Friday riddle

Something for a little fun on a Friday.

Riddle: What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?

We've all heard this old riddle, and perhaps even thought about it for a while at one time or another. So what really is the answer?

(This question came up recently when my sons and I were having a pleasant evening's chat in the living room, as we often do. We kicked the riddle around for a while, not really arriving at a satisfactory answer).

So, intrigued by the question, I then decided to consult Google, the fountain of all knowledge and wisdom, and a little searching produced what the perfectly obvious answer is. Then I thought I would share that answer with you, for a little Friday fun.

A number of sites, some of them rather philosophically sophisticated BTW, pointed out that the riddle is meaningless, and therefore has no answer to it, because it is flawed with an internal contradiction.

Namely, an irresistible force and an immovable object cannot exist simultaneously. Think about it. If a force is truly irresistible, then there can be no such thing as an immovable object. Because otherwise the force is not irresistible. But it has been defined that way. Conversely, if an object is truly immovable, then, by the same reasoning, there can be no such thing as an irresistible force, since otherwise the object is then not immovable. But it has been defined that way.

Therefore the riddle as presented is self-contradictory, and thus there is no answer to it.

Although I did find one rather interesting dissenting opinion. One site maintained that what might possibly happen is that the irresistible force and the immovable object, instead of challenging each other as it were, they actually merge, or join together, somehow, to form a new single entity, which contains the qualities of each, so that this new entity is itself both irresistible and immovable at the same time.

What such an entity would be I have no idea, but perhaps that would constitute another riddle in itself. (!)

(Granted all the above is way OT, even a bit of an odd discussion perhaps, but, hey, it's Friday and time for a little such diversion).

Okay, what DOES get "wetter and wetter the more it dries?"

Somebody smarter than me could probably turn this into a good riddle:

I got an e-mail saying "At Google Earth we can read maps backwards!" I thought, "That's just spam."

What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?

compound stationary movement.

81Gy
Funny you mention that. That was also a sports headline on yahoo yesterday:
Question-"What happens when an irresistible force(a batted line drive baseball travelling 101 MPH) meets an immovable object (Pitcher Bartolo Colon's massive 285 body and belly) "
Answer-The ball falls harmlessly to the ground, Bartolo picked it up, and calmly threw the batter out at first base! Video probably on youtube by now. The two forces did "merge" and resulted in a huge bruise on his belly! But he did survive and even laughed about it. Just wish we could no the same with some of our treatments here.

Got to love the gentle giant Bartolo, he is 44 years young and has pitched for the Indians, Expos,White Sox, Angels-yeah!, Red Sox, Yankees, Athletics, Mets, Braves, Twins, and now the Rangers!

Wings aka Riddler, wrapped in a question ,covered by an enigma-Dan in So Cal

In Physics the perceived force of gravity, whether large or small, is infinite in range, and cannot be resisted by anything. But with small masses or large masses at large distances, the force can be very small. On human time/size scales it can be very small compared to electromagnetic forces, which we usually associate with the irresistible kinetic energy of moving objects, and the immoveable fixity/hardness of massive, hard objects.

Given enough time, however, gravitational interactions between the Earth and the Moon have actually slowed the rotational period of the Earth itself, and caused the Moon to move into a higher orbit.

Plate tectonics and gravity/water erosion processes, given enough time, can and have caused entire mountains to rise up, and to be torn down again, .... on geological time scales, of course.

Human mortality fits in there somewhere, too. I like the way our bodies only live a few score years, yet our minds can contemplate billions of years.

Charles

To the original riddle...I recall a Peanuts comic where Charlie Brown is standing (of course on his pitcher's mound), arms crossed saying "I am immovable, invincible, unchanging, etc etc" Frame 2 has Snoopy running by with Linus's blanket in his teeth and Linus holding on for dear life, and Charlie Brown flies up in the air. Frame 3, has Charlie Brown lying on his back, still arms crossed, still saying the same things.

Make of it what you will.

PDA -

Okay, I guess that works, unless I happen to have a load of kryptonite in the trunk of the car!

I found this riddle in a several-year-old thread on HW/PC. It's a witty way to look at a serious question...you can think of this as "a thinking-man's" riddle:

Imagine you are one of 100 men in a room. Seventeen of you will be diagnosed with prostate cancer, and three are destined to die from it. But nobody knows which ones. Now imagine there is a man wearing a white coat on the other side of the door. In his hand are 17 pills, one of which will save the life of one of the men with prostate cancer. Would you open the door and invite him into the room to deliver the pills to 17 of the 100 men?

Statistics for the effects of PSA testing are often represented this way — only in terms of possible benefit. But to completely convey the PSA screening story, you have to extend the metaphor in this way:

After handing out the pills, the man in the white coat randomly shoots one of the 17 men dead. Then he shoots 10 more in the groin, leaving them impotent or incontinent. Now would you open that door?

The key point is that the only way to measure any screening test or treatment accurately is to examine overall mortality. That means researchers must look not just at the number of deaths from the disease but also at the number of deaths and other side effects are caused by treatment.

Thought provoking.

Post Edited (NKinney) : 5/20/2018 12:37:38 PM (GMT-6)

Ok, one more at your request...but you don’t also have to be an engineer or physicist to figure this one out.

What is at the beginning of the end and the beginning of eternity, and at the end of time and the end of space?

Post Edited (NKinney) : 5/21/2018 7:29:35 AM (GMT-6)

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