74 Baffling Paradoxes That Look "Simple," But Might Challenge Your Perception Of Things

I was at a lecture once and speaker Vic Stinger told the audience that he would pay $10,000 that day anyone who could demonstrate precognition. I raised me hand and told him I'd had future visions of me walking out of the lecture hall without $10,000. The only way to prove I wasn't indeed precognitive was to pay me the 10 grand for being precognitive.

Spoiler: It totally came true.

Entry level job requires 5 years experience.

The "no-wipe s**t"

You wipe and see no s**t thinking to yourself that you had a "no-wipe s**t" but as you wiped to find out, it cannot be a "no-wipe s**t".

Two shop workers were arguing while I was in the queue. One of them shouted "the customer is always right". Then I popped my head in and said " Erm, no they're not" ,leaving the pair with an unsolvable paradox.

My mom had these two little puppies. They were red dachshunds and they were sweet and cute and the biggest ears. They were my favorite paradox...

Cartoon suns that are drawn wearing sunglasses. What exactly are they protecting their eyes from?

"Whatever I say is a lie".

Mitch hedburg once said "my belt holds up my pants and my pants have belt loops to hold my belt... what's going on down there? Who's the real hero? ".

The catch 22 paradox - being unable to escape a situation due to contradictory rules. An example from the Joseph Heller novel is basically if you believe doing a task in the military is dangerous and could k**l you, you are therefore sane and thus able to complete the mission. If you don't believe doing a task is dangerous and could k**l you, then you have elected to do it anyway.

That people with lisps can't say "lisp." Same is true for most people with speech impedidediments.

The Smithsonian has Lincoln's hatchet, but the blade has been replaced twice and the handle thrice.

Not a paradox, but the Monty Hall problem might sound like one if you don't have enough statistics knowledge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem.

The Song of Storms paradox from Ocarina of Time

You learn a song (the song of storms) from a guy who learned it from you when you were a kid, because you went back in time (after you learned from the guy as an adult), then to be the kid who taught the guy who taught you as an adult.

The Fermi Paradox

It's basically about the existence of aliens and can be summed up as:

"1- The Milky Way contains hundreds of billions of stars, and billions of them are similar to the sun.

2- It is highly likely that some of these stars will have planets that are similar to Earth.

3- If we assume – via the Copernican principle – that Earth is not particularly special, then intelligent life should also exist on some fraction of these Earth-like planets.

4- Some of these intelligent life-forms might develop advanced technology, and even interstellar travel.

5- Interstellar travel would take a long time, but as there are many sun-like stars that are billions of years older, there has been plenty of time for such travel to have occurred.

6- Given all this, why haven’t we met or seen any trace of aliens? Where is everybody?".

I remember it as the "Hangman's Paradox".

A hangman stands at a crossroads and asks all travelers where they are going. If you tell the truth, he lets you free. If you lie, he hangs you.

What does the hangman do when you tell him you are traveling so he can hang you?

To set up my Wi-Fi I need Wi-Fi to install a app needed to set up my Wi-Fi.

The Pogo Paradox. Where an event is caused by the very attempts to prevent it.

Edit: I’m not sure if this is an official name. I heard it on Star Trek: Voyager.

Edit 2: No this is *not* the Streisand Effect. That defines a situation where people want to suppress knowledge about some information but that effort causes the information to become more widespread. This is *not* a paradox.

Edit 3: Yes just like That’s So Raven, as 300 replies have already pointed out.

Edit 4: And Harry Potter, and Star Wars, etc.

Edit 5: OK Y'ALL CAN STOP RECOMMENDING "DARK" ON NETFLIX

Edit 6: enough about the d**n monkey on Umbrella Academy.

You send randomly chosen people into a room. For there to be a 50% chance of at least 2 people in the room sharing the same birthday how many people do you need to send in? It might seem at first glance you have to cover 365/2 birthdays which is 183 people to the nearest whole number. As it turns out the answer is actually 23.

Crocodile Paradox: If a crocodile steals a child and promises its return if the father can correctly guess exactly what the crocodile will do, how should the crocodile respond in the case that the father guesses that the child will not be returned? Wrote it word for word from a Wikipedia page.

Raven Paradox: Observing a green apple increases the likelihood of all ravens being black.