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Puzzles

Insights puzzle

How to Design a Perpetual Energy Machine

By Pradeep Mutalik
April 1, 2020
Read Later

This April, find the fatal flaws in two paradoxical claims — one about a perpetual source of energy and the other about whether you will ever see the solution to these puzzles.

Insights puzzle

Solution: ‘Is It Turtles All the Way Down?’

By Pradeep Mutalik
March 27, 2020
Read Later

While the age-old chicken-and-egg paradox is easily answered, the question of infinite regress in physics is far from resolved.

Insights puzzle

Did the Chicken Come First or Is It Turtles All the Way Down?

By Pradeep Mutalik
February 6, 2020
Read Later

The apparent paradox of the chicken and the egg smells like “turtles all the way down.” This puzzle shows how biology and physics can overcome infinite regress.

Insights puzzle

Solution: ‘Natural Law and Elegant Math’

By Pradeep Mutalik
January 17, 2020
Read Later

While mathematics gives us elegant explanations for many physical phenomena, real-world situations often require us to scramble through dense numerical thickets.

Insights puzzle

Does Natural Law Need Elegant Mathematics?

By Pradeep Mutalik
December 5, 2019
Read Later

Many of us are drawn to beauty in mathematics. But is that the way nature really works?

Insights puzzle

Solution: ‘Randomness From Determinism’

By Pradeep Mutalik
November 22, 2019
Read Later

Readers’ modifications of a bean machine showed how deterministic laws are capable of producing random-seeming behavior.

Insights puzzle

How Randomness Can Arise From Determinism

By Pradeep Mutalik
October 14, 2019
Read Later

Playing with a simple bean machine illustrates how deterministic laws can produce probabilistic, random-seeming behavior.

An illustration of a sunset beach scene turned into a puzzle.
Insights puzzle

Solution: ‘Perfect Randomness’

By Pradeep Mutalik
September 27, 2019
Read Later

Is nature inherently random or is perfect randomness just an illusion based on our ignorance?

An illustration of a sunset beach scene turned into a puzzle.
Insights puzzle

The Puzzling Search for Perfect Randomness

By Pradeep Mutalik
August 20, 2019
Read Later

Does objective, perfect randomness exist, or is randomness merely a product of our ignorance?


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