Things I spend too long thinking about

Of course you do. A sandwich is not a specific measure of size or mass or volume.

I’m a bit late to this and can’t be arsed to read through all of it.

So, if I made a sandwich from one slice of bread cut into two. Would that be a whole sandwich? Or a half?

If I then made another sandwich from two slices and cut it into two. That would be a sandwich cut into two? Or would it be two sandwiches?

When does a sandwich cut into two become two sandwiches?

If you cut the bread first, do you get multiple sandwiches? Whereas if you cut the sandwich after it’s created, is it always a sandwich cut into 2/4? Or is that a round of sandwiches?

I think it should be defined by when the bread is cut. Before or after sandwich assembly.

Try telling Jesus and the 5000 that…

That is one sandwich cut into three pieces. However, if you then move each of those three pieces onto three separate plates and hand them to three different people, then each person will say they have a sandwich. Therefore you now have three sandwiches. It's very similar to quantum mechanics, where a quantum entity can be both a wave and a particle simultaneously. In fact rumour has it that Niels Bohr and Max Planck first deduced quantum theory after polishing off a Marks and Spencer's egg and cress on wholemeal.

For the first time in Talkback history a debate has been comprehensively settled to the satisfaction of all. That it took the application of quantum mechanics to do so should come as a surprise to no one.

I do like an egg and cress sandwich, no matter how it's cut or how many sandwiches people actually think I'm eating.

You do not have sandwiches, you have sandwich (or are ensandwiched). Thus, when you eat one item, you have less sandwich, rather than fewer sandwiches.

Talked this over with a smart person who compared it to The Paradox of the Heap.

The Paradox of the Heap: If you have one grain of sand, you do not have a heap of sand. If you have a million grains of sand, you do have a heap of sand. But there is no number of grains of sand which either becomes a heap of sand or stops being a heap of sand by adding or removing one grain of sand. And yet, there must be, because somewhere between one and a million grains, it does become a heap of sand.

(Also, and this is not the 2nd Paradox of the Heap, and I was accused of mansplaining The Paradox of the Heap to someone who was explaining the Paradox of the Heap to me, when I posited that it might be, if you divide a heap of sand into two, you have two heaps of sand, not two halves of a heap of sand.)

I have two cats, and that is most definitely a heap of cats.

Paradox of Heap sounds a bit like a very aged late 60s 'pioneering' prog rock band. Probably with a long dead drummer called Mash or Brix or somesuch and a singer called Syd or Jez.

And I spent too long thinking about that post.

I would listen to that album about 90 minutes after I'd stopped drinking and had a curry.

Or if you were “elaborating” with Shady…