Sunday, August 5, 2007

Is this the axe with which you killed me?

I found a couple of neat paradoxes here.

http://www.paradoxes.co.uk/

One of my favorites isn't there, but goes something like this:

A year ago, you killed a man with an axe. You're standing in your garage with your axe in hand. The man comes back and asks you, "Is this the axe you killed me with?"

Two months after you killed him, the head fell off and you had to have it replaced. A month ago, the handle broke and you replaced that, as well. How would you answer him?



There's also a really neat online quiz somewhere, possibly on Beliefnet, that I had some fun with years ago. In one of the hypothetical questions, the technology exists to make copies of your personality and place it in your body. It runs through several scenarios where you have to decide whether you would keep your body or your mind intact. At the end of the quiz, it runs through the various beliefs of what life is and whether or not your decisions would leave you "alive" according to any of them. I ended up as a zombie! (Well, I'd not have been "alive" as defined by any of the theories of life, but I'd still have a working body and mind.)
If anyone can find it, I'd love to bookmark it.

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