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Saturday, November 04, 2006

Cod philosophy. For the following I will remind you of: self referencing sentences; the Epimenides' paradox; Russell's paradox; and maybe a bit of Cantor's diagonal argument vs. Jazz Butcher (though not yet).
  • Self reference: this statement refers to itself
  • Epimenides: this statement is false
  • Russell: what set does the set of all sets that don't contain themselves belong to?
  • Cantor Jazz Butcher: some infinities are bigger than others; when one gets up, goes out of the room, it gets replaced by another
So I have two self-referencing questions, the answers to which are always yes or no because they ask if something has a property (and that's the only choice you get), but the trick is that they ask if they themselves have a particular property - for example "is this question written in English?". 1 is the definition of yes; 2 is the pathological (in the epiminedes/russell sense) definition of no
  1. is the answer to this question affirmative? - answer yes, and the question answers itself, in a way that can't get more affirmative
  2. is 'the answer to this question negative? - answer no and you're lying, answer yes and you're wrong
2 is more interesting because I could always answer no to 1, but 2 circles recursively. Then I'll enumerate the set of all questions and show that there's always one question not numbered (not in the set of all questions, but still a question). Haven't worked this bit out yet, which is where Cantor comes in. Can't quite work out whether I'm taking the piss here. "Is it sugar?"

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