Pumping Paradoxes

Ever been caught in a loop of self-contradictory statements? As humans we all often are. Here are a couple of paradoxes that have confused thinkers over aeons, and till date have different schools of thoughts fighting over their answers...

1)    The Hanging Paradox

A judge pronounces death sentence to a criminal and tells him that he would be hanged on one of the weekdays the following week, but the hanging would come as a surprise to him. He would not know the day of the hanging till the hangman knocks at his cell door one day at noon. The prisoner returns to his cell, vexed at the information, but soon concludes in exultation that he would escape the punishment!

 

He rules out Friday as the execution day since if not hanged by the first four weekdays, it would be a certainty that he would be hanged on Friday, leaving no element of surprise. He rules out Thursday, as Friday being already eliminated and sentence not having taken place on the first three weekdays, hanging on Thursday would become a certainty. In a similar way, he eliminates all weekdays, inferring that he could not be hanged at all.

But then, to his surprise, the hangman knocks at his door at noon on Wednesday that week. (Surprise since he thought that the execution could not, would not take place!)

2)    Grandfather Paradox

Premise: You hate your grandfather, and you have a time machine.

In the light of this, imagine you go back in time and kill your grandfather when he was a child. Catch- if he dies, your parent is never born. If that happens, then you are never born. If you aren’t born, how can you go back in time to kill your grandfather? Since your grandfather didn’t die and thus you are born, you go back in time and kill your grandfather but then you are never born and… and…

 

Seems like there is no solution but to learn to live with the people you are not particularly fond of!

3)    The Paradox of Tragedy

Tragedy (Cambridge dictionary): a very sad event or situation, especially one involving death or suffering.

Why is it that in real life, we tend to be so risk-aversive so as to avoid every possible hurt to our hearts and wish to minimize regrets, but when it comes to tragic art, there is a certain pleasure attached to viewing it?

Aristotle, explaining the concept of “catharsis” said that until and unless we experience and express a whole range of emotions, we can’t be truly relieved or appreciative. That’s why we willfully indulge in sad music, movies and books from time-to-time. This doesn’t explain though that why in art too, we are often downcast at sad turns of events. (Show of hands: who didn’t want Cedric Diggory or Beatrice Prior to die?)

4)    The Ship of Theseus

The 1^st century AD philosopher Plutarch asked us to imagine Theseus sailing a ship. On his way, he replaces a broken plank with a new one. Still the same ship? Maybe, yes. Well, what if he goes on replacing all the planks and the sails and ends up replacing every single part that made the ship that ship, at what point does that ship stop being that particular ship? Or does it still remain that old ship even though fundamentally its original pieces are no longer a part of it? If you are still here and sane, imagine if using all the older planks the sailor made a new ship. Is that new ship now the old ship?

This little puzzle focuses on the metaphysical identity of entities. Growing up, we learn new things we didn’t know before. Our thoughts, feelings, opinions towards different things change, often completely in the opposite direction. Do we remain the same person that we were before or are we someone else? Huh. To what extent can we survive change while retaining our identities? A sobering thought.

-Rishika Chutani