Showing posts with label Russell's paradox. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Russell's paradox. Show all posts

Monday, 21 January 2013

Monday Maths Madness 23

This is going to be a short one today, as I have a lot of assignments due in on Thursday, and not a lot of time to do them all in.

Consider a set, I shall call it A. A is the set of all sets which are not members of themselves.

If A is not a member of itself, then by definition it is a member of itself.

But if it is a member of itself, then by definition it can't be a member of itself.

This self-contradictory definition is known as Russell's paradox.

And it makes my head hurt.

Ponder on that for a while :)