The Physical World is an Illusion

• Chiyuri wrote on 2012-01-09 22:22
  Even if it isn't a rabbit.. you gotta take into account that careless of how to see or look at the length the thing have to travel, it doesn't really change it's traveling speed.. That thing has to travel 1/2 of the length to reach midway.. Careless of it's speed which is over 0, if the speed doesn't change, the infinity beyond that 1/2 will take as much time and effort to go through than what it took to do the first 1/2 of the total distance...
• Kueh wrote on 2012-01-09 23:50
  The rabbit has to complete an infinite amount of tasks, yes, but each successive task also takes less and less time to do so.
  
  To complete an insignificant task, it takes an insignificant amount of time.
  
  So, the logical world and the physical world don't disagree.
• Spartaaaaa wrote on 2012-01-10 00:04
  Even if the rabbit is dumb enough to only go half the distance it previously traveled every hop, how does that prove that "The physical world is an illusion"?
• MareneCorp wrote on 2012-01-10 00:11
  The "logical world", is something created by human idleness and imagination, and therefore does not exist in the physical world, though some properties of the logical world DO interconnect with properties of the physical world. Basically, the logical world is an illusion fabricated through the human mind. In other simpler words, we are lying to ourselves.
• Mrlucky77 wrote on 2012-01-10 02:10

  Quote from Osayidan;729757:

  Even logically it works out.
  How big is the rabbit? How many halves of the distance you can travel before the distances become irrelevant is relative to the size of the traveler. Once the distances are much smaller than the traveler, he would technically be touching point B due to his size.
  
  It's like trying to cut a pie in half an infinite number of times. With a knife you can only go so far, then you need something thinner and sharper than a knife, then maybe a laser, then even smaller lasers, eventually you're down to individual molecules of pie, then the atomic and quantum levels. I don't think anything exist allowing us to cut that in half so you would say you went as far as you can go, because our cutting tools are too big.

  
  
  Also: At that scale it wouldn't even be a pie anymore.
• Kaldo wrote on 2012-01-15 03:09

  Quote from PoLkaTulK;729144:

  Bringing up a rather ancient and fascinating argument for fun and thought.
  
  Consider the following circumstance:
  
  A creature, let's say a rabbit, wants to travel straight from point A to point B. In order to do this, it first must travel 1/2 the total distance. Once it has done this, it must then travel 1/2 the remaining distance. Next, it must travel 1/2 that remaining distance. Next, it must once more travel 1/2 the remaining distance, ad infinitum. Another way to think of this is that it first must travel 1/2 the total distance, then 1/4 the total distance, 1/8 the total distance, 1/16 the total distance, 1/32 the total distance, and so on and so forth. This means that the rabbit must complete an infinite number of tasks before reaching point B, and therefore, logically, he should never be able to reach point B. However, in the physical world we do see rabbits get from point A to point B, and therefore the physical world does not match up with the logical one, so it cannot be real.
  
  Thoughts?

  
  
  If the rabbit has already travelled half of the total distance, what's stopping it from travelling another half of the total distance? I understand that the paradox is that in order to travel the second half of the remaining distance, it must travel half of the remaining distance (ie 1/4 of the total distance). I think the flaw in this particular scenario is that the end point is fixed. In what I recall to be the original paradox, a man is trying to catch a turtle which moves 1/10 of the man's speed. If the man moves to where the turtle was when the man began to move, the turtle will have moved 1/10 of the distance of which the man has moved. If the man tries to catch the turtle at the position at t=0, then the man will never catch the turtle.
• Kueh wrote on 2012-01-15 05:56

  Quote from Spartaaaaa;730076:

  Even if the rabbit is dumb enough to only go half the distance it previously traveled every hop, how does that prove that "The physical world is an illusion"?

  
  
  The thread title is actually advertising more than the thread is saying. This is one of a few famous arguments that were supposed to prove the world was an illusion, but this particular one is only supposed to prove that motion is an illusion.
  
  Besides, If you try to get from one point to another, without first going half the distance beforehand, I'd say the rabbit isn't the stupid one.