Thursday, April 15, 2010

Self-Referential Paradoxes

There is a roup of paradoxes which share in common being self-referential. The best example is the "set of sets which are not members of themselves". The paradox is that if this set isn't a member of itself then it is a member of itself, or if it is a member of itself then it is. Via lots of jiggery pokery you can get from this observation to Godel's theorem.

A while ago I fantacised about writing a self-help book called "How to stop buying self-help books". You can see all the delightful possibilities.

Today I listened to a podcast about something similar - a book called "How to write a book in 33 days".

This is about a non-fiction business book that really is a marketing pitch.

Given I've got two non-fiction books brewing in me - one on competition in telecommunications and ne that could be called "postcapitalism".

The podcast is actually quite useful as a standard guide to "report writing". Botto end is 35,000 words and really as a marketing technique 60,000 words. The author is a professional ghost writer of executive books - and her how to guide looks more like an attempt to frighten off authors.

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