Lalala Zeno's paradox question lawl

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Originally Posted by I Took the Red Pill

Well then is the passage of time not also "impossible"? If one is going to try and measure the passage of one second, numerically, eventually they would see that .9 seconds have elapsed. And after that, .99 seconds. And still after that, .999 seconds. With this logic, 1 second is an impossible goal. But time does flow, whether or not it seems impossible. Just like any human being can start at point A and reach point B without the universe exploding due to the paradoxical nature of it. Which is why you can't place our numerical restrictions on the physical world in every case. So I don't see an answer to your question unless you're willing to use calculus, which is another human tool to make the concept of infinity more applicable to reality. In the time case, if you're willing to use calculus, the passage becomes the sum of 9/(10^x), starting at 1 and going to infinity, and as with the whole .99999...=1 mess, the series converges at infinity and the passage of a second makes sense.

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Planck time - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ah, that Max Planck dude solved it all.

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Originally Posted by I Took the Red Pill

Well then is the passage of time not also "impossible"? If one is going to try and measure the passage of one second, numerically, eventually they would see that .9 seconds have elapsed. And after that, .99 seconds. And still after that, .999 seconds. With this logic, 1 second is an impossible goal. But time does flow, whether or not it seems impossible. Just like any human being can start at point A and reach point B without the universe exploding due to the paradoxical nature of it. Which is why you can't place our numerical restrictions on the physical world in every case. So I don't see an answer to your question unless you're willing to use calculus, which is another human tool to make the concept of infinity more applicable to reality. In the time case, if you're willing to use calculus, the passage becomes the sum of 9/(10^x), starting at 1 and going to infinity, and as with the whole .99999...=1 mess, the series converges at infinity and the passage of a second makes sense.

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*Brain Implodes*

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Originally Posted by I Took the Red Pill

Well then is the passage of time not also "impossible"? If one is going to try and measure the passage of one second, numerically, eventually they would see that .9 seconds have elapsed. And after that, .99 seconds. And still after that, .999 seconds. With this logic, 1 second is an impossible goal. But time does flow, whether or not it seems impossible. Just like any human being can start at point A and reach point B without the universe exploding due to the paradoxical nature of it. Which is why you can't place our numerical restrictions on the physical world in every case. So I don't see an answer to your question unless you're willing to use calculus, which is another human tool to make the concept of infinity more applicable to reality. In the time case, if you're willing to use calculus, the passage becomes the sum of 9/(10^x), starting at 1 and going to infinity, and as with the whole .99999...=1 mess, the series converges at infinity and the passage of a second makes sense.

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Absolutely, but in this hypothetical scenario it's a little different. The distance traveled with each step is smaller than the last; while you keep getting closer to the goal, you never travel far enough to reach it. Realistically, this is impossible to implement; the remaining distance to the goal soon becomes too small to measure, and too small actually to matter.

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Originally Posted by oddler

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- To get to the wall I need to walk 1/2 the distance, then 1/2 the remaining distance, and so on ad infinitum

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I'll have to disagree. To get to the wall, you don't need to walk 1/2 the distance. Just walk the whole distance and be done with it. If you walk half the distance, then you know how long the other half is.

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Like that, basically.

Or... wait. Have I totally misunderstood the question here?
All along, I've been assuming this is a theoretical situation whereby a person chooses to cover only half of the remaining distance, reducing how far is travelled in each increment.
Have I got this part wrong? Is the paradox actually saying that 'since every movement is comprised of infinite increments, it is theoretically impossible to traverse the entire distance'?
Because if so, then that fails at a fundamental level in the real world. Just because something can be expressed in terms of infinity, doesn't make it subject to the rule that 'the infinite can never be achieved'.

Spoiler: Perception may be warping what is actually happening.

It's not like you are ever going to get a non distance when dividing by half. So, eventually you will get there.

Now, our perception may just be speeding up the process.

D:?

Just about everyone who reads the paradox assumes that the person would take the same amount of time to cover the 1/8 and 1/4 distances that he took to cross the 1/2 distance.
Zeno never said anything of the sort.
Each shorter length of distance takes a shorter length of time to traverse so there would be no slowdown.

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Originally Posted by sockmonkey

Just about everyone who reads the paradox assumes that the person would take the same amount of time to cover the 1/8 and 1/4 distances that he took to cross the 1/2 distance.
Zeno never said anything of the sort.
Each shorter length of distance takes a shorter length of time to traverse so there would be no slowdown.

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Right but there's still infinite slices, and infinite of anything is impossible to achieve using finite increments. Hence the only solution I can come up with involves Planck measurements.

Thinking about planck measurements as the smallest possible distance gives the impression that the universe is made of really small 3d pixels

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Originally Posted by blackmage_nuke

Thinking about planck measurements as the smallest possible distance gives the impression that the universe is made of really small 3d pixels

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**4D pixels, but yeah lol, I suppose so.