The barber paradox as bad technical writing

[kpreid]

In the unlikely event that you haven't heard of it already, the barber paradox is:

The barber [who is the only barber in town] shaves every man who does not shave himself. Does the barber shave himself?

Now, this can be considered just logically contradictory, or a gotcha (“the barber is a woman”). But how about considering it as a poorly-written specification? Under this principle I propose a correction:

The barber shaves every man who would not otherwise be shaved.

Comments

https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id

[(Anonymous)]

So you have shown that something else that is pretty close to the original barber paradox is not paradoxical?

[kpreid.livejournal.com]

An inconsistent specification should be corrected according to the best available judgement of the intent behind it. In this case, the intent I assume is that every man be shaved.