mardi 14 avril 2009

Monster-slaying ax, shaggy dog story & ship of Theseus

Hier, je m'amusais à pérouser (de l'anglais to peruse) des articles sur Wikipedia, et je suis tombé sur deux articles qui, lorsque mis ensemble, me rappellent cette excellente blague que je m'apprête à vous copier/coller, et qui se trouve ici, au besoin.


Graham: Let's say you have an ax. The kind that you could use, in a pinch, to hack a man's head off...
Graham: And let's say that very situation comes up and for some very solid reasons you behead a man.
Graham: On the follow-through, though, the handle of the ax snaps in half in a spray of splinters.
Graham: So the next day you take it to the ax store down the block and get a new handle, fabricating a story for the guy behind the counter and explaining away the reddish dark stains as barbeque sauce.
Graham: Now, that next spring you find in your garage a creature that looks like a cross-bred badger and anaconda. A badgerconda.
Graham: And so you grab your trusty ax and chop off one of the beast's heads, but in the process the blade of the ax strikes the concrete floor and shatters.
Graham: This means another trip to McMillan & Son's Ax Mart. As soon as you get home with your newly-headed ax, though, you meet the reanimated body of the guy you beheaded last year.
Graham: He's also got a new head attached and it's wearing that unique expression of "you're the man who killed me last Spring" resentment that one so rarely encounters in everyday life.
Graham: You brandish your ax. He takes a long look at the weapon with his squishy, rotting eyes and in a gargly voice he screams, "that's the same ax that slayed me!"
Graham: ...Is he right?


D'une part, ça rappelle la shaggy dog story, qui est une histoire longue qui raconte plein de choses qui, au final, n'ont pas de lien avec la conclusion. Selon Wikipedia:

In its original sense, a shaggy dog story is an extremely long-winded tale featuring extensive narration of typically irrelevant incidents, usually resulting in a pointless or absurd punchline[1].


D'autre part, ça rappelle le bateau de Thésée, qui est un bateau dont toutes les pièces ont été remplacées, et qui mène donc à la question, "s'agit-il du même bateau?". Wikipedia explique:

The Ship of Theseus paradox, also known as Theseus's paradox, is a paradox that raises the question of whether an object which has had all its component parts replaced remains fundamentally the same object[2].

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