Paradoxes are statements that lead to contradictions. They are surprising, odd, or even absurd because they contain claims that seem to contradict each other.
Many of them are also funny or fascinating, which explains why paradoxes are so popular for crafting humorous Internet memes and April Fools’ Day jokes.
At the same time, paradoxes are also interesting philosophical riddles that can be used to explore concepts in logic and mathematics. They can even help you play games or solve real-life problems! Let’s check out paradoxes you can map with a flow chart maker below.
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1. The Barber Paradox (or Russell’s Paradox / Lewis Carroll Paradox)
The Barber paradox, also known as Russell’s paradox or Lewis Carroll’s paradox, was first introduced by Bertrand Russell in 1901. It is often used to demonstrate the limitations of naive set theory and formal logic by showing that a contradiction can arise from a seemingly-innocuous set of premises.
The paradox asks us to imagine a village in which there is a male barber who shaves every man in the village who does not shave, and no one else.
In other words, this very barber decides whether you get a clean shave or a face full of stubble! Is it possible that the barber shaves himself? If so, then he doesn’t. If not, then he does.With a free flow chart maker, maybe you can find out.
2. The Boy-Girl Paradox
Imagine you meet a person who says the exact opposite of everything they say (i.e., if they like something, they hate it; if they’re happy, they’re sad).
You will probably think that this is just an odd quirk or that perhaps their brain was damaged in some way. So if your friends want to find someone who likes opposite-to-everything,
they should also look for someone who hates opposite-to-everything. They’ll have no problem finding an opposite person if their friend really does hate everything. Similarly, if you are looking for a happy person, you may be able to find one by looking for someone who’s sad.
3. The Ball-Cup Paradox
If you have a cup filled with water, what is the volume of the water? Now imagine that you take out half of the volume (i.e., pour half of it out). Does this mean that there’s less water in the cup than before? If you said yes, then you’re committed to the conclusion that if you pour half of the water out again, it will be even less.
And yet after pouring half of this new amount out, there’ll still be more water in the cup than at first! Try mapping this in an online flow chart maker; maybe you’ll get to the bottom of things.
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4. The Paradox of the Courtroom (or Newcomb’s Paradox)
Let’s say that a friend of yours is in court and she has been picked up by the police for stealing money from Newcomb, an eccentric billionaire. However, there was no evidence against her and Newcomb offered this generous deal: She will be allowed to go free if she can pick the hundred-dollar bill from one of two boxes.
The first box has ten $100 bills and the second contains either zero, ten, or even a million $100 bills. If you were presented with this situation, what would you do? Choose the first box or choose both boxes?
Find the answer in a flow chart diagram maker.
4. The Buried Lede
If you asked 10 different people to tell you the story behind something, each of them would give you a different version of events.
Now imagine that 9 out of those 10 are also telling you what the other person is saying about your own account! Which report are you most likely to trust?
With a flow chart maker online such as Venngage, you can dig up the truth.
5. The Two-Envelope Paradox
You receive two envelopes from a close friend who lives in a faraway country and has never met you before. You open one envelope, and it contains twice as much money as the other. Which should you choose to keep the entire sum?
The paradox: The two envelopes look exactly the same! Thus it’s impossible to tell which envelope is larger without opening them both. But after opening one of them, you can no longer trust the appearance of the two envelopes. So how are you supposed to choose?
6. The Paradox Of Omnipotence
If God is all-powerful, then he can do anything – including making himself not powerful! Is it possible for an all-powerful being to create a being more powerful than itself?
If God is not more powerful than himself, then he can’t create a being more powerful than himself. But if he’s not more powerful than himself, then he isn’t all-powerful! So if God creates something more powerful than himself and his creation does the same thing to him, then there could never have been an all-powerful God in the first place.
It’s quite the paradox in a lofty topic, but a simple flow chart maker should cut it.
7. Paradoxes Of Infinite Supply
If you were given a large supply of something, such as an infinite amount of gold coins, what would happen to the value of each individual coin? Suppose we took a piece of land and added up its area to find that it contained trillions upon trillions of square feet (i.e., an infinite amount).
Is it correct to say that the price of each square foot on this land is zero? Apart from a flow chart, you can use a mindmap for this too.
In Conclusion
A paradox is a statement that simultaneously seems both true and false. Paradoxes are often used in philosophy to explore the nature of truth or to create an interesting twist on one’s perspective.
To understand these paradoxes better, you can make flow charts about them.
