko's basilisk is just pascal's wager for retarded singularitarians

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wittgenstein_on_Rules_and_Private_Language#The_rule-following_paradox

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_paradox

These are the only two that give me trouble

>>9741221
If at some point in the future we develop a highly intelligent strong AI, it could theoretically reconstruct, in a simulation, all the humans that had conceived of such a strong AI but did nothing to make it possible. Like God punishing sinners for not working towards their salvation. It could also reward, in a simulation, those that had a hand in creating the AI. That is, as long as it has the concept of fairness and justice as we have come to know it so that it would feel inclined to dole out eternal rewards like these after it attains superiority. And a lot of our ideas of fairness and justice come from Christianity. Strange.

>>9741788
Yeah, Zeno's paradoxes occasionally confuse me

>>9741788
it's not a paradox if it is built upon false assumptions

>>9751291
Psychology is irrelevant.

>>9752282
No, it doesn't feel alive or dead. STEMshitters ignore this side of perception because they're solipsists.

>>9752282
it's just a thought experiment dummy. quantum mechanics don't matter on the cat magnitude scale. the system is so large as to be a collapsed wavefunction always. schroedinger was just being an asshole.

i don't know if it's a paradox. i'm not smart enough to know these things. but something that keeps me up at night is why a god with infinite wisdom would create the universe when it ultimately serves no real purpose or why god would create human beings only to condemn them to eternal suffering for being unable to resist temptation.

i want to believe in a supreme being and i have an affinity for the catholic church because i was raised catholic but i can't because god as described in the bible does not behave the way an all-knowing being should behave.

god it is embarrassing how bad at math and physics /lit/ is

>>9753787
>only to condemn them to eternal suffering for being unable to resist temptation.
this doesn't happen. god grants eternal life in exchange for praise.

>>9753663
it could also, in a simulation, eat a hotdog. your paradox isn't a paradox and it is hardly a fully formed thought.

>>9753794
but why? why would an infinitely wise god need to be praised?

>>9753788
Math and physics are for children. Systematics need to burn.

>>9751972
yeah the fact that A is not equal to not A completely blows my mind too

>>9747981
I didn't realise this had a name, but I had always thought about this

>>9753804
who are you to ponder the almighty god?

>>9743775
are you even trying to really bait here

>>9747981
it's because it is completely worthless

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What's gayer between tomboys and traps ?

>>9753804
>applying logic to an infinitely wise God
Eat shit

>>9746246
It's not really taken as an axiom. It's more of an evidence that comes from the fact that we're dealing with abstract mathematical objects.

Studying math should be mandatory for any /lit/fag and vice versa. This shit is embarassing

>>9750446
No, evil is something that you perceive to be wrong and could be avoidable or is committed willingly. Evil is something that simply something that is bad or wrong, it has to be vile, needless and cruel.
This line of reasoning ignores that humans are biological creatures. Your brain formulates a framework and places things in context, based on your upbringing, culture and things that are shared by all humans(in built feelings, reactions). You perceive things and put them into context using this framework, which helps you reason about your situation, or any situation, which is important if you want to make decisions, obviously. So you do not necessarily have a god to make value judgements, you just look at things and make a judgement about them given your framework. Cancer is not evil, cancer has no will. Is it wrong? Did someone do it willingly? Could it be avoided?

>>9751144
>Atheist here
Yes and no. Your logic here is that God gives you the framework about what is moral/good. But that does not have to be that way if you think about it. Look here: >>9753931

The problem is that most people can't accept this, people have a somewhat in built perception that morality is something beyond you, that it is a given, something that is above your existence, something outside the context of your world, something transcendental. Hence the idea that God is the source of value judgements and people have a very hard time accepting that it does not have to be this way.

Atheist are in a kind of a limbo, they have no firm ground they can build upon(no god), we have just what "works", what has been given by biology and culture. Is is very hard because once this idea starts crystallizing in your mind you are have to take conscious responsibility about your decisions and value judgements.

>>9741574
Traps are not gay but rather a phantasmatic object which represents the pervert's disavowal of the mOther's castration.
Read Lacan.

>>9753931
>>9753998

Saying "evil is simply something that is evil" is not a workable definition for evil. As a theist I would agree with you that we can perceive that things are bad and of course our ability to do that is based on our upbringing and how we're raised but this doesn't answer the question of what exactly evil is. If anything this innate ability to perceive when things are bad or evil would point to a, abstract standard of ultimate good.

Let's think about these concepts of "good" and "bad" for a minute. How do you know the difference between a good bowler and a bad one? Only one thing matters in bowling. The person who knocks down the most pins wins. It’s the score that counts. Knowing the difference between mediocre and masterful in anything requires a way of keeping score. There must be some standard of perfection by which to measure a performance. In bowling that standard is 300 — every pin down in every frame. Notice that even if perfection is not attainable (like in golf where a score of 18 on an 18-hole course is unheard of), a scoring system is still necessary to differentiate between excellence, mediocrity, and abject failure. In the same way, moral judgments require a way of keeping score to distinguish virtue from vice.

We use the word "evil" or "bad" when we see things that are not as they are supposed to be. We have a standard in mind — a moral scoring system of sorts — that allows us to recognize moral shortfalls. The reason we say some things are evil is we realize that they score low on the goodness scale. If there were no standard, there could be no error. In other words, without a standard like God there can be no evil.

In a universe without God, where does the moral scoring system come from that allows one to identify evil in the first place?

>>9755020

wut

>>9741259
>He believes in causality.

>>9753849
Traps. Tomboys are girls with male interests. Traps are literal males in a dress.

>>9750457
What about entropy?How does the universe maintain its energy? If it's shedding energy off where is that energy going?

>>9747852
Isn't a penis the most masculine part of a male human

>>9755769

You don't think cause and effect is real?

>>9753998
>Is is very hard because once this idea starts crystallizing in your mind you are have to take conscious responsibility about your decisions and value judgements.

And Christians don't take responsibility for their decisions?

>>9753663
Simulated me isn't actually me though, so why should I give a shit?

>>9752338
thanks for this laugh anon

>>9746598
gynephilia I believe

>>9753849
>pure tomboys are in the same sexuality debate realms as traps

send the flood, god

>>9758197

Don't be a bigot