Interestingly boring paradox, simplly complex.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylc=X3oDMTB2Y2t1c212BF9TAzIxMTUzMDA5ODgEc2VjA2ZwBHNsawN0b2RheXE-?qid=20090625164520AAgNZ4A

is where I found this, here is the paradox, below it is my response and below that is the response of the person who was chosen as the "best" answer so far as the person asking the question is concerned.

The Paradox: There is a village where the barber shaves all those and only those who do not shave themselves. Who shaves the barber?

My answer. Given the answer below I must say that One (of seemingly few) answer to this would be that the barber must have his body shave him however someone else must control the movements of his body so that in some sense it was someone else shaving him and in some other sense he was the only person who was allowed to shave those who couldn't shave themselves while still not shaving those who could. Because it would be someone elses motions in shaving him it wouldn't be his motions shaving him but because it was his hand and He Could shave it was therefore possible for someone else to use Their muscles to control His body while he involuntarily was shaved by his own self, ish. So, does it give a perfect solution? No, but in my opinion it isn't something worth making a paradox over, if a barber only shaved the people who didn't shave themselves (as opposed to couldn't) it would make it real-life as such no one would have Ever asked such a redundantly moronic question. Yes, I hope someone with a thesis who Wrote his/her thesis on this paradox reads this and is offended! =)


The response chosen on that particular site.

OK. take a deep breath and read this slowly, because it is very tricky. First two definitions:

def 1) All and only those who shave themselves = S

def 2) All people in the village, including the barber, are either members of S or members of not-S. there is no one in the village that is a member of both.

If the barber shaved himself then he would be a member of S.
If the barber does not shave himself then he would be a member of not-S.

A barber who must shave all and only not-S can not shave any S

The barber can not shave himself, because he would be shaving a member of S

if the barber is not a self shaver then he is a member of not-S

The barber must shave himself because he must shave all members of not-S

Thus he must both shave and not shave himself

This is the paradox.

No one else in the village can shave the barber because only the barber can shave members of not-S.

This is a variation of Russel's paradox, and there are several ways to solve, or attempts, to solve this depending on how it is interpreted. I'm not even going to attempt a solution here. Someone could, and probably has, written a doctoral thesis on the subject.

laws of physics: the ever changing?

From a senior level Chrysler person: Monday morning I attended a breakfast meeting where the speaker/guest was David E. Cole, Chairman of the Center for Automotive Research (CAR), an Engineer with 40+ years automotive experience, full Professor at the Univ. of Michigan. You have all likely heard CAR quoted, or referred to in the auto industry news lately. Mr. Cole told many stories of the difficulty of working with the folks that the Obama administration has sent to save the auto industry. There have been many meetings where this very experienced automotive expert has had to listen to a newcomer to the industry; someone with zero manufacturing experience, zero auto industry experience, zero business experience, zero finance experience, zero engineering experience, and apparently zero brains tell them how to run their business. Mr. Cole's favorite story is as follows: There was a team of Obama people speaking to Mr. Cole. They were explaining to Mr. Cole that the auto companies needed to make a car that was electric and liquid natural gas (LNG) with enough combined fuel to go 500 miles, so we wouldn't "need" so many gas stations (A whole other topic). They were quoting BTU's of LNG and battery life they had looked up on some website. Mr. Cole explained that to do this you would need a trunk FULL of batteries, and a LNG tank as big as a car to make that happen. And that there were problems related to the laws of physics that prevented them from... The Obama person interrupted and said (and I am quoting here), "These laws of physics? Whose rules are those? We need to change that (while others wrote down the name of the law so they could look it up). We have the Congress, and the administration. We can repeal that law, amend it, or use an executive order to get rid of that problem. That's why we are here, to fix these sort of issues."