blog.shareaholic.com
Pair of crocs
I offer you this
paradox
It's all about this
pair of crocs . . .
While one day walking
in the wild,
two crocs snatched up
a little child.
The first croc said,
“We’ve got your daughter;
grabbed her up, from in the water.”
“Give her back!”
her father called.
“My baby girl!” her
mother bawled.
“So, here’s the deal,
now listen well.
We’ll give her back
if you can tell
the plan we have in
mind for her.
Now, go ahead, discuss
– confer.
And if you guess our
plan correctly,
We swear to follow through, directly.
~~~~~~
Well, there you have
it – think it through.
Just what’s a croc
supposed to do?
http://mentalfloss.com
A
crocodile snatches a young boy from a riverbank. His mother pleads with the
crocodile to return him, to which the crocodile replies that he will only
return the boy safely if the mother can guess correctly whether or not he will
indeed return the boy. There is no problem if the mother guesses that the
crocodile will return him—if she is
right, he is returned; if she is wrong, the crocodile keeps him. If she answers
that the crocodile will not return him,
however, we end up with a paradox: if she is right and the crocodile never
intended to return her child, then the crocodile has to return him, but in
doing so breaks his word and contradicts the mother’s answer. On the other
hand, if she is wrong and the crocodile actually did intend to return the boy,
the crocodile must then keep him even though he intended not to, thereby also
breaking his word.
The Crocodile Paradox is such an ancient and enduring logic
problem that in the Middle Ages the word "crocodilite" came to be
used to refer to any similarly brain-twisting dilemma where you admit something
that is later used against you, while "crocodility" is an equally
ancient word for captious or fallacious reasoning
email updates from this blog (in the upper right hand side of the page).
