My friend sent me a picture of a dumpster with a message painted on the side: "Empty when full". We both realize the words mean that the dumpster should be emptied when it gets full. However, the contradiction, that the bin is actually empty when it is actually full, reminded somebody of Schroedinger's cat, which in a famous thought experiment, could be both dead and alive, given the theories of quantum mechanics.
I am not a quantum mechanic but I am interested in contradictions and their power, if any. The first source of blatant contradictions that comes to mind is the novel "1984". In that book, the government tries to get people to believe what the government thinks will give it the most power and control over people. It may be that the slogans and statements from the novel would not be accepted today. It may also be that some sort of acceptance by many citizens would still fail to provide general belief in the government's statements such as "War is Peace" and "Ignorance is Strength".
Another source of contradiction is one's marriage partner. There are times when I think it is dark but my partner thinks it isn't. So far the loving couple in this marriage have not engaged in "gaslighting", the practice in the 1944 movie where the husband contradicts the wife's statements of recent memory. He is intentionally trying to make her doubt her senses, her mind and her memory.
One aspect of contradiction that matters but is often skipped is message length. When a politician says "The sky is blue" and then says that he never asserted that the sky is blue, I forget about him and his worth. But in the case of the dumpster that needs emptying when it is full, we could take the trouble to write out a more complete message but in doing so, we will make a message that contains more words, that is longer. In today's world of more elaborate auto systems and even smarter phones, a complete message of what the phone can do and how to make it do each of its abilities would make a long, boring, expensive manual, one that few people would read. Once we get a long enough manual, it will be difficult for most of us to remember what we read. So, naturally, we have mostly abandoned long manuals and left it to users to experiment.
