Bookworm thoughtfully ponders conundrums

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Marvin D.
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Post by Marvin D. »

Why is there no synonym for synonym?
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bookworm
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Post by bookworm »

Marvin D. wrote:Why is there no synonym for synonym?
This was already answered.
bookworm wrote:According to my thesaurus, the words ‘substitute’ or ‘replacement’ are synonyms of synonym.
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Post by jelly »

If I were to time travel fifty years into the past, find my grandparents and lock them up in separate prison cells, then travel one hundred years into the future and attain omnipotence, allowing me to run in more than one direction at once at unstoppable speeds, and after surpassing the speed of light I catch a glimpse of an infinite number of penrose staircases, each with an infinite amount of steps, and my omnipotence gave me the ability to count them, would my grandparents be dead?

That one's always bugged me.
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Tea Ess
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Post by Tea Ess »

Today is Opposite Day.

Opposite Day meaning that everything spoken has the opposite intended meaning as its definition.
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Post by bookworm »

Jelly wrote:If I were to time travel fifty years into the past, find my grandparents and lock them up in separate prison cells, then travel one hundred years into the future and attain omnipotence, allowing me to run in more than one direction at once at unstoppable speeds, and after surpassing the speed of light I catch a glimpse of an infinite number of penrose staircases, each with an infinite amount of steps, and my omnipotence gave me the ability to count them, would my grandparents be dead?
Does the 100 year travel to the future occur directly from the 50 year travel to the past, so it ends 50 years from the present, or did you return to the present between the trips and begin counting again from there? Either way I don’t see why omnipotence would affect the situation, it’s simply a question of lifespan. And in either scenario, yes they would be dead, so it doesn’t really matter where the 100 year travel begins.
Let’s bring some numbers into the scenario to make it less abstract. Say your grandparents are, in the present time, 65 years old. You travel 50 years back, making them 15, and lock them up. If you travel 100 years from here, they will be 115 years old, and most likely dead. If you returned to the present between each time trip, the 100 year journey would make them 165 years old, and quite certainly dead.
The same result is reached for any age you insert into the scenario. The youngest your grandparents can be in the present is 51 because a 50 year travel back finds a being you are able to lock up. Taking the 100 year travel immediately from the past, the option that allows for the shortest time span to pass, makes the youngest they can be at the end 101. While people do occasionally reach this age, it’s far from the average life span, so it is to be assumed that they would have died.
This is all of course not even considering the time paradox that results from these actions. Because you locked them in separate cells at 15 years old, or even younger, depending on what numbers you use, it can be assumed that they had not yet given birth to your parents, and will never do so. Therefore the future you would not exist to travel to the past and lock them up in the first place. That would not change that 50 years from the present they would be dead however, that is purely a result of age.
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Post by Tea Ess »

You ignored my conundrum. :(
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jelly
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Post by jelly »

bookworm wrote:
Jelly wrote:If I were to time travel fifty years into the past, find my grandparents and lock them up in separate prison cells, then travel one hundred years into the future and attain omnipotence, allowing me to run in more than one direction at once at unstoppable speeds, and after surpassing the speed of light I catch a glimpse of an infinite number of penrose staircases, each with an infinite amount of steps, and my omnipotence gave me the ability to count them, would my grandparents be dead?
Does the 100 year travel to the future occur directly from the 50 year travel to the past, so it ends 50 years from the present, or did you return to the present between the trips and begin counting again from there? Either way I don’t see why omnipotence would affect the situation, it’s simply a question of lifespan. And in either scenario, yes they would be dead, so it doesn’t really matter where the 100 year travel begins.
Let’s bring some numbers into the scenario to make it less abstract. Say your grandparents are, in the present time, 65 years old. You travel 50 years back, making them 15, and lock them up. If you travel 100 years from here, they will be 115 years old, and most likely dead. If you returned to the present between each time trip, the 100 year journey would make them 165 years old, and quite certainly dead.
The same result is reached for any age you insert into the scenario. The youngest your grandparents can be in the present is 51 because a 50 year travel back finds a being you are able to lock up. Taking the 100 year travel immediately from the past, the option that allows for the shortest time span to pass, makes the youngest they can be at the end 101. While people do occasionally reach this age, it’s far from the average life span, so it is to be assumed that they would have died.
This is all of course not even considering the time paradox that results from these actions. Because you locked them in separate cells at 15 years old, or even younger, depending on what numbers you use, it can be assumed that they had not yet given birth to your parents, and will never do so. Therefore the future you would not exist to travel to the past and lock them up in the first place. That would not change that 50 years from the present they would be dead however, that is purely a result of age.
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Whitty Whit
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Post by Whitty Whit »

Take an infinitely large plane (2-dimensional frame of reference, not an aircraft) and divide it into infinitesimal rectangles. Would there be a mathematical value for the area of the plane?
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Post by bookworm »

T.S. (myself) wrote:You ignored my conundrum. :(
No I haven’t. I take them in order submitted, and generally answer them in individual posts, unless the response is pretty brief.
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Post by IrishTiger »

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Post by bookworm »

T.S. (myself) wrote:Today is Opposite Day.

Opposite Day meaning that everything spoken has the opposite intended meaning as its definition.
Unraveling this conundrum is essentially the same process as addressing this statement. The answer is either and/or both yes and/or no, depending on your personal preference.
By principle, it would be impossible to hold a genuine Opposite Day because the declaration of such a day must itself be taken oppositely, meaning the day in question was in fact not that day.


Whitty Whit wrote:Take an infinitely large plane (2-dimensional frame of reference, not an aircraft) and divide it into infinitesimal rectangles. Would there be a mathematical value for the area of the plane?
No. But not for the reason you may have been implying. Dividing the plane into rectangles doesn’t affect the area, because you calculate that from the dimensions of the whole surface. If I have a 10x20 plane and divide it into two 5x10 rectangles, the total area is still simply the area of the 10x20 plane. The reason your plane doesn’t have a mathematical area is because it doesn’t have any dimensions to run calculations on. You can’t put infinity through a formula.
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