The Carly Simon paradox is inspired by her 1972 song lyrics, “You’re so vain, you probably think this song is about you.”
Carly claims the subject of the song is vain for thinking the song is about them. However, assuming the song is about them, they aren’t really vain – are they? And if the person who the song is about doesn’t think the song is about them, they aren’t vain either.
What’s makes this even more confusing interesting is that Carly has never revealed who the song is about. Which means there might be multiple people who think they are the subject of the song. It’s like Schrödinger’s cat.
The Carly Simon paradox is a self-referential paradox which occurs when a statement creates a logical contradiction or an infinite loop.
The most common version of a self-referential paradox is “This statement is false.” If the statement is True, then its claim must be accurate. Since it claims “This statement is false,” the statement must actually be False. If the statement is False, then its claim must be incorrect. This means the statement is not false, making it True. Because neither True nor False works, the statement is self-contradictory and breaks traditional binary logic.
Another similar paradox is the rule that “All rules have exceptions.” If the rule is true, it must have an exception. If so, that makes the statement false — but that itself an exception, making it true again.
Yes, this is confusing. That’s the point.
I spent some time trying to design another self-referential paradox inspired by song lyrics. The best I could come up with comes from Rick Astley’s 1987 song lyrics, “Never gonna give you up, Never gonna let you down.” If you ask Rick for his copy of the movie UP, according to the lyrics, he can’t give it to you. However, in not giving you the movie, he lets you down.
From the buttered cat to the birthday paradox, apparently I’ve been writing about paradoxes a lot lately. Hopefully by explaining them, I’m not making them more confusing. If am confusing, we could call that the blogging paradox.
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