Everything Is Relative Strange Loop

The statement "everything is relative" (EverythingIsRelative) is an absolute statement. If "everything is relative" is true then some things (at least that statement) aren't relative. If some things aren't relative, "everything is relative" is false.

(Note: that doesn't actually "loop". It stops with "everything is relative" is false. EverythingIsRelative is a simple contradiction, not a StrangeLoop.)

"Everything is relative" does not entail "you should not make absolute statements". As a statement, "everything is relative" is contradictory, but as a claim, it is not. And relativists don't bother a lot with truth values of statements anyway...

What's the difference between a statement and a claim? How can a sentence be false as a statement and true as a claim?

A statement (in the traditional logical sense) is a linguistic expression that has a truth value (true or false). A claim is an act of speech. A statement becomes a claim when you say it to somebody.

So the statement above is false while you think it, but becomes non-false when you say it to someone? What if I say it to myself? I am somebody, after all. What if I write it on a wiki and someone else reads it? Does that make a statement into a claim? Where are you getting your definitions of "statement" and "claim"?

The header of this page talks about "the statement EverythingIsRelative", and yes, it is contradictory to say, "The statement EverythingIsRelative is true". But it is not contradictory to claim that everything is relative. But that isn't what appears above, where it is X (as a statement) that is referred to as contradictory, not "The statement X is true".

It's contradictory to claim that the claim "everything is relative" is true, though. And by your definition, uttering the phrase "everything is relative" makes it a claim.

Changing the sentence to: "Everything except this sentence is relative" creates a defensively true statement (i.e. it satisfies the constraint of the previous comment) and yet retains the spirit of the page.

Defensible but easily falsifiable. One can quickly generate this statement about that statement:

Everything except the sentence "Everything except this sentence is relative" is relative.

Actually, the first statement could either be true or false (given no other axioms); assuming neither state leads to a contradiction. That falsehood is not inconsistent is trivial; a false statement implies nothing. The statement is constructed to exclude itself from the set of things it makes claims about, so there is no contradiction in assuming it true either. Of course, "relative" is ill-defined, but we'll gloss over that for now. :)
- No - "a false statement implies nothing" is incorrect.
But we can include the 2nd statement in the set of "everything" mentioned in the first statement. That 2nd statement isn't relative (because if it is, it isn't). Therefore the 1st statement is false.

If that absolute statement is true then it must be false. You can add it to the set of excluded absolute statements, but the same pattern can be applied to the result to generate another violation, ad infinitum.

I suppose it is like, "everything is a lie, including this sentence."
Yes, that's a canonical strange loop. For more on strange loops, see http://mathworld.wolfram.com/StrangeLoop.html.

A safer (less absolute) position is that SomeThingsAreAbsolute and SomeThingsAreRelative?.

I would prefer to phrase it "Everything is relative, but some things are more relative than others." -- JonathanTang

which of course is equivalent to "Everything is absolute, but some things are more absolute than others."

WcFields summed it up best when he said "All things in moderation. Especially moderation." (AllThingsInModerationEspeciallyModeration)

How about "most things are relative in the discipline of software development".

Only if you can show how many things there are and that more than half of them are relative. Otherwise, I'll stick to SomethingsAreRelative? in the discipline of software development.

Everything Is Relative is a relative statement.

What you include in the statement (everything) includes not only a name or a description, but a host of other attributes which are not the same, even for the same described item.

 Change is continual and ongoing.
 In quantity    : What was everything a moment ago is not everything now, nor is everything in any moment of time.
 In position    : Everything was someplace different a moment ago.
 In Perception  : How each person sees Everything is different and so relative.
 In composition : Everything is made up of different atoms, so material changes, ideas and concepts change, 
 Everything changes, including this statement. -- MarkRogers

Every statement about "every" thing is an absolute statement (like this one). Relative statements are about "some" things. -- GoedelWeenie?

So you know what "every" thing is? When? Where? What? How? Why? I thought we were talking about "everything". How can you be absolute about that?

I don't know what every thing is, but I know everything means every thing.

That doesn't sound absolute.

Why not?

[For every thing you can point to, and every thing you can't point to, that thing is absolutely a member of the set "Everything". There are absolutely no things that are not a member of the set "Everything". Including the concept of "Everything" in a statement almost always makes it an absolute statement. (Of course you can gyrate around it if you try, but note simple use of the word "Everything" isn't enough; I'm specifically referring to the concept.)]

Which statements about "everything" are not absolute statements?

Well, I was just trying to cover myself but I can't think of one that isn't just the play on words I was trying to forestall. Maybe I was too conservative.

[How about "Everything isn't black?" Surely that is not an absolute statement, since we are not defining what everything IS, we are merely excluding every single thing from being black. Some things within the set will still be black and some things won't.]

The "not" negates "everything". Factor out the "not" and we're left with "some things are black", which is not a statement about "everything".

I was merely including my statement as an example of a statement where the concept of everything is included but which is not an absolute sentence (a la the wordplay mentioned previously). Also, the not does not negate "everything", the not negates "is", so it is the combination of the concept of everything AND the concept of to be that creates the absoluteness, rather than simply the concept of "everything", which is what was insinuated above. Surely it's "everything is black" which is being negated. The apparent negation of "is" is merely a quirk of the English language.

It is the verb "to be" that is being negated in the sentence. If the sentence were "Joan walks to the shop", and I changed it to "Joan doesn't walk to the shop", surely you would agree that I negated the verb "walk", rather than negating the sentence "Joan walks to the shop". Joan and the shop don't change, it is only whether she is walking or not that changes. It is exactly the same in this situation, I have merely changed the sentence "everything IS BEING black" to "everything IS NOT BEING black" Neither of the concepts everything nor black have been altered, their meaning is exactly the same in both sentences. The only thing that is being altered is the verb "to be".

There's a contradiction in there produced by an ambiguity in English. "Everything isn't black" can mean two different things:

Not all things are black.
All things are non-black.

When you say "[s]ome things within the set will still be black and some things won't" you are using the first meaning. When you say "everything IS NOT BEING black" you are using the second meaning. The first meaning is a relative statement (because "everything" was negated), but the second meaning is an absolute statement (because "black" is negated). You can't have it both ways. And the statement about "everything" remains absolute.

 So everything, including this statement, is relative. 
 (Not everybody sees it that way, 
  and everything was different when the statement was made, 
  also reinforcing that it is relative) 
  (So Bill Clinton must have been right -- ItDepends on what is is.)
 )

This adds value to the discussion?

Yes.

Much like the concept of relativity is relative to you, To some, Bill Clinton is there [their?] relative, so your passage read by lesser man would better illustrate the ambiguous nature of conceptualism. Your very words are relative in both dimensions, defining a whole new axiomatic construct. Your statement "everything is relative including this statement." demonstrates a hierarchical pattern of closed systems, each existing on one and many levels of human understanding. 1. obviously worded like a SAT test question, (is this true or false) and 2. The general understanding of the sentence can be misconstrued and different generalizations made from its intent. Have Fun!

Some things may be absolute, but we cannot know ahead of time when or how long that condition will last. So we assume that EverythingIsRelative to be on the safe side.

So does that mean that relatively everything is relative?

[Not even close. Absolutes are common enough that assuming everything is relative is unwise. By the same logic above, since we don't know ahead of time which things might be relative we should assume that everything is absolute. Neither side is safe. Some things are relative. Some things are absolute. Neither set is obviously larger than the other.]

So that means we cannot say that absolutely everything is absolute?

[Absolutely correct.]

No it's not. Show me an absolute truth, and I'll show you a fantasy.

[An absolute truth: "The statement 'everything is relative' is an absolute statement."]

No it isn't. Let us hypothesize a time in the near future when everything is absolute. From that point of view, everything is relative is an absolute falsity rather than an absolute truth. So the truthfulness of a statement is entirely dependent on situation, which implies truth is relative. Since this is the case, we must come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as an absolute truth. No - an alternative conclusion, namely that your hypothesis is not tenable, is also available.

This is an obviously absurd case, as once everything is absolute it denies truth the capacity of relativity. But the underlying concept is valid and better illustrated by a clearer example. Consider the statement "parallel lines never meet". This is an absolute statement, and one I'm sure not many would contradict its validity within a Euclidian geometry. But if, however, I considered the statement from an elliptic geometry (such as the surface of the earth), it loses its truth. Hence, since truth is relative to the observer there is no such thing as an absolute truth. You're joking, of course, since you're presenting "there is no such thing as an absolute truth." as an absolute truth.

As for the first point, I admitted the hypothesis pretty absurd in the bullet point below. But just because it is an absurd situation does not mean it isn't likely to happen. Consider the big bang and big crunch theory of modern physics. Can you possibly say that any object which does not experience time nor space (and hence does not experience change, since time cannot pass to allow that to happen) is NOT in a state of total absoluteness? Even if you don't believe in these things, the fact that they are possible permits us to examine the consequences if they were true. The hypothesis is completely sound, thank you.

Does that make sense? What does "not experience space" mean? Why is it related to "not experience change"?

the intended meaning was that it is irrelevant to talk about properties of space and time (such as change) in a period where neither of those things exist. We can define what time and space are after the "instant of creation" [??], but outside the boundaries of the universe, what meanings can those words have? And before you start saying that the universe is infinite in both space and time, consider the interval between the numbers 0 and 1. Is that not infinitely dense (with the real numbers), yet bounded? We cannot talk about the universe itself being any larger than it was before it was created, for spacetime is the defining property of the universe. Whether you also accept that we exist within a bounded universe is a hotly debated topic, but the implications if true are obvious. "Outside" the "boundaries" of our universe (which we can never reach, since there is an infinite amount of spacetime between them) it then becomes irrelevant to speak of such concepts.

So it's not a question of what "not experience space" means, but rather whether space (or time or change) has meaning at all in the given context. Perfect nothingness, bereft of even time and space. The universe becomes both infinitely small and infinitely large within it and neither exists for a nanosecond or an eternity.

Even if we assume that this mathematical space does not exist in real life, it is still possible to construct one with a full set of axioms in order to examine its consequences. For example, a possible set of axioms for the creation of this space would be (Ax,y3R^n) xy={0} (Ax,y3R^n) x+y={0}. With just these properties (I think, although there would probably need to be more), the solution to any problem would be trivial. It is the "most absolute" [?] vector space possible. Truth and falsehood would still exist. For instance, the statement x^3+x^2+y^4 = 46 would obviously be false, whereas the statement (Ax,y,z3R^3)6x^2+ln(y)+40cos(z)=0 would be an example of a statement which is true within the vector space (although all individual solutions x, y and z would be trivial).

PS. You would also need the following axiom: (Ax3R^n)f(x)={0} where f is a real valued function. And (Ax3R^n){0}x={0}would be required. I think that's all. Also, I removed the condition (Ax3R)x={0} since, for the universe to exist within the vector space, there must be at least one non-empty set. It's just that any reaction with any other set it encountered would produce an empty set.

Possible peculiarites of spacetime, etc., are not an excuse for utterly wacky concepts lacking proper definitions. Firstly, it was you that introduced "experience space", so please explain the concept. Secondly, "becomes both infinitely small and infinitely large within it" doesn't make sense. Thirdly, we can explore space as far as we like (given enough time), though that doesn't exclude the possibility that we can never reach some boundary which is receding from us faster than we can go. However, there could simply be more of the same beyond that boundary - we couldn't tell. The volume of space within some boundary is finite, by definition. Any matter within the boundary needs some space, so its quantity is also finite. The ability to have infinitely many positions on a unit interval doesn't make that interval infinite in length. By definition, it has unit length.

The second rebuttal is accepted, although the only reference frame that would negate the aforementioned statement about "absolute truth" would be the reference frame in which EVERYTHING was absolute (since we would need to get rid of the dependence of truth upon reference frame). If that were the case, then the absolute truth about absolute truth is relative. I think the easiest thing to say is that absolute and relative are human inventions, much like time, money, truth and love.

Kirk: Norman, I want you to listen to me, carefully. Everything is relative!

Norman the Android: Everything is relative but this statement but you said everything is relative but this statement but you said everything relative but this statement but you said... . <stack overflow, general protection fault. If this problem repeats, please contact Microsoft technical support at 1-800-WIN-DOZE, where the underpaid script-reader on the other end of the line will tell you to re-install Windows.>

Kirk: Damn Windows machines. Get's 'em every time.

Harry Mudd: You've saved us, Captain! Thank you!

Kirk (aside): Heh heh heh

Android that looks like Mudd's wife enters:

Android that looks like Mudd's wife: Harcourt! Harcourt Fenton Mudd!

Harry: Shut up dear!

ATLLMW: Have you been drinking again, Harcourt?

Second ATLLMW enters

Second ATLLMW: Harcourt! Harcourt Fenton Mudd!

Mudd: Captain! How could you do this to me?

Kirk: Easily. One to beam up, Scotty!

''Kirk beams out. Harry is now surrounded by androids which resemble his wife, browbeating him for his numerous personal flaws. One of the more enjoyable episodes of StarTrek...''

{I believe the Windows part is a slight deviation.}

Knowths: Everything is relative, and the appearance "Relative" in the statement only confirms that the fact that relativity exists is imminent. In regards to the presupposed continual listed above mine, even time is relevant, in terms of our reality. Everything is relative, it is only a matter of perception, and falsely, a matter of time.

I see - so "2 = 2" isn't valid in some frames?

Perhaps it should be clarified as "absoluteness cannot be absolutely determined". If there is absoluteness, we have insufficient knowledge to separate it from relativism. (Something tells me there is a RelativeStrangeLoop? in that statement also.) --top

Tossing out a few ideas, top? We absolutely know that there is absoluteness (since EverythingIsRelative is a paradox, there must be), and sometimes the absolutes can be determined absolutely (e.g. we absolutely know 'X if X': axioms are absolutely true in a model for which they are defined as absolutely true... and bubbles last forever if they don't pop). I think the most useful things one can distill from your own statement are:

ThereAreSomeThingsWeDontKnow? (due to a wide array of causes)
ThereAreSomeThingsWeCantKnow? (due to both computational and physical limitations)

PageAnchor: one_big_loop

I thought this would be about a programming paradigm that uses only one master loop and a bunch of conditions, something like:

  while (true) {
    if (...) {....}
    if (...) {....}
    if (...) {....}
    if (...) {..break..}
    if (...) {....}
  }

This would be TuringComplete. It is sort of like thinking like a CPU. You have to arrange to have things take multiple cycles to complete and manage state between cycles to continue half-done tasks.

Expert systems of the late 80's often used these kinds of things

OctoberZeroFive

CategorySubjectivityAndRelativism