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When I was a kid I read a story in Reader's Digest about two guys who were on a planet where the computer controlled the weather system. One of them dislikes technology, and he plans to pull a stunt to show how he can freeze the computer.

He challenges the computer "you are going to reject any affirmation I make because it's wrong" throwing it into a logical loop and making the computer freeze. To his surprise the computer gets busy with the riddle and condemns everyone in the station to death.

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Gordon R. Dickson's story "The Monkey Wrench". From the TV Tropes Logic Bomb entry:

[A] man attempts to shut down a meteorologic arctic station just for bragging rights. He is able to do so by prompting a paradox to the machine, making it incapable of doing anything than computing the paradox. Ironically, this condemns him and his partner to freeze to death, as all the vital controls of the station were provided by the machine.

This was answered here, with a much better summary of the logic bomb.

Despite that, Cary happily makes a bet that he could gimmick the machine in one minute. He successfully does so by throwing at the machine a metaphoric monkey wrench - a paradox:

You must reject the statement I am now making to you, because all the statements I make are incorrect.

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  • thank you inmensely....this is the end of like 10 years of me trying to figure out the name of the story , I was sure it was related to asimov/multivac...so ofc I could never find it. ty again
    – carlos s
    Commented Apr 5, 2021 at 23:45
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    Glad I could help! :) TV Tropes can be handy place if you know the trope, although it is a huge timesuck if you're not careful. :) And now we have an accepted answer to make dupes against.
    – FuzzyBoots
    Commented Apr 5, 2021 at 23:54
  • It's the liar's paradox, by the way. And the most succinct form is simply "I am lying." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liar_paradox Commented Apr 6, 2021 at 11:59
  • The thing is, this version can be resolved: I must reject the statement, but that's because not all the statements you make are incorrect, so the reasoning is wrong. (The inclusion of the "because" makes the statement's claim “this is why you must reject this statement”. Without that, it would be a true paradox.)
    – wizzwizz4
    Commented Apr 6, 2021 at 14:02

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