How your brain creates paradoxes

Two ways of looking at the world

Our brains try their best to make sense of the world. They try sort through the chaos by organizing and labelling what we encounter. But when our tidy picture of “what is what” clashes with reality, we get what we call paradoxes.

Here's a famous one:

Say you have a bag of rice. You start placing one grain at a time on the floor in front of you. At what point does that collection of rice become a "heap"?

Or, the reverse. You start with a heap of rice, remove one grain at a time... at what point does it cease to be a heap?

Another paradox, called the Ship of Theseus:

Imagine a wooden ship sailing around the Mediterranean, stopping at every port city. At each port, planks of the ship are replaced, until at last nothing remains of the original ship. Is it still the Ship of Theseus?

Or, imagine all the old planks are salvaged and used to build a new ship. Which one is the Ship of Theseus: the original ship with entirely new planks, or the new ship with entirely original planks?

These paradoxes are similar. They both ask the same question: when does something become something else? At what specific point do the grains become a heap, and at what specific point does the ship cease to be the Ship of Theseus?

The simple response is, well, whenever you say so. When you say it's a heap, it's a heap. When you call it the Ship of Theseus, that's what it is.

There's some wisdom there. But that's not the answer we want. We crave specificity. That’s what causes the paradox in the first place. That craving reveals something how our brains work.

As we said, both paradoxes ask when, at what point. It is a question of time. And our brain has two very different ways of perceiving time.

Our first method of time perception belongs to our left hemisphere, which sees time as a series of snapshots. If you look back on your life as a string of distinct moments—that's your left brain. These moments are sharply divided from each other; one moment separate from the next. You might plot them like a line of dots.

. . . . . . . . . .

The second way of perceiving time belongs to your right hemisphere. Here, time is a smooth flow. Imagine a river, each moment flowing into the next, unbroken.

__________

The right brain allows ambiguity, one moment blending into the next. It sees a world of overlapping processes, with no clear boundaries between them.

The left brain likes divisions: this moment vs that moment. It likes binaries: yes/no, is/isn't. Is it ship or not-ship? Is it a heap or not a heap?

The left brain causes these paradoxes. It claims time is divided into distinct moments, so there must be ONE moment where the rice goes from not-heap to heap. There must be ONE moment where the Ship of Theseus ceases to be the Ship of Theseus. We should be able to identify that moment of transition.

But here's the trick: it was your left brain who invented those binary labels. Heap and not-heap, ship and not-ship. One thing or another, one moment or another.

The left brain is struggling with these paradoxes because it's trying so hard to put borders on the world. But reality is borderless. There is no objective way to decide where a ship ends and begins. Is a grain of sand on the deck part of the ship? What about a grain of sand embedded in a plank in its prow? What about a speck of paint chipped off its hull, or sawdust left behind when a plank is replaced? Ship or not-ship?

The right brain doesn't care about those labels. The pile of rice changes with each grain added. It is undergoing a constant process of transformation. So is the ship. What is "ship" mingles with what is "not-ship"; there's no dividing line, unless we impose one.

You can of course "solve" these paradoxes by picking a more specific definition: a heap is 100 grains of rice, the ship must be 80% original material. It doesn't matter. The same result: we are the ones drawing the borders. We are the one trying to decide what fits in the box and what doesn't. Those borders don't exist outside our minds.

A paradox is defined as "a statement that is seemingly contradictory or opposed to common sense and yet is perhaps true". But the common sense approach is the simple answer: it's a heap when you say it is. Call it a heap whenever you like, but don't forget that it was your decision. The world doesn't recognize your boxes.

P.S. I'm simplifying the hemispheric interaction, especially when it comes to language. Another example of drawing dividing lines when the real picture is more complex. For more, read pages Chapter 4: The Nature of Two Worlds in The Master and His Emissary.