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It’s a paradox. A rather well-known one, too. Wikipedia has an article on it, in fact.
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Right, it is a paradox. If the barber shaves himself, we’ve got a contradiction. If he doesn’t shave himself, then he must shave himself, yielding the same contradiction.
Here’s another good one: Suppose there is an all powerful being who can do anything. As such it follows that he should be able to limit himself in performing a certain task, contradicting the fact that he can do anything. If, he cannot limit himself in such a way, well then there’s something he can’t do.
Why must it say straight razor? That is really bothering me lol.
As for the barber, he doesn’t shave himself. No where does it say he MUST shave himself. Oh, and beards and mustaches are much cooler than being clean shaven.
No, you’re missing the point. If he shaves himself, then he can’t shave himself because he doesn’t shave people who shave themselves. But that means he doesn’t shave himself, so he does shave himself. It’s an endless loop.
I guess a better question would be instead of DOES he shave himself, WILL he shave himself.
Let n be the smallest natural number that can only be described with more than 20 words. Here I have described it with fewer than 20.
(Note that, mathematically, the existence of this paradox is taken into account when rigorously constructing the natural numbers, but nevertheless it still makes for an interesting language paradox).
ahh, but then it must happen because it didnt happen to be able to prevent it therefore it WAS prevented but then that means that it WAS NOT prevented, forcing it to happen.