The solution is in paradoxes?

How is uniting around the fact we are different paradoxical? I know it may seem so at first glance, but consider this: communities "think" using evolutionary processes, and those will only work well if enough diversity is present. If everyone thinks the same thing, nobody has a better idea.

So if we want the whole (mother earth if you wish to call it that ) to solve it's problems then we have to make the whole think harder, and to make the whole think harder there should be more debate between people with different opinions.

Of course people are naturally hostile towards those who are different from themselves. Perhaps the real paradox is that we have evolved an instinct that is very disadvantageous. But that one is easy to explain: instincts evolve genetically instead of memetically. On the timescale of evolution society even slightly similar to what we have now has only existed for a few minutes. It has been only a few thousand years. Another explanation is that for a meme to be successful it need not necessarily be benificial for its host.

That's a good question because it probably objectively isn't, but I would say that objectively nothing is paradoxical (objective here being the universal truth that exists independent of human interpretation).

If enough people adopt the idea it wont sound paradoxical to anyone in a society anymore. It sounds paradoxical only to those who still limit their thinking to such definition of "united" which acknowledges uniting only based on where we are *not* different. That's because this is how it has historically always been, by default.

So when I use the word paradox I use it in that context, "paradox" as it may be perceived by most people today.

About the introduction of a concept of memes that's quite interesting. So we have genes for our physical evolution and memes for the evolution of human concepts and ideas (intellectual evolution), if I'm getting it correctly. So with regards to that, uniting around the fact that we are different is a good solution to problems because it is the most efficient way for intellectual evolution to proceed. More diversity equals more things to test and process which in turn equals more useful results to draw final conclusions from.

Btw, I just saw an interesting ad in google on this page: In honour of Karl Marx. What's he doing here?

I see the word paradox itself as a paradox. On the face of it it infers poor understanding and/or poor expression, but in fact it's usually deliberately employed as a literary amusement.

The two elements involved are only mutually exclusive if either or both are taken in their absolute form. If something inadvertently sounds paradoxical it just needs to be restated to clarify the degrees of elements. Sometimes the elements have no extreme form, eg how can there be absolute diversity, given the concept of the universal set?

But paradoxes are useful devices to provoke analysis by otherwise ambivalent parties.

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Hey!!!

Very well said.

Thanks. I should have remembered this example from RMS (I must be getting Alzhei

That got wider coverage because "each worse than the other" is so quotable. Paradoxes are like article spice, a delicacy savoured by pundits and consumers alike. We could actually do well to concoct some choice morsels around free software, pen v sword...

I see what you mean. "Each worse than the other" and similar "paradoxically" sounding terms really tickle the mind, encouraging us to think a bit deeper.