Comment on Open Thread: April 2010

Thu, 08 Apr 2010 20:21:58 GMT

Ugh, yes. Why are we speaking of "paradoxes" at all? Anything that actually occurs is not a paradox. If something appears to be a paradox, either you have reasoned incorrectly, you've made untenable assumptions, or you've just been using fuzzy thinking. This is a problem; presumably it has some solution. Describing it as a "paradox" and asking people not to solve it is not helpful. You don't understand it better that way, you understand it by solving it. The only thing gained that way is an understanding of why it appears to be a paradox, which is useful as a demonstration of the dangers of fuzzy thinking, but also kind of obvious.

Maybe I'm being overly strict about the word "paradox" here, but I really just don't see the term as at all helpful. If you're using it in the strict sense, they shouldn't occur except as an indicator that you've done something wrong (in which case you probably wouldn't use the word "paradox" to describe it in the first place). If you're using it in the loose sense, it's misleading and unhelpful (I prefer to explcitly say "apparent paradox".)

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