Do they expect something along the lines of: "Assume a spherical cow in a vacuum, uniformly emitting milk in all directions..."?
German city offers $1.1M to whoever proves it doesn’t exist
31–40 of 52 posts
Re: German city offers $1.1M to whoever proves it doesn’t exist
#32Its existence relies on formal documentation such as a deed declaring its existence as a city.
Proving it doesn't exist would rely on proving the absolute absence of the documentation, and absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. This is a logical proof of non-existence fallacy.
But surely the German city officials would not make a mockery of such things by frivolously asking for something they know would be logically impossible. So thereby the only conclusion that we can draw is that the proof of non-existence does both exist and yet by logic can not exist.
This would have been a curious case of a macro superposition had it not been for contest communication from Bielefeld insiders leading to an observation of the phenomenon collapsing said superposition were it not that with the collapse a new instance of the superposition is created without delay out of the logical fallacy and the now created instance of the past communication which makes this an even more curious case as we are now facing an endless series of both collapsing and superimposing states of Bielefeld's existence.
We thereby incontrovertible proved that the only possible state is that Bielefeld does in fact perpetually both exist and does not exist fulfilling and exceeding the requirements for claiming the offered cash price.
We realize that this proof could be refuted if the city officials were able to proof the absence of the offer's communication as in that case the superposition of Bielefeld's existence could remain intact and unobserved, in which case I will gladly refund them their $1.1M minus expenses.
Re: German city offers $1.1M to whoever proves it doesn’t exist
#33In Italy we have an entire region (Molise) that doesn't exist. Do other countries have their own non-existent places too?
In Brazil, it's a very well established fact that the state of Acre doesn't exist.
Re: German city offers $1.1M to whoever proves it doesn’t exist
#34In Italy we have an entire region (Molise) that doesn't exist. Do other countries have their own non-existent places too?
Whole New Zealand doesn’t exist https://www.reddit.com/r/MapsWithoutNZ/
Re: German city offers $1.1M to whoever proves it doesn’t exist
#35Pet peeve: converting currencies from the original makes for awkward headlines, as well as making the article future-incompatible (because of exchange rate fluctuations). They should keep the original €1M in the title. It is what they offered.
The problem is that you and I may know the rough exchange rates for Euros, pounds, and dollars (and the fact that we can more or less treat them as equivalent at this level). But a lot of US readers won't. I probably wouldn't have any idea if this were some other European non-Euro currency. I'd agree with you if they didn't have Euros in the article but the headline is really just there to entice readers. And it does…
Reading your point and GP's point, I understand your reasoning, but I agree with GP
Re: German city offers $1.1M to whoever proves it doesn’t exist
#36This is too funny. Someone mocked conspiracy theories by spinning an undoubtedly and obviously fake theory which was in turn promptly absorbed by actual conspiracy theorists and also became a bit of pop culture absurdity and now the city is taking this supposed non existence as an opportunity to promote itself back into the real world of money, tourism and goodwill. Nice turnaround.
"promptly" :-) It started in 1994 on the German Usenet. Edit: this is the original posting http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=2r570dINNahh%40snofru.i... You'll notice the usenet group is de.talk.bizarre so it is completely understandable that people think this is just a hoax.
it's not clear that the joke started on usenet or offline and was just reported there.
reality is that at one point all highway exits to bielefeld were closed (that's what i was told), and that triggered the joke. that this joke is still alive is astonishing.
source: i have been to a conference in a city that claimed to be bielefeld. now i am not so sure anymore...
Re: German city offers $1.1M to whoever proves it doesn’t exist
#37Its existence relies on formal documentation such as a deed declaring its existence as a city. Proving it doesn't exist would rely on proving the absolute absence of the documentation, and absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. This is a logical proof of non-existence fallacy. But surely the German city officials would not make a mockery of such things by frivolously asking for something they know would be l…
Surely you can prove that something doesn't exist if you can show that assuming its existence leads to a contradiction? I'm pretty sure the whole "can't prove a negative" thing is a meme, or I'm just misunderstanding it.
Re: German city offers $1.1M to whoever proves it doesn’t exist
#38Its existence relies on formal documentation such as a deed declaring its existence as a city. Proving it doesn't exist would rely on proving the absolute absence of the documentation, and absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. This is a logical proof of non-existence fallacy. But surely the German city officials would not make a mockery of such things by frivolously asking for something they know would be l…
I’m no philosopher but this sounds incorrect. You can prove that many things couldn’t exist, and therefore prove that it doesn’t exist.
Like an integer greater and less than 0.
Re: German city offers $1.1M to whoever proves it doesn’t exist
#39Its existence relies on formal documentation such as a deed declaring its existence as a city. Proving it doesn't exist would rely on proving the absolute absence of the documentation, and absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. This is a logical proof of non-existence fallacy. But surely the German city officials would not make a mockery of such things by frivolously asking for something they know would be l…
I’m no philosopher but this sounds incorrect. You can prove that many things couldn’t exist, and therefore prove that it doesn’t exist. Like an integer greater and less than 0.
You can prove something could not exist. That doesn't mean you can prove that something that can exist doesn't.
Re: German city offers $1.1M to whoever proves it doesn’t exist
#40Pet peeve: converting currencies from the original makes for awkward headlines, as well as making the article future-incompatible (because of exchange rate fluctuations). They should keep the original €1M in the title. It is what they offered.
I agree about keeping the original currency, but I don’t buy the future- incompatibility argument. Even comparing current dollars to past dollars needs to be taken with a grain of salt and some reflection (though, granted, inflation is not so quick as forex), but when the specific news event happened, the dollar equivalent number had the same value as the euro-denominated one.