Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of cryptocurrency Ethereum, is having a blast on Twitter.

An active tweeter, Buterin uses the platform to announce news about Ethereum, but also to crack jokes or debate almost anything. On Tuesday, he decided to tackle some ancient logical paradoxes, including the eternal "chicken or egg" dilemma and the omnipotence paradox.

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"The correct resolution to the "can an omnipotent god make a rock so heavy that even he cannot lift it?" paradox is: yes, he can, but as soon as the rock is created he will no longer be omnipotent, he'll be 'omnipotent except for that darn rock," Buterin tweeted.

Reminder: the correct resolution to the "can an omnipotent god make a rock so heavy that even he cannot lift it?" paradox is: yes, he can, but as soon as the rock is created he will no longer be omnipotent, he'll be 'omnipotent except for that darn rock'



Now you know. — Vitalik "Not giving away ETH" Buterin (@VitalikButerin) May 22, 2018

That sounds simple and elegant enough, but I've seen enough similar arguments to know this wasn't going to be that easy. And of course, within minutes, critics chimed in.

"The concept of omnipotent isn’t revocable. It can have self imposed limits, like a king can make a rule that he has to follow until he changes the rule," said one commenter. And thus started the debate, which you can read by following the entire thread on Twitter.

Nope! Kings are free to abdicate, and indeed I would say a monarch without the power to abdicate is not an absolute monarch.



Water can cease being wet if it can irrevocably transmute itself into gold. — Vitalik "Not giving away ETH" Buterin (@VitalikButerin) May 22, 2018

We're not entirely sure who won, but both blokes sound pretty smart, so we'll call it a tie.

Before the argument was done, someone just had to stir the waters some more with a different paradox, and Buterin readily obliged.

You'd have to pick some genetic dividing line to distinguish chicken vs non-chicken. Since as I understand most genetic rearranging happens at conception, it's likely the first chicken egg came before the first adult chicken.



Biologists feel free to correct me though. — Vitalik "Not giving away ETH" Buterin (@VitalikButerin) May 22, 2018

Sounds pretty reasonable? Well, maybe in this universe. Buterin, the smarty pants that he is, just had to include other universes into the problem, making it infinitely more mind-blowing.

There are possible worlds where it is not. For example, suppose chickens are unisex and self-fertilize eggs, and most genetic mutation happens *around birth*. Then, the first adult chicken likely came before the first chicken egg, at least for any genetic definition of "chicken". — Vitalik "Not giving away ETH" Buterin (@VitalikButerin) May 22, 2018

At this point, I'm not even sure I even know the correct definition of "chicken."

Buterin concluded his paradox-smashing rant with another classic.

The former passes through the latter. Duh. — Vitalik "Not giving away ETH" Buterin (@VitalikButerin) May 22, 2018

I guess this comment sums it up:

Did I just get a Philosophy degree? — kk⚡ (@KevinKelbie) May 22, 2018

Yes, Kevin. Yes you have.

What's fun about Buterin's social presence is that he seems to tackle light subjects such as these with equal zest as actual problems in the cryptocurrency space. Just days ago, with a few comments on Github, he solved an important problem in Ethereum competitor's EOS' consensus mechanism, prompting that project's founder Daniel Larimer to publicly thank him.

Elon Musk, you have a serious competitor here.