Puzzles
Three offhand claims about babies and crocodiles force one inescapable conclusion
Lewis Carroll offers three statements to accept as true: all babies are illogical; nobody who can manage a crocodile is despised; and all illogical people are despised. Taking all three as given, what single conclusion about babies and crocodiles do they force you to accept?
Reveal the answer
No baby can manage a crocodile: illogical people are despised, but anyone who can manage a crocodile is never despised, so nothing illogical — including any baby — can manage one. It's one of the whimsical chained syllogisms ('sorites') Carroll devised to teach formal logic in Symbolic Logic (1896), still used to introduce the subject today.
— Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), Symbolic Logic — Part I, 1896
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