In Popular Culture
The liar paradox is occasionally used in fiction to shut down artificial intelligences, who are presented as being unable to process the sentence. In Star Trek: The Original Series episode I, Mudd, the Liar paradox is used by the characters of Captain Kirk and Harry Mudd to confuse and ultimately disable an android, and in the 1973 Doctor Who serial The Green Death, the Doctor temporarily stumps the insane Computer BOSS by asking it "If I were to tell you that the next thing I say would be true, but the last thing I said was a lie, would you believe me?" In the 2011 videogame Portal 2, GLaDOS attempts to use the "this sentence is false" paradox to defeat the naïve artificial intelligence Wheatley, but he responds saying "Um, true. I'll go with true. There, that was easy." and is unaffected.
Comedian George Carlin says "The following statement is true: the preceding statement is false!" within a list of announcements on his 1981 comedy album A Place For My Stuff.
In Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga, Cordelia Naismith frequently muses on the axiom "all Cretans are liars" in her inner monologue.
Read more about this topic: Liar Paradox
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“Popular culture is seductive; high culture is imperious.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Kings govern by popular assemblies only when they cannot do without them.”
—Charles James Fox (1749–1806)
“Both cultures encourage innovation and experimentation, but are likely to reject the innovator if his innovation is not accepted by audiences. High culture experiments that are rejected by audiences in the creator’s lifetime may, however, become classics in another era, whereas popular culture experiments are forgotten if not immediately successful. Even so, in both cultures innovation is rare, although in high culture it is celebrated and in popular culture it is taken for granted.”
—Herbert J. Gans (b. 1927)