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Why is this a "paradox"? Not sure what this applies to either. It's not even counterintuitive.

jws 11y ago
As stated in the article, this is an example of a veridical paradox under Quine's classification of paradoxes. Which, a quick link following reveals as… A veridical paradox produces a result that appears absurd but is demonstrated to be true nevertheless. Amazing what philosophers will get up to.
- pervycreeper 11y ago
  The point is that it doesn't even appear absurd unless you have absolutely no number sense.
  - mst 11y ago
    Typical Mind Fallacy. Took me ten seconds to get it. Takes most people (IME) a lot longer than me to get similar things. Maybe "no number sense" is actually "other people's minds don't usually work like mine"?
  - marvy 11y ago
    If you think that, you have more number sense than many people. Perhaps more than most :)
    - vacri 11y ago
      Part of it is also the ambiguous way the question is phrased. amolgupta above mentions the same thing, but using humans (engineers and managers) and the answer is much more obvious in that context. Particularly with the second form of the question in the article - anyone who's ever had a potato knows that it doesn't shrink to half it's weight overnight. Poor situation selection and confusing wording do not make a paradox.
deleted 11y ago
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tjradcliffe 11y ago
There is a certain type of mind that delights in paradoxes, to the extent that even after an explanation has been clearly produced, the person will continue to insist there is a paradox. Naming things paradoxes attracts this sort of individual, so it's a kind of marketing ploy for an idea: it won't just get it talked about, it'll get it talked about forever, because each generation of paradox-mongers will take it up anew and discuss it and analyze it and do absolutely anything except acknowledge that the specific flaw in the reasoning that leads to the appearance of an impossible conclusion being true was exposed generations ago. For example, consider the supposed paradox of the evening star and morning star, which I will first state in the a way that makes it clear there is no paradox, then restate in the traditional way. "The Evening Star is Venus seen in the evening sky." "The Morning Star is Venus seen in the morning sky." "Transitivity implies therefore that the Evening Star is the Morning Star, since Venus seen in the evening sky is Venus seen in the morning sky." This is obviously stupid: no one would make this claim. The traditional formulation actually depends on a falsehood, or at least on radically incomplete statements: "The Evening Star is the planet Venus." "The Morning Star is the planet Venus." "Transitivity implies therefore that the Evening Star is the Morning Star, since the planet Venus is the planet Venus." At this point, you can spend millions of words explaining why the statements identifying lights in the sky viewed at a particular time of day with a ball of rock orbiting the sun are problematic. It will be pointless: paradox-mongers will simply not let their nice toy be demolished. Most traditional paradoxes have straightforward resolutions (frequently involving inserting a knowing subject into them, like the person who observes Venus) but none of them will ever be "solved" because of this purely psychological resistance to the possibility of their solution on the part of a very vocal sub-population. One useful trick is to never let a paradox be stated in the traditional way. The first step in any discussion should be to restate the paradoxical situation as completely as possible, usually by introducing the perspective of particular individuals, as I've done above. Traditional paradoxes almost all depend on very specific ways of stating them for their psychological effect, and breaking out of that ritual pattern of restatement often makes them look simply stupid. One can then ask what is missing in the ritual statement of the paradox that makes it not seem stupid. In the case of the Potato Paradox, the restatements we've seen here, which introduce the ratio 1:99 as the way to think about the problem, is a good example of this. Since the answer is not intuitive, the correct way to introduce the problem is to make it intuitive, not to blurt out a non-intuitive answer and expect the now-confused listener to catch up. That's just bad pedagogy.
the_cat_kittles 11y ago
your comment is just you trying to tell everyone you are smart, but its worse because you are trying to act like you are so smart that you don't even realize thats what you're doing.
cbd1984 11y ago
https://math.dartmouth.edu/~matc/Readers/HowManyAngels/WaysofParadox/WaysofParadox.html https://math.dartmouth.edu/~matc/Readers/HowManyAngels/Wayso... Quine (who never went by QuineQuine, more's the pity) had an answer to this problem: Differentiate between veridical and falsidical paradoxes. A veridical paradox is a paradox of the linked type: It appears absurd, but there is no problem in the logic, so it doesn't lead to a contradiction. Therefore, the conclusion is valid. A falsidical paradox is similar to the Liar Paradox: It appears absurd and has a hole in the logic, such that there is no conclusion (it contradicts itself, and is also called an antinomy, as in the Liar Paradox) or the conclusion is invalid (as in one of the many fake proofs that 1 = 0). In Quine's words: > In a falsidical paradox there is always a fallacy in the argument, but the proposition purportedly established has furthermore to seem absurd and to be indeed false.

jws 11y ago

As stated in the article, this is an example of a veridical paradox under Quine's classification of paradoxes. Which, a quick link following reveals as… A veridical paradox produces a result that appears absurd but is demonstrated to be true nevertheless. Amazing what philosophers will get up to.

pervycreeper 11y ago
The point is that it doesn't even appear absurd unless you have absolutely no number sense.
- mst 11y ago
  Typical Mind Fallacy. Took me ten seconds to get it. Takes most people (IME) a lot longer than me to get similar things. Maybe "no number sense" is actually "other people's minds don't usually work like mine"?
- marvy 11y ago
  If you think that, you have more number sense than many people. Perhaps more than most :)
  - vacri 11y ago
    Part of it is also the ambiguous way the question is phrased. amolgupta above mentions the same thing, but using humans (engineers and managers) and the answer is much more obvious in that context. Particularly with the second form of the question in the article - anyone who's ever had a potato knows that it doesn't shrink to half it's weight overnight. Poor situation selection and confusing wording do not make a paradox.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

tjradcliffe 11y ago

There is a certain type of mind that delights in paradoxes, to the extent that even after an explanation has been clearly produced, the person will continue to insist there is a paradox. Naming things paradoxes attracts this sort of individual, so it's a kind of marketing ploy for an idea: it won't just get it talked about, it'll get it talked about forever, because each generation of paradox-mongers will take it up anew and discuss it and analyze it and do absolutely anything except acknowledge that the specific flaw in the reasoning that leads to the appearance of an impossible conclusion being true was exposed generations ago. For example, consider the supposed paradox of the evening star and morning star, which I will first state in the a way that makes it clear there is no paradox, then restate in the traditional way. "The Evening Star is Venus seen in the evening sky." "The Morning Star is Venus seen in the morning sky." "Transitivity implies therefore that the Evening Star is the Morning Star, since Venus seen in the evening sky is Venus seen in the morning sky." This is obviously stupid: no one would make this claim. The traditional formulation actually depends on a falsehood, or at least on radically incomplete statements: "The Evening Star is the planet Venus." "The Morning Star is the planet Venus." "Transitivity implies therefore that the Evening Star is the Morning Star, since the planet Venus is the planet Venus." At this point, you can spend millions of words explaining why the statements identifying lights in the sky viewed at a particular time of day with a ball of rock orbiting the sun are problematic. It will be pointless: paradox-mongers will simply not let their nice toy be demolished. Most traditional paradoxes have straightforward resolutions (frequently involving inserting a knowing subject into them, like the person who observes Venus) but none of them will ever be "solved" because of this purely psychological resistance to the possibility of their solution on the part of a very vocal sub-population. One useful trick is to never let a paradox be stated in the traditional way. The first step in any discussion should be to restate the paradoxical situation as completely as possible, usually by introducing the perspective of particular individuals, as I've done above. Traditional paradoxes almost all depend on very specific ways of stating them for their psychological effect, and breaking out of that ritual pattern of restatement often makes them look simply stupid. One can then ask what is missing in the ritual statement of the paradox that makes it not seem stupid. In the case of the Potato Paradox, the restatements we've seen here, which introduce the ratio 1:99 as the way to think about the problem, is a good example of this. Since the answer is not intuitive, the correct way to introduce the problem is to make it intuitive, not to blurt out a non-intuitive answer and expect the now-confused listener to catch up. That's just bad pedagogy.

the_cat_kittles 11y ago

your comment is just you trying to tell everyone you are smart, but its worse because you are trying to act like you are so smart that you don't even realize thats what you're doing.

cbd1984 11y ago

https://math.dartmouth.edu/~matc/Readers/HowManyAngels/WaysofParadox/WaysofParadox.html https://math.dartmouth.edu/~matc/Readers/HowManyAngels/Wayso... Quine (who never went by QuineQuine, more's the pity) had an answer to this problem: Differentiate between veridical and falsidical paradoxes. A veridical paradox is a paradox of the linked type: It appears absurd, but there is no problem in the logic, so it doesn't lead to a contradiction. Therefore, the conclusion is valid. A falsidical paradox is similar to the Liar Paradox: It appears absurd and has a hole in the logic, such that there is no conclusion (it contradicts itself, and is also called an antinomy, as in the Liar Paradox) or the conclusion is invalid (as in one of the many fake proofs that 1 = 0). In Quine's words: > In a falsidical paradox there is always a fallacy in the argument, but the proposition purportedly established has furthermore to seem absurd and to be indeed false.