If human understanding is flawed and I am human, it could mean only one thing: The understanding presented here is also flawed. And of the many paradoxes in life, I have found this to be the ultimate paradox.

Yesterday, I was involved in a conversation where I was talking about “be yourself” over “try and emulate” i.e. whether to follow your own philosophy of life or try and be like someone. By “being yourself”, I cannot defend or prove the point of it over “try and emulate” because the other person is just being himself by trying and emulating, since he believes in it. Or in other words, he is just being himself by doing what he believes in, which is to “try and emulate”.

Having realised how my very own belief  holds out against me, I gave up. But then, I realised that there was a catch for the folks who “try and emulate”. Here a series of steps:

1. Select one’s top ten favourites from a list if people on would like to “try and emulate”.
2. From the list, find out what each person’s take was on the “being yourself” and “try and emulate’ argument.
3. Find the majority opinion.

Now if a person subscribes to the “try and emulate” philosophy, he should emulate the result of the third step. If the result of the third step is “try and emulate”, then there is no problem. But what if the result is “be yourself”?

The Grandfather Paradox
This paradox usually turns out to be first paradox which most people hit upon while contemplating on time travel. The paradox is also portrayed in the “Back to the Future” series of movies. I am reproducing the paradox from Wikipedia here…

“Suppose a man traveled back in time and killed his biological grandfather before the latter met the traveller’s grandmother. As a result, one of the traveller’s parents (and by extension, the traveller himself) would never have been conceived. This would imply that he could not have travelled back in time after all, which in turn implies the grandfather would still be alive, and the traveller would have been conceived, allowing him to travel back in time and kill his grandfather.”

A related paradox is the pre-destination paradox which attempts to explain on how history need to be changed by one’s modification of the past in time travel…

“A man travels back in time to discover the cause of a famous fire. While in the building where the fire started, he accidentally knocks over a kerosene lantern and causes a fire, the same fire that would inspire him, years later, to travel back in time.”

The film “Minority Report” dealt with the pre-destination paradox.

Omnipotence Paradox
This is one of those paradoxes which make you scratch your head once you have read it. It deals with this question: “Could an omnipotent being create a stone so heavy that even that being could not lift it?” If so, then it seems that the being could cease to be omnipotent; if not, it seems that the being was not omnipotent to begin with.”

Mathematicians, theologians and philosophers have attempted to answer this paradox. Quoting from Wikipedia…

“This problem led in the High Middle Ages to developing the concept of mathematical infinity, and laid the basis for infinitesimal calculus. Combining omnipotence with omniscience can yield the difficulty of whether or not God can pose a question to which he would not know the answer.”

And theologians and philosophers have answered this questions from various fronts.

Theseus’ Paradox
The paradox goes like this: “The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned [from Crete] had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their place, insomuch that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same.”

There is a related argument in Artificial Intelligence which deals with human consciousnesses. Let us assume that neurophysiology has grown to a point that the behaviour of neurons(in the brain) is fully understood to create electronic replicas which behave exactly in the same way as neurons. Let us also assume that surgery had advanced to a point by which a neuron could be replaced by its electronic counter-part without affecting any function of the brain. After repeated surgeries, the entire brain has now been replaced by electronics. Will this brain contain the human quality of consciousness?

Have a great day.

Every opposing argument in a debate can be further deduced to two conflicting premises. These two conflicting premises can be further reduced to other conflicting premises. The problem here is that only one of of these premises can be right or wrong. And the premises used to deduce whether something is right or wrong is again based on other premises. The entire thing is a painful paradox. Human thought is flawed since the parameters used to judge whether something is wrong or right are decided by humans themselves³.

The idea presented above is a very dangerous thought which can damage any existing and non-existing social order leaving utter confusion in its path. So, on a personal note, I use two premises to evaluate any thought (idea) or proposition:

1.What makes a thought or an action good? If every member of the human species were to follow the action or an idea and there would be no harm in the propagation of the species, the thought or the action is good.

2. What makes a thought or an action bad? If a thought or an action discriminates against the equality of any member of the human species, it is bad.

These premises are not absolute. They throw open a huge number of other questions. Other problems include definitions. What is ‘harm’? Can a few members of the species be harmed for greater good? If so, are there baselines for this number? What are the premises on which these baselines should be decided? What is greater good? These questions again lead to the same conclusion: Human understanding is flawed. It is a quasi-stable set of premises judged on another quasi-stable set of premises.

If human understanding is flawed and I am human, it could mean only one thing: The understanding presented here is also flawed. And of the many paradoxes in life, I have found this to be the ultimate paradox.

Footnotes:
1. I have been asked by a lot of people (here and elsewhere) on why I don’t take sides. One of the major reasons that I do not take sides is that I like to analyze the reasons on what makes people take sides. It could involve a factors of which the major factor would be the environment. An understanding of these factors helps one to isolate the thought from the person. It is easier to work with people when you address the reasons behind their behaviour rather than addressing their behaviour. It takes time and it is a huge pain.

Secondly, just imagine a world which contains only theists (or atheists), or only liberals (or conservatives) or only Microsoft (or Linux). Do you think that it will be an interesting place to live in? Differences are an integral part of human thought.

2. There is a funny side to this: I can argue for and against both sides in any argument.

3. I might be sounding religious here but religion does not lend itself to absolutes. I have seen numerous debates about various issues in all of the world’s religions.

Feel free to agree or disagree. Whatever you might do, it is still subject to the ultimate paradox!!