Ask HN: What is your favorite thought experiment?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10329196

by PascLeRasc • 11 years ago

7 13 11 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

PascLeRasc• 11 years ago

Personally, I think Newcomb's Paradox is really interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcomb%27s_paradox

PepeGomez2• 11 years ago

That's only called a paradox becasue some people refuse to accept the obvious solution.

alphydan• 11 years ago

Einstein's thought experiment on simultaneity illustrated with a train (simultaneous, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Traincar_Relativity1.svg), (not simultaneous, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Traincar_Relativity2.svg)

willstepp• 11 years ago

This is meditative and not scientific, but still a thought experiment: To consider, who am I between two thoughts?

bediger4000• 11 years ago

Imagine Pinocchio at rest.

Suddenly, Pinocchio says "My nose is growing!"

What happens next?

shermanyo• 11 years ago

Imagine Pinocchio at rest. Not sure why, but pictured a spherical Pinocchio in a vacuum :P

cabbeer• 11 years ago

Like the inside of a whale?

ljk• 11 years ago

i'd think his nose would still grow because he lied when he said it

Zikes• 11 years ago

Yeah, perhaps change the line to "My nose will now grow."

Nadya• 11 years ago

Not so much a thought experiment - but trying to grasp the Library of Babel.

Somewhere on the pages is your entire life story, already written. Waiting to be discovered. The story of your birth, every variation of death. Every success. Every failure.

Just a meaningless collection of words waiting to be discovered, only given meaning once found.

https://libraryofbabel.info/

Even my post already existed: https://libraryofbabel.info/bookmark.cgi?vdayie_ifpawv163

PepeGomez2• 11 years ago

What is that?

iyn• 11 years ago

http://flavorwire.com/515783/brooklyn-author-recreates-borge...

http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/07/23/the-library-of...

gull• 11 years ago

What is the one thing that could reverse an entrenched system, and how could you build a prototype in the least amount of time. Preferably, something people think is too much work, while it actually takes two days.

Ask HN: What is your favorite thought experiment?

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