Which Alice?
Which Alice?
Which Alice?
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ALICE IN PUZZLE-LAND<br />
"That's interesting!" said <strong>Alice</strong>.<br />
"Incidentally," added Humpty Dumpty, "if we made the additional<br />
two assumptions that Epimenides is the only Cretan, and that<br />
the statement he made is the only statement he ever made in his life,<br />
then we would have a paradox! It would then be just like the<br />
statement I wrote down in your book which asserts its own<br />
falsehood."<br />
"Come to think of it," added Humpty Dumpty, "I'd like to try<br />
another experiment. May I have your memorandum book again?"<br />
<strong>Alice</strong> handed him the book with a pencil. Humpty Dumpty wrote<br />
something, handed the book back, and said, "Look on page eleven.<br />
Is the statement there true or false?"<br />
<strong>Alice</strong> turned to page 11, and here is what she found:<br />
—11—<br />
THE SENTENCE<br />
ON PAGE 11 Is<br />
TRUE.<br />
<strong>Alice</strong> thought about this for a while.<br />
"I see no way to tell," replied <strong>Alice</strong>. "It seems to me that it could<br />
be either: If it were true, there would be no contradiction; and if it<br />
were false, there also wouldn't be any contradiction."<br />
"This time you're absolutely right!" said Humpty Dumpty. "Now,<br />
that's what I call being chameleonic!"<br />
"What ever did you mean by that?" asked <strong>Alice</strong> in astonishment.<br />
"All I meant is that sometimes you are wrong and sometimes you<br />
are right—-just like a chameleon is sometimes one color and<br />
sometimes another."<br />
This seemed to <strong>Alice</strong> a most odd use of the word chameleonicstill<br />
(as <strong>Alice</strong> recalled) Humpty Dumpty sometimes has his own very<br />
special way of using words!<br />
"Now, I'd like to try something else," said Humpty Dumpty. "Let<br />
me have your notebook again."<br />
Humpty Dumpty took it and on pages 10, 11 he erased the<br />
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