Mathy Stuff
The Humpty Sentence
Taiyō Térada
Man and Woman are enjoying a slow evening at work in a burger king bathroom.
Man: Alright, stop what you are doing! You're about to ruin these stalls that you're used to.
Woman: That's funny you obviously haven't been in a mens bathroom before.
Man: Shut up! Don't you make money here.
Woman: sí
Man: I hope for your sake this place is ready for Boss when she gets here.
Woman: I'm working my way around slowly.
Man: You're a fool.
Woman: Did you here that sound.
Man: It's just the subway underground.
Woman: OK good I thought I might have been drinking and made that sound myself.
Man: Why are you writing on the bathroom wall that we are having to clean.
Woman: It gives people something to read.
Man: There's already enough stuff to read. This one says, “The Humpty sentence breaks when read on a wall.”
Woman: Could that sentence be the Humpty sentence?
Man: Maybe, but how does a sentence break?
Woman: Well it could mean its no longer a sentence.
Man: That's impossible! Then it would no longer be the Humpty sentence so it would no longer be broken, and if it was no longer broken it would still be the Humpty sentence. How can it both be and not be the Humpty sentence? Oh right never mind that's not strange at all. We need to get busy at once or Boss is gonna' go crazy.
Woman: Wait it's even more amazing then that. Not only is it both the Humpty sentence and not the Humpty sentence, but if you continue to do what you were doing, you would once again get that it is not the Humpty sentence. Which means it is the Humpty sentence, which means it is not the Humpty sentence, which means it is the Humpty sentence, which means it is not the Humpty sente...
( The record of time begins to run backwards and forwards abruptly, as D.J. Determinism scratches the discussion into an entirely different conversation than the pawns of the story experience, purely for the entertainment of the reader.)
Nam: Fruoeuwawaeorewawo. Alright that's funny and all, but I just said we need to start working.
Namow: But it's so interesting.
Man: Actually if you are so adamant about it I've actually seen plenty of thingys like this but they're more explicitly crazy than that one.
Woman: What do you mean?
Man: I 'll only tell you if you help me clean while we talk.
Woman: Yeah sure, I love cleaning restaurant bathrooms, it's my favorite thing, and I know how cranky Boss is in the morning. So what are these thingys you speak of.
Man:Well... how about the sentence, “This sentence is false.”
Woman: Wait how is that like the other sentence?
Man: Is the sentence false or true?
Woman: False of course it says so in the sentence.
Man: But if the sentence is false wouldn't that mean the thing it is asserting is false, and henc..
Woman: It's false about being false and so it's true! Oh it is like the first one.
Man: Exactly, that's weird that you've never heard or read that sentence before, you probably just forgot.
Woman: Man!
Man: What?
Woman: Oh no I wasn't calling your name I was just saying. Man! Those sentences are crazy.
Man: Yeah I hate my name, but I guess I'm preaching to the choir. But anyways, like I said there's tons of more thingys like those sentences.
Woman: Yeah? like what
Man: errr.. I can't remember but it's not that hard to come up with new sentences.
Woman: How about, “This sentence is false if it is said.”
Man: Sure but that's pretty similar to the one before. How about, “Everything that ends in a preposition is fallacious, if this sentence contains the word “in”.”
Woman: Did you think that up on the spot?
Man: That was just a bit of my freestyle. My minor in college was bustingmadflowsology.
Woman: Oh yeah you know that's a huge booming field now, If you majored in it instead you probably wouldn't be working at this Burger king cleaning a mens bathroom with yours truly. What was your major anyways?
Man: Mathematics.
Woman: Oh, I'm sorry.
Man: Oh it's OK I've come to terms with it, but incidentally that reminds me of a thingy that is similar to what we're talking about.
Woman: Like another sentence.
Man: No, It's called the dilemma of mathematics theorem. It was long conjectured since about 2035 when a crack teem of rogue ninja mathematicians were able to show mathematically that 47=276,983,048,939,768,265,018,927,762,540,000,000.
Woman: Yeah I heard this before.
Man: Obviously, because if you didn't it would mean you've lived in a hole for the past 7 years. Anyways I'll tell you a little more history. So then they ended up showing that Pi=157/50 and that the number of real numbers is 900. They also showed that the probability of a rolling a 99 with a regular six sided dice was 1 out of 1.
Woman: Are these the Ninjas still?
Man: No these were just some other mathematicians.
Woman: Oh, OK it's just that you just said “they “ after you were just talking about the ninjas, but you meant they as in the all knowing gurus of math.
Man: Yes, of course in hind sight we know that math is useless but I still have the habit of calling the people of “knowledge” or “power” as “they”, in certain contexts.
Woman: You mean like the government in all contexts.
Man: Exactly, anyways back to the history. Then two people, Dr. Automate Emissary and Clash Echo Badger, discovered or came up with (however you want to think of it) what we now call The Emissary-Badger Absolute Uselessness Theorem. When translated into something intelligible the theorem states that mathematicians are absolutely useless.
Woman: Oh yeah I've heard of that, so that's when all the mathematicians went and became philosophers.
Man: yup and that's when my fate was sealed everything I learned was useless.
Woman: Why couldn't you just go in to philosophy?
Man: That's easy I hate it.
Woman: hmm? OK well, anyways how is any of this related to those thingys we were talking about.
Man: pardon?
Woman: you know like the Humpty sentence.
Man: Oh right, right, well you see, the way that Emissary and Badger showed their result was that they were able to get mathematics to say, “I am useless.”
Woman: Oh yeah I read something about that, but it seemed pretty hand wavy I didn't really understand it at all. How does that even make sense? Why would mathematics do such a thing?
Man: Easy, they got it drunk first, and then they got it to say all sorts of crazy stuff in fact anything they wanted.
Woman: aah now I understand, why don't more people explain it that way.
Man: I don't know. That's the way I learned it.
Woman: So how does this make mathematicians useless?
Man: Isn't it obvious? If mathematics is useless then why would someone who studies it be any different?
Woman: I know, I heard that before. I guess I just wanted to rehear it with my newly acquired knowledge of how the argument works.
Man: Never thought you would learn so much history in the bathroom did you?
Woman: Nope, but thanks for making this job bearable
Man: No problem, Freuiwalshcischibhestiii.
I can't keep on doing this it won't come off.
Woman: Peace.
Man: Yeah that Humpty Sentence is staying forever