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xkcd #3084: Unstoppable Force and Immovable Object (imgs.xkcd.com)
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by xkcdbot@lemmy.world to c/xkcd@lemmy.world
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Title text:

Unstoppable force-carrying particles can't interact with immovable matter by definition.

Transcript:

[An arrow pointing to the right and a trapezoid are labeled as 'Unstoppable Force' and 'Immovable Object' respectively.]
[The arrow is shown as entering the trapezoid from the left and the part of it in said trapezoid is coloured gray.]
[The arrow is shown as leaving the trapezoid to the right and is coloured black.]
[Caption below the panel:] I don't see why people find this scenario to be tricky.

Source: https://xkcd.com/3084/

explainxkcd for #3084

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[-] AmidFuror@fedia.io 26 points 1 week ago

The expression as I heard included "an irresistible force."

[-] SGG@lemmy.world 26 points 1 week ago

That's on the nsfw version of xkcd

[-] sxan@midwest.social 1 points 1 week ago

Yeah, irresistible force is the version I know. Now I'm wondering if there are even more versions. Are they regional deviations?

[-] Get_Off_My_WLAN@fedia.io 1 points 1 week ago

While not what you're asking for, but fun fact, in Asia, this sort of paradox is represented by the story of the all-piercing spear and the unpierceable shield in Chinese philosophy. So in Chinese and Japanese, the word for 'paradox' or 'contradiction' literally means 'spear-shield' (矛盾).

[-] wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

Well I'm from Utica and I've never heard the term "irresistible force"

[-] Goretantath@lemm.ee 14 points 1 week ago

Facepalm Man i'm dumb, this is a great answer to that thought experiment.

[-] ianhclark510@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 1 week ago

"What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?" that image doesn't show a force meeting an object

[-] BartyDeCanter@lemmy.sdf.org 54 points 1 week ago

They met, they just didn’t interact. Kinda like me at a work party.

[-] wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

"where's the food and booze?"

[-] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Noooooo! You're violating my binary thinking! Either A or B has to win!

[-] Cochise@lemmy.eco.br 1 points 1 week ago

This is soo politically charged that can't be seen as political anymore.

[-] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Maybe the universe will crash due to division by zero, floating-point error, integer overflow and segmentation fault, all of them occurring simultaneously. The objects will experience infinite velocity and infinite forces, there will be rounding errors, the system will run out of RAM and storage space. The universal CPU will max out all threads, and run out of cooling capacity. The hardware catches fire, the entire universe immediately collapses into a singularity, resulting in a new big bang as the system reboots. Oh, and the log files are corrupted, so good luck troubleshooting that one.

[-] gnufuu@infosec.pub 1 points 1 week ago

A popup will appear asking you to buy the "Extended Physics" DLC

[-] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 week ago

First billion years free. After that it’s 17.99 per millennia.

[-] lud@lemm.ee 1 points 1 week ago

What currency?

I doubt the universe accepts Euro or whatever.

[-] noxonad@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

It's just 17.99. Take it or leave it.

[-] Zwrt@lemmy.sdf.org -2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Division by zero is just zero.

Just think about it. You have 4 slices of pie and 0 people to eat any.

How much pie did each of those no people eat. Clearly the answer is just 0.

Education took us for absolute fools.

[-] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

This one is a bit counterintuitive. My maths teacher explained it like this. Take a look at this graph. If you approach zero from the positive side, it looks like the line goes to infinity. If you approach zero from the negative side, it appears to go to negative infinity instead.

Is it both, is it zero, is it all the values? The canonical answer is “undefined”. The value of y at x=0 doesn’t have a meaningful answer.

[-] WolfLink@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

It’s just as true a statement to say each of those 0 people at a billion slices of pie.

However, with these types of word problems, there’s usually the implication that the pie is now gone. There’s kind of a problem figuring out where the pie went when nobody ate any pie.

[-] jecxjo@midwest.social 1 points 1 week ago

i think I've made that game engine before.

[-] iAvicenna@lemmy.world 0 points 1 week ago

so if god creates rock so heavy that it can't lift it, its hand just passes through the rock? makes sense.

[-] PlexSheep@infosec.pub 0 points 1 week ago

No that doesn't make sense. The thing you're alluring at is a classical thought experiment showing contradiction in allmightiness.

P1: God is Almighty, meaning he can do anything

Therefore he must be able to create a stone he can't lift. But then there is something he can't do: Either he can not lift the super stone, or he can not create a super stone that he can't lift.

[-] iAvicenna@lemmy.world 0 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

lol I am not alluring to anything I am just giving a xkcd twist to this well known paradox

[-] traceur301@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 1 week ago

.. it's 'alluding', y'all

[-] Tippon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago

I don't know, heavy things attract other things, so maybe it is alluring ;)

[-] Charlxmagne@lemmy.world 0 points 1 week ago

Pretty sure none of these exist so idk why it bothered any1 in the first place.

[-] pyre@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

if people only bothered to think about things that exist (especially things that they think exist) we would probably go the way of the dodo. funnily enough that would prevent the dodos from going that way but whatever.

I highly recommend watching the Vsauce video on supertasks—it's a great video as expected from Vsauce but also ends on a great note about people and their tendency to think about things like this.

[-] Harvey656@lemmy.world 0 points 1 week ago

You clearly haven't met my mother.

[-] lugal@sopuli.xyz 0 points 1 week ago

Is the an unstoppable force or an immovable object or a little bit of both?

[-] Harvey656@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

Both.

[-] billwashere@lemmy.world 0 points 1 week ago

🤯

this post was submitted on 02 May 2025
196 points (98.5% liked)

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