16. Racing tortoises

The author is right - experience tells us that it's almost impossible that Achilles won't beat the tortoise.

Considering the Achilles fails option, the question that comes to mind is why does Achilles not just keep running past each milestone at a constant speed? To not catch up with the tortoise, he would have to drastically reduce his speed of travel at each start of elapsed distance. It doesn't make sense, especially to students of 'train A leaves at 1030am and train B starts in the opposite direction at 11am' mathematics.

It's underdog cool to imagine the tortoise winning with time and space split into quanta. However our physical world and activities will not be as orderly without a summation of these quanta. Nothing would work. But those paradoxes will kick in and get us all confused again.

Logic is what should guide us. Experience is what tells us what to expect. Sometimes the two don’t meet eye to eye. This is one of those times.

(It's nice to know that the ancient Greeks were thinking really hard way back in 500BC. Makes you wonder why we're so screwed up 2500 years later.)