Talk:Physical paradox

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Physical paradox has been listed as a good article under the good-article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can delist it, or ask for a review.

"In physics as in all of science, contradictions and paradoxes are assumed to be artifacts of error and incompleteness because reality is assumed to be completely consistent."

This is a metaphysical idea, not a scientific one. Science makes falsifiable theories to explain observations and experimental results. So far, the rules of mathematics and logic have proved very good as bases for these theories. However, there is no physical law which says reality has to be self-consistent. -- Karada 13:49, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

While there are no physical laws that say reality has to be self-consistent, there is observational evidence to that effect. I agree it's a metaphysical statement, but I don't believe that this statement isn't falsifiable, so it probably is scientific at least in that sense. Joshuaschroeder 14:27, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Contents 1 Causality for Santa 2 which reference of the references uses the label "physical paradox"? 3 Afraid of saying the word "paradox"? 4 Crank warning 5 GA Re-Review and In-line citations

[edit] Causality for Santa

Many really serious scientist believe in time travel. For example, I could travel back 5 years and meet myself! Then I would have two consciousnesses. My second "I" can live along with my first one--we like each other--untile we feel lonely, built another time machine and--huiiii there's three of us (Autofellation anyone?).

So cheers to all the tenured naturalist philosophers who think long evenings about the stuff. Also: make a perpetuum mobile. Also: make a time loop sending back pink chewing gum. Arrive 1/2^n seconds earlier than before. The universe will explode from chewinggum. Fortunately not ours, but the split-one. And don't forget: Creationism is BUNK--85.74.129.45 19:14, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] which reference of the references uses the label "physical paradox"?

It's not clear from the article, and I had never heard of it before. We need a pointer to to a reliable reference for it. Harald88 13:16, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

The first google hit uses the term, though doesn't define it: [1]. --ScienceApologist 02:59, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, I meant peer reviewed article, but it's illustrative anyway. As the French Wikipedia sets forth, those classes are a bit artificial: a physical paradox can also be a logical one, and this one is indeed both. Harald88 03:22, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

GZK peer-reviewed: [2], though this says "physics paradox" in the abstract. --ScienceApologist 03:24, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks! - it's better than nothing I guess, but at the same time it makes one wonder if "physics paradox" is better, or if they are equally OK. Harald88 17:03, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Afraid of saying the word "paradox"?

"A physical paradox is an apparent contradiction relating to physical descriptions of the universe." If this is so, why then, on this page and others (e.g. I followed a link here from Black hole information paradox), do we keep putting scare-quotes around the word, and say things like "so-called paradox", "seeming paradox", "apparent paradox", and so on? So is an "apparent paradox" then an "apparent apparent contradiction relating to physical descriptions of the universe"? -Dan 22:35, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Where in this article? Harald88 22:44, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Oh, almost right off the bat! First section ("paradoxes relating to false assumptions"), caption to the image on the right: "The Twins paradox is an apparent paradox that shows that there is no absolute time." Text of section: "Certain physical paradoxes seem to defy common sense predictions [...] and thus appear superficially to be paradoxical [...] Other so-called paradoxes that appear at first glance to contradict common sense are Babinet's paradox and the Gibbs paradox [...]"

In "Observational paradoxes", section text: "A further set of physical "paradoxes" are based on sets of observations [...] In some sense, these may not be paradoxes at all [...]"

I think I've listed all of them. (I've also added "seem to defy common sense" and such to my objections. I'd say they do defy common sense, no?) -Dan 04:13, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, I agree about paradox, especially as it's immediately pointed out in the intro. "at first glance appear" is obviously overdone -- a bit like "I would like to ask you if I can come in" could be replied with, technically, "OK, you may ask"! But "defy common sense" isn't good, as paradoxes that are solved by explanation only defy the common sense of those who don't understand yet; thus expressions like "seem to" or "may at first seem to" are required. -- happy editing! :-) Harald88 12:54, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

I can see that in some cases intuition might be satisfied by explanation, but in general explanations only work on a rational level. It is quite common for people to call results "unintuitive" or the like, even when they understand it perfectly well. This article even asserts that the Twin's and ladder paradoxes do defy common sense. -Dan 15:04, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Really? Such assertions are POV; for me the solutions to those two paradoxes make perfect sense (but I must admit that I studied them for years...) Harald88 00:04, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Crank warning

Someone added a link to quantum Smarandache paradoxes. Someone should carefully check this out because [[Florentin Smarandache] and/or some Romanian fans have been enthusiastically adding references to his often bizzare ideas in WP. See this Romanian website, Neutrosophy, Dezert-Smarandache theory, etc. ---CH 07:31, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] GA Re-Review and In-line citations

Members of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles are in the process of doing a re-review of current Good Article listings to ensure compliance with the standards of the Good Article Criteria. (Discussion of the changes and re-review can be found here). A significant change to the GA criteria is the mandatory use of some sort of in-line citation (In accordance to WP:CITE) to be used in order for an article to pass the verification and reference criteria. Currently this article does not include in-line citations. It is recommended that the article's editors take a look at the inclusion of in-line citations as well as how the article stacks up against the rest of the Good Article criteria. GA reviewers will give you at least a week's time from the date of this notice to work on the in-line citations before doing a full re-review and deciding if the article still merits being considered a Good Article or would need to be de-listed. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us on the Good Article project talk page or you may contact me personally. On behalf of the Good Articles Project, I want to thank you for all the time and effort that you have put into working on this article and improving the overall quality of the Wikipedia project. Agne 00:15, 26 September 2006 (UTC)