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| Thread: Understand this and win a cookie! | |
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Korejora
Promising
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posted December 19, 2004 12:07 AM |
bonus applied. |
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Understand this and win a cookie!
Is real life really stranger than fiction, or is fiction about real life being stranger than fiction stranger than real life being stranger than fiction?
Perhaps real life is really stranger than fiction about real life being stranger than fiction, but you know what's really strange? Fiction about fiction stranger than real life being stranger than real life being stranger than fiction, or worse yet, fiction about real life being stranger than--
No wait, I'm sorry, I mixed that all up.
What I mean to say is that fiction about fiction about real life being stranger than fiction being stranger than real life being stranger than fiction is a bit strange. It should be simple enough to say that fiction about fiction about real life being stranger than fiction is stranger than either fiction about real life being stranger than fiction being stranger than real life being stranger than fiction or real life being stranger than fiction about real life being stranger than fiction.
Now, let's not go into an infinite loop. I'd like to point out that you could just as easily say that fiction about fiction about fiction about fiction about fiction about fiction about fiction about whatever, whether real life being stranger than fiction being stranger than real life or whether fiction about real life being stranger than fiction being stranger than real life is stranger than real life or not is the end of your loop, as you could say that fiction is just plain stranger than real life or real life is just plain stranger than fiction. The beauty of it is that without making an infinite loop you can say something that makes sense. What? Don't tell me you didn't think I was trying to make sense! Just because it's a little confusing doesn't mean there's no rhyme or reason to it...
Anyway... Back to the point...
One way you could always look at it is that real life is your control, and so rather than real life being normal, normal is real life. If real life is your normal, that means that anything that is different than real life (i.e. fiction) is strange to some extent and because normal is normal and real life is normal and normal is real life, and all fiction because it is not synonymous to real life is also not synonymous to normal and is therefore stranger than real life. But then we have to look at our very first question, which didn't ask whether or not real life was more normal, but rather, whether a fictional relationship between real life and fiction was stranger, or a real live relationship between real life and fiction, or the question of the relationship itself, being 'which is stranger, real life or fiction?'.
So let's look at the question.
Is fiction about real life being stranger than fiction stranger than real life being stranger than fiction? One would think that since real life is not supposed to be stranger than fiction, because real life is normal, then fiction about real life being stranger than fiction is not stranger than real life being stranger than fiction because nothing can be stranger than real life being stranger than fiction because real life cannot be strange because it is our freezing point on the strangeness scale. On the other hand, the fiction is about real life being stranger than fiction, which brings up the exact same problem. If you look at the question algebraically, the question is actually, 'is fiction stranger than nothing?' because after removing real life being stranger than fiction from both sides, you are just left with fiction. We therefore have to ask the question, 'what is the strangeness value of nothing?' Does nothing have a strangess value of nothing, or does it not have a strangeness value at all? For one, you could say that there is nothing strange about nothing, because there is nothing to be strange about. I suppose you could also say that there is nothing normal about nothing because there is nothing to be normal about. Then again, you could say nothing is nothing, and so it can't have a strangeness value, or there would be something in nothing which is unhealthily paradoxical.
Let's look at the next-
This speech has ended because it has become too boring. We apologize for any inconvenience.
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That's the best part. 
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Dingo
Responsible
Legendary Hero
God of Dark SPAM
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posted December 19, 2004 12:16 AM |
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Celfious?
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The Above Post/Thread/Idea Is CopyRighted by, The Dingo Corp.
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TitaniumAlloy
Honorable
Legendary Hero
Professional
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posted December 19, 2004 06:26 AM |
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Did you say.. cookie?
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John says to live above hell.
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pandora
Honorable
Legendary Hero
The Chosen One
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posted December 19, 2004 09:58 PM |
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Well i tried to understand, and had some trouble. But I gave you a red star for trying to make us understand.
So may I have a cookie anyways?
I kept almost thinking I had it... if only you'd written just a wee bit more!
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"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
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klauts
Famous Hero
lost in a mourning hall!
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posted December 20, 2004 12:03 PM |
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hey i wanna cookie too 
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Leo_Lion
Honorable
Supreme Hero
The 5th Element & 6th Sense!
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posted January 01, 2005 01:19 AM |
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xyz = zyx / abc; abc = xyz X zyx
Quote:
Is real life really stranger than fiction, or is fiction about real life being stranger than fiction stranger than real life being stranger than fiction?
According to your argument, which I think I understood well enough to take a shot at answering your questions:
#1- "Real Life" is not stranger than fiction! This is so because you consider "Real Life" to be normal and so, anything other than "Real Life" must be considered strange. Fiction, therefore, is considered strange, while "Real Life" is considered normal; meaning that Fiction is stranger than "Real Life".
#2- Fiction about "Real Life" (being stranger than fiction) that is stranger than "Real Life" (being stranger than fiction) is not even possible considering answer #1. You can write a fictional story about a "Real Life" writer, who is living a life that is stranger than fiction. No problems there... That fictional story will even be, by definition, stranger than "Real Life". But since "Real Life" cannot be stranger than fiction (as proven in answer #1), then the fictional story cannot even be compared to it. You can't compare something tangible (the fictional story) against something impossible ("Real Life" that is stranger than fiction).
Quote:
...the question is actually, 'is fiction stranger than nothing?'
Following the previous 2 answers:
#3- Fiction is not always stranger than nothing, because nothing is not "Real Life". Since anything other than "Real Life" must be considered strange, fiction and nothing are therefore both strange. But, since there is no way to measure strangeness, the level of strangeness of nothing compared to the level of strangeness of fiction, is completely subjective. 
Am I not correct here? 
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*The end to no beginning...
*Take care, Leo
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Korejora
Promising
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posted January 01, 2005 01:36 AM |
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Well, most of what you said was repeating something I'd said in the original post...
But yes. You most definitely understood. So here is your cookie.
Open it if you dare...
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That's the best part.
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Leo_Lion
Honorable
Supreme Hero
The 5th Element & 6th Sense!
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posted January 03, 2005 06:02 PM |
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Quote:
But yes. You most definitely understood. So here is your cookie.
Open it if you dare...
Oh no...not another Fortune Cookie. My mother-in-law owns a Chinese-Buffet Restaurant and I just so happened to help out on Saturday because it was busy. Not to mention the fact that I already spend lots of time there eating, but I don't think I even want to look at another Fortune Cookie.
Thanks anyways! 
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*The end to no beginning...
*Take care, Leo
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TitaniumAlloy
Honorable
Legendary Hero
Professional
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posted June 25, 2006 10:09 AM |
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Revived.
In your speech, you seemed to take the rule that Real Life (R) is stranger than Fiction (F).
This is very hard to say, in fact.
First you have to think about what constitutes strange and normal. Normal being the everyday, common events that you witness in R, and strange being things that are very rare, or even nonexistent in R.
Just reading that, you would see that 'strange' is very rare in R, because the most common events in R are considered normal, and things are only considered strange if they are rare or not in R at all.
So if rare events and ideas constitutes strange, then you have to find out the boundaries of both R and F to see how likely these occurances are in each, to find out which is more strange.
R is limited by the laws of the universe, and mostly time. If time is indeed infinite, then there is an infinite chance for anything to happen, as long as it follows the absolute laws of the universe. You could argue that this is all irrelevant, because if strange occurances in R happen often, this makes them common, right? Say, if an alien ship landed on your roof, that would be strange, because it has never happened before.... then if it happened every day for your whole life, it would become normal. But this only applies to multiplications of the same event. If an alien ship landed on your roof, it would be strange, and if the next day you were attacked by a giant squid while eating breakfast, that would also be considered strange, and if the next day and so on and so on. These events are still rare though, and even in saying this these strange events become F, not R. The fact that is an infinite time for these occurances is the biggest factor in this argument, as fiction can only be written for a fraction of eternity, due to the inevitable rise and fall of civilization.
F is limited by the human mind, and imagination. This is where F finally gets stuck. The human mind isn't as good as we give it credit. It is in fact very difficult to come up with an original thought, which leads to strangeness, and to think of something it often has to have happened before, which could mean it can't be that strange, and if it is, it has already happened in R. This is not true, however, because you can take knowledge of R and change ideas and events to come up with strange events which can even break the universal laws.
If you put that into an equation, on a scale of strangeness, the contested rule would look like this:
R > F.
Real Life is stranger than Fiction.
But then you have to take into account the boundaries mentioned, which would look something like this:
where
(normal events) > R > (impossible events)
and
(original thought) > F
Real Life strange events must be stranger than normal events, but cannot be impossible. Fictional events cannot be created by the mind, but it could be said that there are infinite ideas that could be created just from already found knowledge.
This has F strongly in the favour of strangeness with the infinite ideas, but then you take into account the time constraints, looking something like this:
R = (infinity)
F = (infinity)
--------
x
where (infinity) > (x)
This is the difficult one to put into an equation, because it takes for granted that time goes on for infinity, making R infinite, and F limited by an estimate of what fraction of infinity civilizations have a developed language enough to create fiction, x being that amount of time, and infinity is obviously larger than the fraction.
So it comes down to this.
In real life, there is a near infinite amount of time in which strange occurances are very rare. In fiction, there is a short amount of time in which a near infinite amount of strange occurances can happen. The simultaneous equation would look something like this:
R = @*q
F = m*@
where
@= <infinite time units (years maybe)
q= the amount of strange occurances per year
m= the amount of time in which strange fictional occurances can take place
So they are basically the same rate, only you have to find out q and m as the variables.
You can work that one out.
That is just how complicated the very basics of your post is, so I don't even want to go into how complicated the rest gets. Kudos on the qp lol
Perhaps after all that, fiction about real life being stranger than fiction is the strangest of all fiction, as shown here.
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John says to live above hell.
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