[subversion]

I am glad that you had entertainment pondering over my paradox, but allow me to reiterate to you that the way you have solved it is not true, because you are assuming that you know what nothing is, when you in fact can not. But before going into that I want to point out that you said something must not contain what it is not, then you go on to say that everything must contain what it is not! So which is it? Are you saying everything is an exception?

Anyway, the point of the paradox is that the thing which everything is not, nothing, we cannot ascertain whether nothing is meaningful or not. Adding nothing to everything does not change the value of everything, so you can say that everything contains nothing (i.e. what it is not) or that everything does not contain nothing. Either way everything remains unchanged. Therefore there is no way for us to decide whether or not nothing forms a meaningful part of everything. Therefore it is a paradox in that it is something which we know we can not know. We know we cannot know what nothing is and therefore we know we cannot know if it contains itself or if it is part of everything. The only thing we do know is what nothing is not, and what everything is.

When you say that nothing must contain itself what you're not realizing is how can nothing contain or not contain itself when it doesn't even exist?? So again the answer is that we cannot determine whether or not nothing contains itself. In general, if nothing does contain itself, then it is relevant, and it must form a meaningful part of everything (this is the option you chose). If nothing does not contain itself, then it is not relevant, and it doesn't form a meaningful part of everything. The thing is, we can not decide, because nothing is simply nothing; it does not necessarely contain or not contain itself and it does not necessarely form or not form a meaningful part of everything.

SO in conclusion, at least we agree that everything must contain itself and that nothing must not contain what it is not. However, I think it is important for you realize we still can not figure out what nothing is (only what it is not), and therefore we can't know whether everything contains it, and whether it contains itself, and the reason is simple: because nothing does not necessarely exist, whereas everything DOES necessarely exist. So now I realize what Godel predicted when he said we would be able to prove that something is unknowable. THe thing that we know we can not know, is nothing, and that is the crux of Russell's and Walstad's paradox IMO. Also, the thing that we know is true but can not prove, is everything. So there is one thing that we know we can not know, nothing, and there is one thing we know but we don't know how we know it, everything. What's most important for you to get right now is that we can not figure out what nothing is, and therefore we cannot know if it contains itself or not, etc. etc.