Peter_de_Blanc comments on Anime Explains the Epimenides Paradox - Less Wrong

-1 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 27 May 2009 09:12PM

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Comment author: Psychohistorian 28 May 2009 12:13:15AM *  1 point [-]

Video may be a wee bit longer than needed to get the point across. And by wee bit, I mean you could cut 7.5 minutes off of it, and it runs for 7:40.

I've always (after a fun paper on this!) thought of this in modal terms. Self-referential statements are not truths about the world; they're truths about ill-defined universes. "This statement is false" doesn't refer to anything; it's its own little world, and consequently truth has no meaning.

Similarly, "This statement is true" really doesn't provide any information. What if it's a false statement? Is there a difference? How can we tell? It's its own self-referential world, and it's unclear what truth even means in that little world, though it's very clear that it does not make the least bit of difference in any world I care about.

Comment author: Peter_de_Blanc 30 May 2009 06:38:47PM 1 point [-]

"This statement is false" doesn't refer to anything; it's its own little world, and consequently truth has no meaning.

What about statements that refer both to themselves and to things in our world, such as "either this sentence is false, or Psychohistorian owes Peter de Blanc $50"?