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Current time: March 28, 2024, 1:40 pm

Poll: Is this a genuine paradox?
This poll is closed.
Yes.
14.29%
1 14.29%
No.
71.43%
5 71.43%
I don't know.
14.29%
1 14.29%
Total 7 vote(s) 100%
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Paradox of Surprise? Yes? No?
#1
Paradox of Surprise? Yes? No?
Just something I thought of really:

"If you expect to be surprised when you're not surprised are you surprised?"

Or a shorten version:

"If you expect to be surprised when you're not, are you?"

I'm pretty suspicious of a flaw here somewhere making it not a genuine paradox....but I'm not sure where it is.
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#2
RE: Paradox of Surprise? Yes? No?
(December 29, 2010 at 12:27 pm)EvidenceVsFaith Wrote: Just something I thought of really:

"If you expect to be surprised when you're not surprised are you surprised?"

Or a shorten version "If you expect to be surprised when you're not, are you?"

I'm pretty suspicious of a flaw here somewhere making it not a genuine paradox....but I'm not sure where it is.

Its.....BOOOOOO did that surprise you.









You can fix ignorance, you can't fix stupid.

Tinkety Tonk and down with the Nazis.




 








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#3
RE: Paradox of Surprise? Yes? No?
A bit.
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#4
RE: Paradox of Surprise? Yes? No?
I depends on the surprise you are expecting. Like, if you think someone is going to pop out and say boo, but instead you turn the corner and there is a naked women, you would be genuinly surprised. The way you have posed it, I would say is too vague because it isn't specific enough, or clear enough to be a paradox.

If you are hypervigilent and hard to surprise, could you be surprised? Certainly, because there is always something outside your expectation that could happen. It is more a matter of intensity that would illicit the surprise response.
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#5
RE: Paradox of Surprise? Yes? No?
I mean that if you expect to be surprised at time X, but at time X you aren't surprised, wouldn't you then be surprised because you were expecting to be surprised but, weren't?
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#6
RE: Paradox of Surprise? Yes? No?
Ahhh, I see, interesting. Ok, so then if you expect to be surprised, you will be surprised if and only if you aren't surprised which would surprise you and therein lies the paradox. Yep, sounds like a paradox to me. Good one. Smile
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#7
RE: Paradox of Surprise? Yes? No?
(December 29, 2010 at 1:14 pm)EvidenceVsFaith Wrote: I mean that if you expect to be surprised at time X, but at time X you aren't surprised, wouldn't you then be surprised because you were expecting to be surprised but, weren't?

Hmm... I'm not sure. The surprise at the lack of surprise occurs after time X, when the surprise you were expecting didn't take place. So what really happened was a non-surprise at time X followed by a surprise at time Y (immediately after time X). Which I'm not sure is a paradox. Also, I'd question whether an expected surprise is actually a surprise, or rather an anticipated unusual event, whose exact nature is unknown. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I'm unsure.

'We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.' H.L. Mencken

'False religion' is the ultimate tautology.

'It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.' Mark Twain

'I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.' Abraham Lincoln
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#8
RE: Paradox of Surprise? Yes? No?
I think you have sussed the flaw. You can't be surprised and not surprised at exactly the same time. But maybe all paradoxes are really contradictions it's just we haven't been able to unravel them yet? Something either is or isn't.... so how can paradoxes really exist?
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#9
RE: Paradox of Surprise? Yes? No?
NO!

Because you are surprised about not being surprised rather than the thing that you thought would surprise you. Therefore it is a different 'surprise' that you have experienced.

Discuss...
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#10
RE: Paradox of Surprise? Yes? No?
As well as the time aspect (the 'when'), you have also found an error in the thing aspect (the 'what').

Congrats Darwinian.... not a paradox....

Do you think that whilst a logical contradiction remains unable to be spotted and seems a paradox then it remains a paradox? Are paradoxes merely logical contradictions that haven't been spotted yet? (And so, was my paradox a paradox until its contradiction was spotted to be a contradiction?).

Or are paradoxes logical contradictions that logically can't be spotted?
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