Photo: Woodley Wonderworks

A few weeks ago I posted about the controversial ways European countries are approaching drug reform. Today I’d like to broach a topic that you will probably more closely relate to: speeding tickets.

Once again those Europeans have proven to be creative with their laws – in some countries the price of an excessive speeding ticket is linked to the wealth of the driver. For example, a Swiss millionaire received a $290,000 ticket. He was also a repeat offender, going twice the speed limit, and had a personal wealth over $20 million.

So what do you think? The same concept is also applied to drunk driving. Now what do you think?

Someone more qualified than myself (a Ph.D. in economics from UCLA) doesn’t think it makes sense. If you don’t vary the price of goods (cars, houses, food, etc.) for the wealthy, why would you do it for a speeding ticket? Here’s why: just because you are rich, doesn’t make you above the laws of the land!

If you can afford to pay the penalty, does that mean you have the right to do it? No way Jose! If the only penalty for driving too fast was a $100 fine, Bill Gates could drive as fast as he wants. He could just pay $100 every time he gets caught. The goal of the law is not to make the government money, but rather to keep the roads safe.

Keep reading…

Photo: makelessnoise

Last week I posted some of my favorite paradoxes (Click her for part 1.) – here are some more gems:

Service recovery paradox: “Successfully fixing a problem with a defective product may lead to higher consumer satisfaction than in the case where no problem occurred at all.” This is the business flavor of the paradox, but it can be similarly applied to social aspects as well. Someone who is born again or overcomes some failure that was entirely their fault, often garners more respect than those who avoided the pitfall in the first place. Go figure. Nice guys finish last, that’s why I’m a bad boy.

Heat death paradox: “Since the universe is not infinitely old, it cannot be infinite in extent.” Any hot object transfers heat to its cooler surroundings, until everything is at the same temperature. If the universe were infinitely old there must have been enough time for the stars to cool and warm their surroundings. Everywhere should therefore be at the same temperature and there should either be no stars, or everything should be as hot as stars. So the universe can’t be infinitely old, and since it can’t be infinitely old it cannot extend to infinity.

False positive paradox: “A test that is accurate the vast majority of the time could show you have a disease, but the probability that you actually have it could still be tiny.” Consider a test with no false negatives, which gives a false positive only 0.04004% of the time, applied to a million people, in which 1 person in 10,000 is infected. The expected outcome would be: 100 people would receive a true positive, 400 people would receive a false positive, and 999,500 would would be correctly negative. Thus, only 20% of the positive results are correct, even though the test is “over 99.95% accurate”.

Tolerance paradox – “A tolerant person is antagonistic toward intolerance, hence intolerant of it. The tolerant individual is by definition intolerant of intolerance, but in so being must be intolerant of himself.” Should the tolerant person be tolerant of intolerance in others? So maybe the most tolerant people are those that are just completely indifferent to the cause?

More: Wikipedia’s complete list

Photo: Ruben Alexander

Almost everyone has heard the paradox “which came first, the chick or the egg?” That was so 2nd grade. Here are some others for you to think about:

Zeno’s paradox: “In a race, the quickest runner can never overtake the slowest, since the pursuer must first reach the point whence the pursued started, so that the slower must always hold a lead.” This is also known as Achilles and the Tortoise. If Achilles (fast) is racing a tortoise (slow), but the tortoise is given a mile head start, by the time Achilles has reached where the tortoise has begun, the tortoise has advanced a measurable distance X. In the time it takes Achilles to cover the distance X to where the tortoise currently is, the tortoise will have gone another measurable distance Y. This will go on infinitely so that Achilles will come close, but never actually pass the tortoise.

Mpemba paradox: “Hot water can, under certain conditions, freeze faster than cold water, even though it must pass the lower temperature on the way to freezing.” If you have two cups of water – one at 95 degrees and one at 45 – and place them in the freezer, shockingly the hotter cup will freeze first. Check out the link for insight into why and the story of the high school kid it was named after.

The Pinocchio paradox: “What would happen if Pinocchio said ‘My nose will be growing’?” An awesome version of the classic “This sentence is false” paradox.

Drinker paradox: “In any pub there is a customer such that, if he or she drinks, everybody in the pub drinks.” Either everyone in the pub is drinking , or at least one person in the pub isn’t drinking. On the one hand, suppose everyone is drinking. For any particular person, it can’t be wrong to say that if that particular person is drinking, then everyone in the pub is drinking — because everyone is drinking. Suppose, on the other hand, at least one person isn’t drinking. For that particular person, it still can’t be wrong to say that if that particular person is drinking, then everyone in the pub is drinking — because that person is, in fact, not drinking. Either way, there is someone in the pub such that, if they are drinking, everyone in the pub is drinking. Something to talk about next time you are in a pub not drinking.

Go on to Part Deux for more.