A conversation about a puzzle

At “WeWork” reception,  they had placed a puzzle at the reception:

“What has a head but no brain?”

As a coffee machine was pouring a Cappuccino for me, I tried to solve it. I told the receptionists (there were a guy and a lady) that I cannot solve it. So it could be me. Jubilantly, I said the answer is “me”. They smiled and the guy said, you got it :) …. then I became more perplexed, because “I figured out the answer”, right? but I have no brain, so it was me and it was not me. And then I said, well it is paradoxical … Something like Russell’s Paradox and Axiom of Choice and all that…. So I gave up. Just like in grad school when I came across the Zebra Puzzle that was solved by Hassan Aït-Kaci (1984). Even though I tried to solve it before giving up, I studied the methodology and ran the program that was written by my academic advisor in his programming language called ALE: Attribute Logic Engine. Sometimes I wonder if ChatGPT can solve a similar but a novel puzzle like zebra puzzle 🤔.

Then next to the puzzle there was a sticker box. I started sorting through the free stickers for my daughters: I picked three stickers that I thought they would love, and they read: “Don’t forget to smile :)“ …. “Today was a good day” … and “Be kind” with a  🩷 on it. The lady smiled, and she said “don’t you want to know the answer?”  And I said I thought I found it. It was me, no? And she laughed and said no. It is lettuce 🥬. It has a head but no brain.

I realized later on in life that the only logical thing to do to resolve paradoxes is by applying Axiom of Love.

I figured that out one day, interestingly enough in another WeWork location, while I was writing some Scala code - and in my coffee breaks I started painting and coding simultaneously.