The paradox of the liars | Technology

In the second half of the 20th century, the great logician, mathematician and illusionist Raymond Smullyan popularized some puzzles, inspired by the famous paradox of the liar, starring characters who always told the truth and others who always lied, whom Smullyan called, respectively, knights and squires. Some impeccable riddles from the logical point of view, as well as very funny, but of dubious philosophical consistency, since to affirm a priori the absolute sincerity -or mendacity- of a human being is equivalent to denying him the possibility of changing, or what is the himself, the exercise of his free will; which makes, by the way, the liar paradox doubly paradoxical.

Paradoxical or, depending on how it is formulated, simply absurd, as in the version offered by Saint Paul in his epistle to Titus, in which he says, quoting Epimenides: “True is the testimony of one of them who said that the Cretans always lie ”. A crazy statement, in addition to being xenophobic, more than paradoxical (the paradox disappears when he understands that it is Pablo who lies or goes astray when taking the testimony for granted), as it refers to the inhabitants of the island of Crete, but which ended up being true many centuries later when applied to the artificial planetoid of the same name.

The Cretans (some prefer to call them Cretians to avoid confusion, and others call them cretins) are androids programmed to always lie (remains of a gigantic sociological experiment of which nobody remembers the details or the reasons), which turns the gigantic central computer of the planetoid Crete -to which all the androids are connected- in one of the most important repositories of information ever built, since to answer truthfully -or falsely- all the questions you have to know all the answers.

With which, paradoxically, the liars’ planetoid is the place in the universe where reliable information can be obtained with greater security. There is no better way to find something or someone than to ask the Cretans where it is not.

The texts in this series are brief narrative approaches to that “great game” of science, technique and technology, three inseparable threads of the same braid, which is transforming the world faster and faster and in which we all must participate as players, if we do not want to be mere toys.

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