Sunday, April 10, 2011

IT'S A PARADOX!

The Hangman. 
                   There is a hangman who stands on a hill along a road to town.  Every person who passes is asked the same question:  "Where are you going?"  If the passerby answers honestly, he or she is allowed to continue.  If he tells a lie, he is hanged.  There is, however, one reply for which the hangman can neither hang the person nor let him go. 
                    What is that reply?
                     Well suppose a man comes along the road and the hangman asks him, "Where are you going?"  The man replies that he is coming here so that the hangman can hang him.  This answer creates an irreconciliable paradox.  It is unfair for the hangman to hang the traveler, for the traveler has told the truth.  If he lets the traveler go, however, it is also unfair, for then the traveler would have been lying.

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