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Notice the definitions: > The two capacitor paradox or capacitor paradox is a paradox, or counterintuitive thought experiment, in electric circuit theory. > A

by JadeNB 6y ago

Notice the definitions: > The two capacitor paradox or capacitor paradox is a paradox, or counterintuitive thought experiment, in electric circuit theory. > A paradox, also known as an antinomy, is a logically self-contradictory statement or a statement that runs contrary to one's expectation. It is a statement that, despite apparently valid reasoning from true premises, leads to a seemingly self-contradictory or a logically unacceptable conclusion. (emphases mine). It's paradoxical in that it runs counter to expectations or intuition, using apparently valid reasoning. (Of course, maybe it doesn't run counter to your intuition; but that's how correct intuition is developed, by breaking naïve intuition against examples like this!) In fact, the article explicitly acknowledges this: > Unlike some other paradoxes in science, this paradox is not due to the underlying physics, but to the limitations of the 'ideal circuit' conventions used in circuit theory.

brummm 6y ago
Fair enough, wikipedia does include the reference to expectation in its definition of paradox. However, I think my main point is still valid that this should not necessarily be called a paradox exactly because it differs a lot from how this term is commonly used in the naming of scientific thought experiments.
- mokus 6y ago
  My initial gut response was the same - that this isn’t a paradox, but rather a proof by contradiction that one or more of the assumptions are wrong. But after thinking about it a bit more, I don’t think there’s really that much of a difference. It’s just that some people have already learned not to apply those assumptions in this context (or by chance never stumbled into them in the first place). Perhaps it’s fair to say that all paradoxes are “just” part of a proof by contradiction and the only difference between ones that feel truly paradoxical and those that feel obvious is something subjective about a person’s understanding of the situation. Maybe it’s down to whether someone has enough of an understanding of the conceptual landscape to be able to actually recognize some of the problematic assumptions from the start of the problem statement or not, or maybe it’s something else, but either way I’m suspecting that it’s something subjective related to a person’s state of knowledge and/or approach to organizing their own knowledge.

by JadeNB 6y ago

brummm 6y ago

Fair enough, wikipedia does include the reference to expectation in its definition of paradox. However, I think my main point is still valid that this should not necessarily be called a paradox exactly because it differs a lot from how this term is commonly used in the naming of scientific thought experiments.

mokus 6y ago
My initial gut response was the same - that this isn’t a paradox, but rather a proof by contradiction that one or more of the assumptions are wrong. But after thinking about it a bit more, I don’t think there’s really that much of a difference. It’s just that some people have already learned not to apply those assumptions in this context (or by chance never stumbled into them in the first place). Perhaps it’s fair to say that all paradoxes are “just” part of a proof by contradiction and the only difference between ones that feel truly paradoxical and those that feel obvious is something subjective about a person’s understanding of the situation. Maybe it’s down to whether someone has enough of an understanding of the conceptual landscape to be able to actually recognize some of the problematic assumptions from the start of the problem statement or not, or maybe it’s something else, but either way I’m suspecting that it’s something subjective related to a person’s state of knowledge and/or approach to organizing their own knowledge.