Friday, 27 March 2015

Epimenides paradox


Epimenides (a Cretan) once wrote a poem, in which he stated that all Cretans are liars.


Since he is a Cretan, and therefore a liar, Cretans are veracious.

But then again he wouldn't be a liar!


This paradox can be solved, i.e. it can be shown that it's not an actual paradox. How?


Edit: In this puzzle's "universe", liars always lie. I don't know how to precicely explain it, but "black and white logic" applies.


Additionally, there are at least 52 Cretans.



Answer



The negation of "All x are y" is "There is at least one x which is not y".


So, Epimenides is a liar. Therefore his statement "All Cretans are liars" is false. This means that not all Cretans are liars. This means that at least one Cretan tells the truth. He can still be a liar, there just has to be at least one Cretan who's not a liar.


Now, if Epimenides is the only Cretan, we'd have a bigger problem.


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