what is a paradox? how do you explain it?
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There are two types of paradox.
Others have mostly talked about the self contradictions like going back in time and killing your grandfather before your father was born, or sentences like “this sentence is false”.
The other kind of paradox is things that appear to be absurd or wrong, but are actually corrected on closer inspection. One example is the twins paradox: Imagine twins, where one twin gets in a spaceship and travels nearly the speed of light for a ten years, then turns around and comes back to earth, taking another ten years. Einstein’s law of special relativity tells us that when the twins are reunited, the one that stayed on earth will be nearly twenty years older that the traveller. This is on its face absurd. The theory works very well, but gives this unbelievable result, so it is called a paradox. This type of paradox has a solution though: the traveling twin really will be nearly twenty years younger, even though it seems hard to believe.
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