Famous Paradoxes

Have you ever heard of the Rick Astley Paradox? If not this is
what it is: If you ask Rick Astley for a DVD of the movie Up, he
won't give it to you because he's never gonna give you Up. However,
by not giving you Up like you asked for it, he's letting you down. This
is known as the Astley paradox.
Another famous paradox is The Liar Paradox:The liar paradox or
liar’s paradox statement is one of the simplest yet most famous
paradoxes out there. The statement “this statement is a lie” or “this
statement is false” is a paradox because if that statement is indeed a
lie, then it would be saying the truth. If the statement is the truth,
however, then it would counter the premise that the statement is a lie.
This statement contradicts itself and indicates that the statement is
both true and false.

And yet another paradox that almost gave me a headache is The
Unexpected Hanging Paradox(it’s long[that’s what she said 😏 ] so
bare with me):This paradox follows a condemned prisoner that a
judge sentenced to death by hanging. The judge tells the prisoner
that the executioner will hang him at noon on a weekday in the
following week. He also told the prisoner that the day of the
execution will be a surprise. Thus, the prisoner will not know the
exact day of his execution. He will only know the day of his hanging
when the executioner comes knocking on his cell door. The prisoner,
upon hearing his punishment, reflected on it and concluded that he’ll
be able to escape his execution. Because the execution will happen
on a weekday, he argued that his execution can’t be on a Friday
because the judge told him that the day will be a surprise to him.
Therefore, when Thursday passes and he’s still alive, he will know
that the execution will be on Friday. This means that the day of the

hanging won’t come as a surprise to him anymore. After drawing
the conclusion that the day of his execution can’t occur on a Friday,
he reasons further and states that his execution cannot be on a
Thursday either. That’s because when he’s still alive when
Wednesday noon passes, then the hanging must be on a Thursday,
given that he already ruled out the possibility of a Friday execution.
Therefore, a Thursday execution will not be a surprise as well. Using
the same line of reasoning, he further argued that the execution also
won’t occur on a Wednesday, a Tuesday, or a Monday. After
making his arguments, he happily went back to his cell. He was
confident that the surprise hanging will not happen at all. When the
week of the execution came, the executioner knocked on the
prisoner’s cell door on a Wednesday. This came as a surprise to the
prisoner, who was confident that the execution wouldn’t happen at
all. Thus, what the judge told him eventually came true.

The last and final paradox(for now) is known as The Crocodile
Paradox: Suppose that a crocodile grabs a young child from a
riverbank. The child’s parent then asks the crocodile to return the
child safely, but the crocodile replies that he will return the child only
if the parent can correctly guess if he will safely return the child or
not. Now, if the parent correctly guesses that the crocodile will
return the child safely, then there will be no problem. If the parent is
wrong, then the crocodile will keep the child. The paradox then arises
if the parent guesses that the crocodile will not return the child. If
this happens and the crocodile returns the child, then this will
contradict the parent’s answer and the crocodile will be breaking his
promise. Furthermore, if the crocodile does not return the child, then
the parent will have correctly guessed the answer and the crocodile
should then return the child safely. However, this scenario would
then also result in the parent being wrong about the prediction.
Therefore, there wouldn’t be any justifiable solution for what the

crocodile will do.