Battling AI
The liar paradox has been used in science fiction to shut down artificial intelligence (A I) unable to process paradox. In the original Star Trek series, Captain Kirk and Harry Mudd disable an android holding them captive.
Kirk: (to the android Norman) Everything Harry tells you is a lie. Remember that. Everything Harry tells you is a lie.
Harry Mudd: Now listen to this carefully, Norman. I am lying.
Norman: You say you are lying, but if everything you say is a lie, then you are telling the truth. But you cannot tell the truth, because everything you say is a lie. But . . . . you lie . . . you tell the truth, but you cannot, for you lie. Illogical! Illogical! Please explain! You are human. Only humans can explain their behavior! Please explain!
(Above is from “Star Trek and Philosophy: The Wrath of Kant” page 299)
No statement can be true and false at the same time. When attempting to consider this contradictory state of affairs, Norman literally blows his mind. And with my paradoxical thinking, so did I.
My Loopy Thinking
Paradoxical thinking at the heart of OCD brought me close to suicide late in my teens. Reeling way down bottomless vortexes, it ended with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT).
My psychiatrist would say, “I’m not getting on your merry-go-round. But it was his brand of Freudian psychoanalysis that got me on his horror-go-round in the first place.
No way off by focusing on thoughts or problems. Belatedly, I stumbled on a bit of ancient philosophical logic offering a way off the merry-go-round. The liar paradox: “This sentence is false.”
If the sentence is false, then it is true. And if it is true, then it is true that “This sentence is false. “But if it is true, then it must be false. But if it is false it must be true. A never-ending loop paralleling my obsessive thinking.
I would think it unfair some girls are pretty and have an advantage over others who are not. So I thought it unfair to be attracted to pretty girls. I would only go out with homely girls. With this loopy thinking, I felt sick if I started getting attracted to a girl who was pretty. That did have an upside: I can’t recall ever getting turned down for a date.
This is the humorous (in retrospect) two percent least loopy of my thinking that I am able to share.
Metacognitive Therapy
The liar’s paradox focuses on thinking process. We can go deep into the thought process while not getting steeped in self-focused thoughts. Deconstructing the liar’s paradox is a kind of Metacognitive Therapy. Rather than focusing on thoughts. Metacognitive Therapy focuses on the thinking process.
Rather than self-focused therapy, a focus on the liar paradox centers you outside your narrow limiting world. Metacognitive Therapy moves you from internal to external focus. Analysis of philosophical thinking such as with the liar’s paradox shifts focus from internal to external.
Over many years philosophers have grappled with the liar paradox. One philospher’s simple solution to the liar paradox is that some apparently well-formed sentences will turn out to be neither true nor false. Another way out is that what is true to one point in time need not be true in another. Other philosophers take apart the logical structure of the paradox and write out all the possible truth values and false values in terms of letter’d equations.
Or stay with positive logic that cannot get you in trouble. “This sentence is true,” will not lure you into the internal spiraling maze.
But you cannot avoid paradox. Living with paradox is inevitable.
I might not be able to control my paradoxical loopy thinking, but I relate to the fact that philosophers have pondered their own brand of paradoxical, if not loopy, thinking. And just as the liar paradox confused and disabled an android, I was confused and disabled by my own paradoxical thinking.
I learned to somewhat look at my thinking from the POV of an outside observer to see how patterns of thinking handicap me. For example, stereotyping not only is unfair, it is limiting. Following through on my thought process, it would be just as unfair for a girl to be intelligent as to be pretty. I would need to reject the intelligent ones and go out with only the intellectually challenged. It is a fascist pattern of thinking, ie Aryan good; Semitic bad.
A therapist must sometimes get on the merry-go-round to help her client find his way off.
Self-help books that help:
Total Self-Renewal through Attention Therapies and Open Focus
The Open-Focus Brain: Harnessing the Power of Attention to Heal Mind and Body
