19 Sep 2011, 9:54 am
iamnotaparakeet wrote:
DeaconBlues wrote:
My answer to the question is, "What question? You haven't asked me a question to answer yet."
Their question is actually, "do you think you can answer every question honestly", and after which they'll probably ask a lot of questions of the sort as "have you stopped beating your wife?" or other similar ones falling under the category of Plurium Interrogationum. It's just yet another bait thread.
Ah, you see, for that gimmick to work, they would have had to specify "only yes or no answers". Since this was not specified, I can answer with a bit more nuance, which kind of defuses the technique...
19 Sep 2011, 5:13 pm
19 Sep 2011, 6:32 pm
visagrunt wrote:
Of course my answer is no.
There are countless questions that I cannot answer. If I cannot answer, then it follows that I cannot answer honestly.
quod erat demonstrandum
What's next?
There are countless questions that I cannot answer. If I cannot answer, then it follows that I cannot answer honestly.
quod erat demonstrandum
What's next?
I disagree. If you do not know the answer to a question, "I don't know" is an honest answer. This becomes a conundrum only if one is restricted to a binary, yes/no answer, which was not specified in the original post. Certainly, the way the question is phrased assumes you're going to answer either "yes" or "no", but the phrasing certainly permits one to answer more fully, and thus more accurately.
Semantics is a science too, you know.
19 Sep 2011, 6:43 pm
Ambivalence
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20 Sep 2011, 11:19 am
DeaconBlues wrote:
iamnotaparakeet wrote:
DeaconBlues wrote:
My answer to the question is, "What question? You haven't asked me a question to answer yet."
Their question is actually, "do you think you can answer every question honestly", and after which they'll probably ask a lot of questions of the sort as "have you stopped beating your wife?" or other similar ones falling under the category of Plurium Interrogationum. It's just yet another bait thread.
Ah, you see, for that gimmick to work, they would have had to specify "only yes or no answers". Since this was not specified, I can answer with a bit more nuance, which kind of defuses the technique...
I understand the point you're making, but I think you're wrong; the gimmick cannot work under any circumstances, because the underlying premise* - that paradoxes exist - is incorrect. Paradoxes do not and cannot exist. The universe is itself and it runs on itself and it does not run on mathematics or logic, which are useful but flawed tools that happen to describe its behaviour well in some cases. You can state a logical paradox, and people do ad tedium - but it's just sound or letters.
*one of them, at any rate.
