Sunday surprise 03: some zing for zen
[ by Charles Cameron — fun and games — as if you’ll ever really catch me doing much else ]
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I like to do something a little special on Sundays, to keep Zen and his readers amused in the absence of legitimate work.
The “animated .gif” above is an illustration of something way above my head called the Banach–Tarski paradox. To my eye, it’s a brilliant illustration of the curious affair of the numbers one and two… or what I like to call more generally “dualities, contradictions and the nonduality“.
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But in case that mesmerizing graphic doesn’t do the trick, here’s a foolish conundrum for you to chew on. Is:
e-meter : lie detector :: Scientology : NSA :: clear : clearance
?
September 3rd, 2013 at 6:35 pm
From the wikipedia link,
“Obtaining infinitely many balls from one”
This means, if I’m not mistaken (which I may be after a long weekend), that the Banach-Tarski paradox is also an example of recursion. In the animation, one quadrant of next greater scale is the same as three quadrants on the original scale.
September 3rd, 2013 at 6:43 pm
Obtaining infinitely many balls from one
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Let’s just be glad Hitler never found out about the paradox, eh?
September 3rd, 2013 at 7:28 pm
The Balls from Brazil?
September 3rd, 2013 at 11:55 pm
Precisely.