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What's the simplest thing humans are too dumb to grasp? (lemmy.world)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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You ever see a dog that's got its leash tangled the long way round a table leg, and it just cannot grasp what the problem is or how to fix it? It can see all the components laid out in front of it, but it's never going to make the connection.

Obviously some dog breeds are smarter than others, ditto individual dogs - but you get the concept.

Is there an equivalent for humans? What ridiculously simple concept would have aliens facetentacling as they see us stumble around and utterly fail to reason about it?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_paradoxes

List of things that, at least to some people, don't work they way they'd expect.

I think that the Monty Haul problem is a good example on there.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Intentionally blank page: Many documents contain pages on which the text "This page intentionally left blank" is printed, thereby making the page not blank

Thats not a paradox. The pages are blank in terms of the topic of the book, and the note is to inform you that it’s not a mistake.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It's not particularly confusing, but there are a whole class of paradoxes that rely on the same mechanism -- the truth of a statement is being altered by the existence of the statement, because it is self-referential in some way.

I think that the Berry paradox is the first one of these that I ran into, and it's a little more confusing to most, I think.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

See I’m really dumb, but how is that a paradox?

It just sounds like some guy said a false claim, which was proven to be false by its own wording, and thus because it’s false it’s a paradox?