Try to Relax — and Other Things That Prevent Themselves

“Try to relax” is a paradox with a precise psychological mechanism. So is the traversable wormhole: the geometry you need to cross spacetime closes the moment you try to use it. The grandfather paradox, Wegner’s ironic monitoring process, and Rick Sanchez’s nihilism problem all share the same deep structure — and understanding that structure is more interesting than any of the individual cases.

15 January 2026 · 15 min · Sebastian Spicker