Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Irresistible Force Paradox

So I found my blog again after almost six months and now I'm all over it with a post a day for three days. This post come because I learned about something new on Wikipedia called the Irresistible Force Paradox.

How I got this far in life without ever even hearing about this I'll never know, but it's damn interesting. I knew the shield and two-handed mace from World of Warcraft had something in common (and this item is funny too).

After reading Wikipedia's definition and solutions to the problem I wondered to myself if an unstoppable force can stop on it's own? True, it's unstoppable, and by the literal definition it cannot be stopped by anything. But, if it was truly unstoppable would it not be able to stop itself because by not being able to stop itself, in itself, makes it not unstoppable! Let me try to explain this another way...

Basically there cannot be a such a thing as an unstoppable force. For an unstoppable force to be unstoppable, it should be able to do whatever it wants to. It has unlimited energy. So if it wanted to stop, but it can't, now it didn't do whatever it wanted to. It has limitations, and with unlimited energy it cannot have limitations. It's inability to stop invalidates it's very existence as and unstoppable force.

My argument for an immovable object is a little different. An immovable object cannot exist because for an immovable object to exist it cannot be made of atoms. Atoms move pretty much no matter what (at least as far as I know).

Another argument for both to not exist would go back to perpetual motion. For an object to have unlimited energy and power, this unlimited energy and power would have to come from somewhere. Unless for some reason the immovable object or unstoppable force has an external power source; which would very likely make them stoppable or movable. Thus, either of these anomalies, will have to violate the first law of thermodynamics.

For the most part, immovable objects and irresistible forces exist, but only in perspective. André the Giant may really be an immovable object to a wus like me.

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