Do certain thoughts come to you that keep you awake at night pondering over them, twisting and turning as the pillow sighs and nudges you to go to sleep? Well we have news for you guys! For all the insomniacs in the world Guys World rifled through a few journals and unearthed a few thought experiments which will challenge your sanity! All the best sleeping now boys!
The prisoner’s dilemma: stay silent or confess!
Imagine that you and your friend are arrested for a crime and jailed in separate cells. The jailer then gives you one night to confess but gives you these conditions.
- If you confess and your friend keeps quiet, he will grant you freedom but jail your friend forever.
- If your friend confesses and you keep mum then he will free him but jail you for life.
- If both of you confess the jailer gets two convictions.
- If both of you keep mum then both will escape due to no evidence.
What is the guarantee that if even if you remain silent your friend will not rat on you.
The roller coaster paradox
Imagine that a roller coaster full of people are hurling towards their death as the tracks are fractured. To save the people you can press a switch to make the roller coaster change course. The only catch being there is a man on the other track who will die and there is no time to warn him. Will you press the switch and let him die or will you let the passengers on the roller coaster die? Instead of a switch if your only chance of saving the passengers is to push the same man onto its tracks to stop it, will you do it? The strange fact about this moral dilemma is people who say they wouldn’t mind pressing the switch are mortified about pushing the man, even though both end in his death.
Ship of Theseus paradox
Just to think you have a brand new ship which sails the world and grows old. When its parts get old and broken and you start replacing all the broken parts with new, identical pieces and in this manner you replace every last piece on the ship, does it become a different ship? Or is it the old ship? Ship of Theseus anyone?
Interstellar paradox
Now this comes straight out of Einstein’s brain. Imagine you have a twin who is born at the exact same time as you. Now imagine that your twin is put on a rocket which travels out into space at the speed of light, while the other is on Earth waiting for his return. From earth’s point of view since time moves slowly on spacecraft due to its great speed and it takes five years to travel at the speed of light around space and return, 100 years would have passed on Earth. While your twin would only be 5 years older, you would have aged 100 years or probably died! Interstellar thought right!
Ultimate Time travellers Paradox
A girl named Jane is left at the doorsteps of an orphanage. The orphanage adopts her and when she grows up, she falls in love with a drifter who makes her pregnant and disappears. When the baby is about to be born Doctors discover that Jane has both male and female genitals. To save both mother and child they have to remove her female organs and Jane becomes a man. But the baby is kidnapped and unable to come to terms with it Jane who is now a man goes into depression and becomes a drifter.
One day he enters a bar and tells the bartender his story, who gives him a secret to put everything right if Jane joins a Secret Time Traveler’s Army. He lets Jane time travel and once in the past Jane falls for an orphan girl and makes her pregnant. Then he travels forward nine months and kidnaps the child and leaves her at the doorsteps of an orphanage after time travelling 25 years back.
A few years after he comes back and becomes a member of the Secret Time Traveler’s Army, he disguises himself as a bartender and travels back for a priority meeting with a drifter he has to help. This means Jane, the child, the drifter, the bartender- they are all the same person! Mind = Blown!!!
