Lost in paradox
Posted by Anantha | Posted on Monday, June 26, 2006
This afternoon i accidentally stumbled [!.. is there any thing called purposefully stumbling ?] upon few famous paradoxical statements in net, which i want to introduce to the readers here.
The first which dragged my attention [/ distracted ] me was a paradox known as Barber's / Russels's paradox. Below is the explanation of it:
"Suppose there is a town with just one male barber; and that every man in the town keeps himself clean-shaven: some by shaving themselves, some by attending the barber. It seems reasonable to imagine that the barber obeys the following rule: He shaves all and only those men who do not shave themselves. Under this scenario, we can ask the following question: Does the barber shave himself? Asking this, however, we discover that the situation presented is in fact impossible:
If the barber does not shave himself, he must abide by the rule and shave himself. If he does shave himself, according to the rule he will not shave himself."
nice one right..?
There is another one called Liar's paradox. which states as "The following sentence is true. The preceding sentence is false" :-)
The above paradox made me to recall an anecdote in Poo Chan The's Annana Nenepu. The author mentions a similar paradox about a coin hung in some temple in Greece.One side that coin would state "What ever is written on the other side is true". The other side would say What ever is written on the other side is false"..
I know u started analysing it and lost in the infinite loop..
If u want to get more confused, refer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Paradoxes
Comments (0)
Post a Comment