Tuesday, November 1, 2011

The village barber


Life is full of contradictions and irreconcilable opposites – real twists of logic that challenge the brain. Here is such one . . . .

A man visits a village that has a single barber. The barber proudly tells the visitor that he shaves only those, and all those, in the village who do not shave themselves.

 The stranger leaves the village and next day wakes up preoccupied by a problem that perplexes him for the rest of his life. He has remembered that the barber himself was a clean-shaven man. Who, then, shaves the barber?

At first it seems clear that the barber shaves himself. But if he does, he breaks his own rule: That he shaves only the men in the village who do not shave themselves. But if someone else shaves him, the barber cannot shave all those who do not shave themselves.

Who shaves the barber?


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