The Liar Paradox - Stephen Read

[@acidic_sloth]

Johnny’s papa: Johnny Johnny? Johnny: Yes Papa? Johnny’s papa: Telling lies? Johnny: Yes Papa. ErRoR eRrOr ErROr JOHNY.PAPA.EXE has stopped working.

[@NegativeReferral]

My solution to the liars paradox involves accepting that “I am lying” has two meanings: “I am lying right now, in this very sentence”, and “I have been lying this whole conversation.” Lies can also have a kernel of truth, so it’s possible for the former meaning to be false while the latter is true, though it can also be true in that the statement understates the lies.

[@sparklemuffin9220]

Bruh I’m watching this at 1 am trying to wrap my head around this

[@RenegadeComics]

😭😭😭😭😭😭 it's 1am here lmfao

[@hardrockwhisker2771]

I might be wrong, but to me the statement "this sentence is a lie" is an utterance which is empty of any content, therefore it's truth value cannot be judged. Same with uttering a sentence like "this sound is true" - just because we can say something like that, doesn't mean that it contains any meaningful information. Lets look at it another way, if there's a sentence like "two plus two equals five, this sentence is a lie", we would automatically assume that the uttered part which is untrue is "two plus two equals five", because that's the content of this proposition, the latter part essentially is just an evaluation (by the author of that statement) of it's truth value. If you delete the first part, the statement becomes meaningless. Furthermore, to show how meaningless it is, in that same statement "this sentence is a lie" you can delete everything but the last word, because to say that something is a sentence within a sentence is just a tautology, so what are you left with? The word "lie".

[@peterflack9933]

Thank you, that was really interesting. I'm usually not into A.I. types off things, but its hard to ignore. How you program a computer to lie to you. A priori. > the philosophy of Emanuel Kant. And Russell. Empirical knowledge and synthetic knowledge. Well said friend!

[@josephs8984]

Thank you, this was very helpful! Please do not stop providing these valuable vides's.

[@SiemdeO07]

This is something that keeps me awake at night... no joke... every night I go to bed a hour before i'm planning to sleep, so I can cogitate...

[@zzzzzz7375]

my brudda

[@superpartes4990]

If you find a solution please share with us. I have this feeling that there is a deeper layer in this than saying that it is a contradiction.

[@zzzzzz7375]

Super Partes what do you think?

[@ibperson7765]

This video is a very unsatisfying (and I say incorrect) solution. The best solution is tarski’s. It’s technical but comes down to this idea. If I make a statement or assertion, p. Such as p = snow is white. I just make a statement. I write or say, “p”. There is actually no difference between saying p and saying p is true. Snow is white vs. It’s true that snow is white. Same thing. So if I say “p is false” thats the same as saying “not p”. Truth isn’t a separate thing, at least not in statements. So I can say p and it implies I think p is true. Someone ELSE can say what Art Boman said is false. However *I* can’t. It is not coherent. At a minimum I am distinguishing the me now from the me who made the statement before if I say what I said is false. Otherwise all Im saying is “p and not-p” in one single assertion. Contradiction. if I say p, then someone ELSE can disagree and assert not p. Or they can assert the exact equivalent, by saying “not what-Art-said “. Only an outside asserter can call my statements false, or for that matter true. I dont need to call my own statements true because by making them I am already claiming them, ie claiming they are true. No meaning in saying “P, oh and P is true”. Saying P is same as saying it’s true. Someone else can say “yep thats true”. Same as them asserting P right after me. Or they can immediately say not P. So “this sentence is false” is the same as saying “P and not-P “ because I am already claiming it’s true by asserting it. Imagine adding to every assertion you ever make “and this statement is true”. “Snow is white and this statement is true”. Wtf? No change in meaning. Saying a statement IS claiming it’s true. So by making the statement “this statement is false” you are claiming it’s true by making it, cause making a statement always means claiming it’s true. So you are actually stating: This statement is true and false. It’s not even so much of a contradiction as incoherent. Because there is no content other than saying it’s true and false. Whats true and false? You didnt say anything. Snow is white and this statement is false at least is a contradiction. “Snow is white and thats true”. Redundant. “Snow is white and thats false” Contradiction. “This is false”. What is false? Vacuous and incoherent. “This statement is false” What statements is false? Vacuous and incoherent. Hope that helps you sleep man. You are in good company because the continuum hypothesis and liars paradox and set of all sets that contain themselves as a member, and the axioms before the incompleteness theorem was discovered, and even free will obsessions, are all forms of this same empty thing that has driven people insane, sometimes literally, for hundreds if years. Like the guy who worked on and conjectured the continuum hypothesis. It’s like trying to predict what youre gonna decide. Someone else can accurately predict or know what youll decide, but YOU cant. Because if you know what youll decide then youve already decided. It’s all forms of trying to make two things out of one and something fake and obsessing about it. No meaning no purpose no reality to it nothing there. This kind of trying to observe yourself from the outside completely or feeling of a loop or whatever. Same type of feeling as when you ponder too hard if you have free will. Assertions cant talk about their own truth value. We are not just free will causes of everything but we are not helpless caused “objects” or machines. We are one with causality. The solution to that is: I am one with causality. We live in this world. We cant get outside of it. It’s much simpler than all that. The sentence is incoherent. The final point is that it conflates a sentence and an assertion. An assertion can be true or false. A sentence is a grammatical structure and form and order of words its not quite exactly the same as an assertion. Like you can say this sentence has five words. There the assertion made by the sentence that is about the actual sentence and can be true or false. So whats meant by this sentence is false is “this assertion is false”. To which you say 1. What assertion? The assertion that the assertion is false?? Makes mo sense. and 2. But youre asserting it, so youre saying its true and false?

[@AutonovaAI]

@@ibperson7765 gg

[@alanbunyan5007]

One approach to solving this issue is to take the view that the supposed self-referentiality of the proposition in question is impossible, for the simple reason that the sentence apparently referenced by the word 'this' does not yet exist: it is IN THE PROCESS of being formed: that is to say, it consists at the moment of reference of nothing more than a grammatical subject ("this") but, as yet lacking any predicate, it has not been formed, i.e. it does not yet exist AS A SENTENCE. It could refer to another sentence which has already been formed, but never to itself. It's a bit like my trying to sell you a car that has not yet been built and asserting '"This car never breaks down", to which you would be entitled to retort that I cannot reasonably make any such claim of something that does not actually exist! To expand a little further, the basic problem here is the fact that a written sentence is an IMPERFECT representation of a spoken sentence: it is flawed in very much the same way that a 2D diagram of a building is flawed as a representation of an actual (3D) building. Since spoken naturally precedes written language (i.e. the second is an attempt to represent/record the first, and not vice-versa) a written sentence, if it were to be completely accurate, would have to contain some mechanism (perhaps, e.g. colour-coding) for indicating that the second word is uttered after the first, the third after the second, and so on. No spoken sentence (except, perhaps for one consisting of a single imperative, such as “Go!”) has ever emerged complete, but is built up word by word over time, and the only thing to which a subject ‘this’ can ever refer is something that already exists at the time of utterance!

[@chuckgaydos5387]

"This statement is true" has the same problem but is usually overlooked.

[@lamegalectora]

What is the rule of this game he is playing? That you cannot step outside the circle? I find it amusing that he is so mesmerized by the sound of the words themselves. The intriguing question is what does this paradox tell us about the tool called language that which we so blindly trust to rule our lives.

[@WafferG]

Actually there's three options , There might not be a wall at all .

[@JorgetePanete]

don't put space before comma and dot

[@therealswinery5416]

Then the wall is not white because it doesn’t exist.

[@therealswinery5416]

Let’s say for the sake of discussion that the Liar’s Paradox does indeed prove that the Law of Noncontradiction is false. This would mean that the Law of Noncontradiction could be both true and false, and, since the Law of Noncontradiction is axiomatic, it is. Thus the Liar’s Paradox has no implications whatsoever on the nature of truth, since we could just as easily invoke the truth of the Law of Noncontradiction as we could its falsehood.

[@patinho5589]

Just disallow self-reference-ability in the description of things. Solved. This is also how Russell’s paradox is solved, in the set theory axioms, which define what number are. You just don’t allow it. And apply the analytical statements only to ‘other’ sentences. Ie the ‘this’ can’t refer to the analytical sentence itself. Like I say.. solved.

[@jasonrafael5945]

I'm not the best at determining which logical fallacies are taking place, but I feel like comparing a statement's true or falseness to a wall's white or non-whiteness is a false equivalence, or maybe a non-sequitur.. Yes, if you limit the color spectrum to two options to say a wall is either white or not white, yes, only those two options are available. But in reality, the wall can be any option of colors. So there never really was only 2 options, you just limited it to those two options. Likewise, must a statement ALWAYS be either true or false? And, by the way, saying a statement is either true or untrue is just the same as true or false... "This statement is false".. What if it is just a paradoxical statement, and that's the third option, and we don't have to try so hard to make sense of it? What if it's just a nonsense statement? "box rained hill car there over" Is that statement true or false? Neither.. it's just a nonsense combination of words.

[@ABC-yt1nq]

This purported paradox proceeds on the false premise that the evaluation of something can be contained within that thing being evaluated. It appears to be impossible for the evaluation of something - let's call it X - to also be contained in that X. The evaluation of X changes the value of X from X to X + [Evaluation of X]. Prima facie these values are not and can never be equal. Imagine X can only be either True or False. We know some things about X, but not whether or not it is T or F. To learn that will add information to and expand our definition of X, changing it from X to either X+T or X+F. This appears to be similar to the observer effect, which alters the results of the double slit experiment by the act of observation of sub-atomic particles, which previously were waves, by collapsing the wave function into the observed particles. Thus, in order to evaluate X, and not X + [Evaluation of X] , the evaluator of X must be completely separate from and independent of X and must not affect the value of X by the act of evaluation. This is impossible when observing sub-atomic particles because of the workings of quantum mechanics, but it is possible in larger, grosser information systems. Symbology - specifically written language - is such a system. The sentence that is the target of evaluation for Truth or Falsity is an essential part of the communication but is missing. This appears similar to asking someone to calculate the square root of ... and then not telling them the number you want them to calculate the square root of. Without the separate sentence to be evaluated being set out, the word combination "This sentence is false" is gibberish with zero information value. The sentence "This sentence is false" must by necessity be an evaluation of a separate and independent sentence which was communicated, in full, at some point in time prior to the evaluation. The only proper answer to the Liar's Paradox of "Is this sentence false?" is, "Which specific sentence are you referring to?"

[@V_Rosez]

If a Liar says hes Lying is he telling the truth

[@AutonovaAI]

couldnt he be lying about lying (he is a liar after all) lol

[@liyexiang666]

the why hes a liar

[@Ja1sc3L113r]

Paused video to say this...did not watch to end. But her eis my thinking. "What I am saying is a lie." Typical issue: well...if it is a lie, then what they are saying is true! Therefore not a lie! But...that means it isn't true...so therefore it is a lie...*exploding brain noises*. My answer. Yes. What you are saying is a lie (is untrue). Because if you are lying about I being a lie...it is still a lie, by saying a lie isn't a lie, you are lying about it being a lie. Therefore it is still a lie. But if you are telling the truth, that it is a lie, then it is still a lie. You have admitted to lying by saying such. But I am probably wrong...

[@liyexiang666]

wha?

[@matthewthompson555]

This has potential to be either true or untrue based on how one thinks about what is meant by "lying". Unlike an action verb expressed in the world (i.e. "painting", "jumping", "laughing") lying is similar to words like "thinking" or "dreaming". It is content of the mind and therefore rather unknowable to anyone but the doer of that action. If I say that I am lying, you can either take it at face value or not, just like "I am thinking". It really is a rather silly "paradox".

[@williambindley421]

Regarded by mathematicians and philosopher's as the hardest paradox in existence, rivaled only by the Sorites paradox. If you think that's a solution, write it up, publish, and collect your nobel prize for literature. If it was "silly" the best mathematicians and logicians would not have failed to solve it. Even Allan Turing was tortured by this paradox. Also, you can generate the Liar's paradox with arithmatic, so there won't be any more "action verbs" which you think are responsible for generating the paradox. Saul Kripke (widely regarded today as the best contemporary analytic philosopher and a mathematician by the age of 14) tried to solve this paradox and has not convinced many that his solution is correct.

[@matthewthompson555]

I was curious about your response William and went on a small Google trek. Beyond watching this video I have never explored the Liar's paradox. In this video the wording that was used to express the paradox was, "I am lying." Upon that I based my comment. While looking over some written works online, I came upon "I am a liar", or "This sentence is false". Having insight into the many different versions of the liars paradox sheds new light on my initially limited viewpoint. I would posit that any paradox found in nature is a beautiful mystery which further evolution of our minds, sciences, and souls, will one day unravel and discover the next layer of understanding in the cosmos. I feel that any paradox derived from language alone simply points to the plasticity of meaning derived from words. Language is a messy construct of characters and sounds that we collectively use as sign posts for real world objects, ideas, emotions, etc. (When does red become orange on the color spectrum by the way?) And while I appreciate the challenge that the Liar's or Sorites paradox creates for the mind as a logic puzzle, it is unsolvable because it is built out of those messy parts and therefore malleable in the same way all meaning can be. Some would argue that such a puzzle is the perfect type, because it can keep a mind busy forever! I feel that it is unsolvable, and yes, a bit silly, and would myself not invest much mental energy into it's deconstruction. My comment was rather narrow in it's addressing the multitude of derivatives and focused on the sole statement "I am lying". I stand by it in the context I wrote it. However I now have a larger view of the liar's paradox and it's many manifestations. I also appreciate you taking your time to craft an enlightening reply. Thanks all around good sir.

[@evinrenjithemastermind]

The statement "I am lying" is meant to be a standalone statement i.e there is a self reference to the statement inside the statement. You are considering it as an addition to another statement like the one mentioned in the video. Dont think you watched the full video pal.

[@peterflack9933]

He said "pee". Its probably pronounced PI. Or in other words the infinite number. Golden ratio. A perfect circle example indescribable. An indescribable utterance.

[@peterflack9933]

@@stephanosgreco2602 No you silly Dumbarton my name is Pete!

[@peterflack9933]

PHI is golden ratio.

[@peterflack9933]

@@stephanosgreco2602 I didn't pronounce anything by voice. Silence is golden.

[@peterflack9933]

@@stephanosgreco2602 You Stephanos Greco Didn't hear my VOICE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[@b1ralomvchv203]

watchinf this high

[@mickdug]

'This sentence is false'...... is true.

[@hanzhou4058]

here are six points I've summarized from this video: ......

[@seanstevenson8220]

It's an anti-truth :/