The tiny town of Russell is so small that it only has one barber, a man named Jim-Bob. Since Jim-Bob is the only barber around, he shaves all the men in town who don’t shave themselves. And of course it would be silly to shave a man who already shaves himself, so the only people Jim-Bob shaves are the men in town who don’t shave themselves. Sounds reasonable, right? Wrong. In fact, it’s logically impossible. Jim-Bob literally cannot operate that way, because the concept is nonsense, like the concept of a married bachelor.

Unless you’ve heard of the Bachelor Paradox before (or you happen to have an extremely nerdy philosophy brain), you’re probably confused at this point. My explanation of how Jim-Bob operates sounds perfectly coherent and non-contradictory—why on earth is it nonsense? 

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

Imagine you wake up one day and find yourself in a hospital bed. You have no idea how you got there, and there are cords running out of your body and into the body of a person who’s lying back to back with you on the bed. You understandably start to freak out a little. A doctor rushes in and explains: “It’s okay, you’re safe. Here’s what happened. That man on the hospital bed with you is a world-famous violinist who has a rare, typically deadly disease. He needs to be hooked up to someone’s kidneys so they can filter his blood, and it turns out you’re the only match in the world. So the Society of Music Lovers, which is obsessed with this guy and really doesn’t want him to die, kidnapped you, brought you here, and hooked you up.”

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes