I read the following book around twenty years ago and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes logical problems and philosophy. I didn’t realize how these two areas share a lot in common. It was called
There are Two errors in The
The title of this Book
The title itself is a puzzle. I’ll wait here while you ponder it.
Give up? The first error is that the word “the” appears twice in a row but in seperate lines. That one is pretty easy to find. The second one is a little trickier.
There is actually no second error. However, if you accept the premise that there is no second error, that in its self is an error. If you then accept there is now a second error, than the title is actually correct, then wait, that would mean there is only one error again. We can go on and on like this forever but you get the point.
The above is nothing to do with this post besides being an intestesting puzzle in itself. The one chapter that is devoted to the concept of casting shadows is actually where I want to spend some time on. Here are the premises for this puzzle. These are not meant to trick you and they are common truths.
- Light hits an object (for example small piece of paper in the air) and the paper casts a shadow on the ground.
- If there is a large object (big piece of plywood) that is placed between the light source and the paper, the paper no longer receives light and can’t cast a shadow on the ground.
- If that same piece of plywood is put between the paper and the ground, the paper can’t cast its shadow on the ground anymore as its shadow is blocked by the plywood.
So the question is this:
If you accept the fact that you can’t cast a shadow if no light hits an object and that an object can’t cast a shadow on the ground if another object blocks the ground, what is casting the shadow in the one spot where the two objects overlap?
The point of this puzzle is that if you accept the premises, technically neither can cast the shadow as one object always blocks the other object from the light source or the destination of the shadow.
Want to know my answer to this problem? Read on to see.
What does the above have to do with this blog you might ask. I had lunch with a friend the other day (I’m noticing a trend here with my blog) and we were talking about value and trust equity and how we as humans need to trust the people we have relationships with to really unlock value. As you can imagine, this talk was right up my alley.
As we sat that, I started thinking more about how you can only talk about value in the context of what it means in a relationship. Ie, you can’t create value on your own. Someone else needs to “value” what you are doing and want that value.
Furthermore, I think a lot of time people think in terms of win/lose outcomes where in order for them to win, the other party needs to lose or they need to lose for the other party to win. If you accept this premise, you will never be able to have a sustainable relationship in work or personally. If both parties look for win/lose solutions, you actually end up both losing. This so sometimes called the prisoners dilemma.
I’ve been reading Stephen Covey’s book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and he talks about three stages that people live their lives by.
Dependent – you need the approval of other people to give you self worth. This is where a lot of people spend their time. Looking for other people to tell them, they are valuable.
Independent – you are a strong enough individual that you don’t need the approval of others and you are self sustaining. This is where most people strive towards.
Interdependent – this is where you realize that you can actually accomplish more by multiplying your efforts through your circle of influence to achieve more than each piece on its own.
This last stage is where Stephen believes we need to get to. The irony is that in order to be interdependent, you need to be strong enough to be independent first.
So here is my interpretation of the answer to the shadow box.
What makes the shadow is both objects.
If you think about how a shadow is created, it requires light on one side and an absence of light on the other side. What is in between is irrelevant. Only the space between the light and the first object and the space between the other object and the ground are needed for the shadow.
The objects create the shadow together. The objects don’t block each other, rather they work together to create the shadow. There does not need to be a winner and a loser.
In conclusion, I wanted to show how things work together and even when we think two objects might adversely affect each other, if we reframe how we interpret things, win-win solutions still exist.
Thanks as always for reading.
Henry Bill 
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