🚀 go-pugleaf

On 27 Mar 1997 23:03:19 GMT, Garrett Choi decided to claim that
>In article <5he5lg$hs8@flood.weeg.uiowa.edu>,
>Doug Siebert <douglas-siebert@uiowa.edu> wrote:
>> I always thought Zeno's paradox was silly because although you only
>> get half the distance to your goal each time, it also takes half the
>> time.  But it is always phrased in a way that implies that if you
>> take one second to get halfway there at the start, your second
>> halfway again takes a second, and so on.  At this point, yes, you
>> are certainly in trouble ever trying to reach your goal.  This was
>> apparent to me when I was 6 years old or so and first heard of
>> Zeno's paradox (I don't know that it was called that, but I remember
>> >hearing this riddle from a babysitter) It didn't take me long to
>> work this out (she was probably grateful she managed to shut me up
>> for a few minutes!)  
>
>Is it this simple?
>
>William Poundstone talks about that Thompson Lamp thing where
>basically you imagine you've got this lamp which can switch on and off
>infinitely fast.  I walk out of the room and you start.  You turn it
>on for 1/2 a minute, off for 1/4, on for 1/8, etc.  After two minutes,
>I come back in.  Is the light on or off?
>
>
>Garrett
>gchoi@cco.caltech.edu
>
This is the inverse of the first problem.  You are now trying to
travel an infinite distance in a finite amount of time.  The only way
to solve this (according to Poundstone) is if the button moves half
the distance each time, so then the switch will end up being flush
with the leads, so the lamp will be on.

The other two machines that William Poundstone talks about in
"Labyrinths of Reason" are: 
  One that shows sucessive decimal places of PI for 1/(2^n) seconds
each, where n is the number of digits that have been shown.
  One that moves a slider back and forth between 0 and 1 in decreasing
distances, then says the inverse of the current number in
ever-increasing frequencies, so that it will eventually say every
whole number, only it will be impossible to hear.

Of course, everything said here has been publicly denied by the US
government, Shell Oil and the Tremere. However, we know the truth,
don't we. 
,.-'`Kearsley Schieder-Wethy`'-.,
Es brillig war. Die schlichten Toven
Wirrten und wimmelten in Waben;
Und aller-mumsige Burggoven
Die mohmen Rath' ausgraben.