felipec
unbelief
No bio...
User ID: 1796
felipec
unbelief
2yr ago
And because the information is limited, relevant information is missing
Information is always missing.
No, I claim I know when the week ends from the phrase "the week ends in sunday", which was included in your example. You're playing obtuse.
No, you are deliberately not engaging with my argument.
felipec
unbelief
2yr ago
If you prove Alice isn't racist, you haven't proven anything relevant. You're just nitpicking.
In your opinion, which isn't infallible.
I'm listening to the supporting case and engaging with your arguments.
This is not enough. Open debate requires an open mind: you must accept the possibility that you might be wrong.
If you don't even accept the possibility that you might be wrong about anything, then there's no point in debating, not about Alice, not about Bob, not about anything. All you are doing is wasting the time of your interlocutor.
This in my view is arguing in bad faith. If there's absolutely no way you can be convinced otherwise, then what am I even doing?
You're mainly arguing he's as racist as Alice and I happen to know she isn't.
Therefore it's impossible for you to be convinced of anything (about Alice and even less of Bob), and there's no point in me even trying.
felipec
unbelief
2yr ago
This one. I'm the participant not making any assumptions about what you mean.
I suppose (not assume) that your question was rhetorical, and you actually believe I cannot answer it in truth, because you believe in every conversation all participants have to make assumptions all the time. But this is tentative, I do not actually know that, therefore I do not assume that's the case.
And this is a fallacy I have pointed out already. The fact that somebody appears to be making an assumption doesn't necessarily means that he is. All that glitters is not gold. You are likely going to comb through my statement and try to find a point where I made an assumption, but all you are going to find is the appearance of an assumption, without reading my mind you can't actually tell.
Once again: I do not know what you mean though, but I'm guessing, and that's all rational agents can do when communicating.
felipec
unbelief
2yr ago
I assume you didn't read the post very thoroughly, then, because the paragraph immediately below where your quote ends contains a distinguishing case.
This is an equivocation fallacy. You are using a different definition of "assume", in particular using it exactly as "suppose". In my view assuming and supposing are two different things, even in the colloquial sense.
I see the false assumption was "that you are intelligent enough to comprehend those kinds of comparative asides and familiar enough with conversational English to understand that loading them with caveats would draw too much focus away from the point they are supporting."
Wrong. I can comprehend the notion without accepting it. This is a converse error fallacy.
Asides of that type are implicitly restricted to the general case, because they are intended to quickly illustrate a point by way of rough analogy, rather than present a rigorous isomorphism.
This is obviously a cop-out. If you were aware that your claim applied only to the general case, but you merely did not make it explicit, then the moment I mentioned there was an assumption you would immediately know what assumption I was talking about, because you were fully aware.
But you didn't know what assumption I was talking about, because you were not aware of the restriction. Now you want to pretend you always knew you were making an assumption, you merely didn't say it when I pointed it out, for some reason.
This is precisely what everyone does. Before they say they aren't making an assumption, and after I point it out to them they always knew. You did exactly what I said people do, and you went for one of the options I listed: "everyone would have assumed the same".
felipec
unbelief
2yr ago
What about your second most fundamental belief that you have questioned?
felipec
unbelief
2yr ago
OK. But in the answers it's claimed that this defines a new way to say what elements equals to what else, so 3=7. Therefore 4=0, and 2+2=0.
felipec
unbelief
2yr ago
Good. So you accept it's possible there's importance in the nuance.
felipec
unbelief
2yr ago
This is a smoke screen. You still haven't answered the question.
The most important ideas in civilization are not "clever". So what?
OK. I'm not a mathematician, I'm a programmer, but from what I can see the set {0,1,2,3} is isomorphic to ℤ/4ℤ that means one can be mapped to the other and vice versa. The first element of ℤ/4ℤ is isomorphic to 0, but not 0, it's a coset. But the multiplicative group of integers modulo 4 (ℤ/4ℤ)* is this isomorphic set, so it is {0,1,2,3} with integers being the members of the set. Correct?
Either way 2+2=0 can be true.
felipec
unbelief
2yr ago
Doubt about axioms is basically mathematical philosophy.
So it's essential.
So you agree doubt about everything is not reasonable in every field?
Depends on what you mean by "doubt". If you mean <100% certainty, then no. If you mean 50% certainty, then yes.
felipec
unbelief
2yr ago
Yes, but this is what happens when you are conned. You feel betrayed for trusting someone or something only to realize that your bullshit detector isn't as good as you thought it was. The cognitive dissonance when you are forced to change paradigms is a personal struggle, but not something that changes the world in any way, only your perception of the world.
The goodness in the world isn't going to diminish because effective altruism turned out to be bullshit, only Scott's belief in the goodness in the world.
felipec
unbelief
2yr ago
Yes, but this is perfectly consistent with FTX being a Ponzi scheme all along. It was never an important thing for humanity, some people were just duped into believing it was.
felipec
unbelief
2yr ago
I cannot imagine how crypto could work without exchanges.
The exchanges don't need to work like the do now. The exchange could transfer the bitcoin to an external wallet, it doesn't need to be a wallet controlled by the exchange.
It's perfectly doable to buy bitcoins with Binance, and then transfer those to an external wallet you have 100% control of. That way if Binance disappears you still have your bitcoins.
felipec
unbelief
2yr ago
You said, "The 'laws of arithmetic' that are relevant depend 100% on what arithmetic we are talking about," which is only meaningful under your usage of "laws of arithmetic" and does not apply to the term as I meant it in my original comment.
No it doesn't.
The "laws of arithmetic" after your explanation mean the "laws of all the different arithmetics" which you asked me to not consider as uncountable, which I didn't. You yourself said that the "laws of all the different arithmetics" is not a single set of rules that apply to all arithmetics, therefore a subset of the "laws of all the different arithmetics" may apply to a specific arithmetic, but not necessarily to another different arithmetic.
Therefore my phrase "The 'laws of arithmetic' ('laws of all the different arithmetics') that are relevant depend 100% on what arithmetic we are talking about" is 100% consistent with your usage of the term.
To rephrase that, communication relies on at least some terms being commonly understood, since otherwise you'd reach an infinite regress.
This is what you said:
This is because I have no evidence that any reasonable person would use the notation associated with integer arithmetic in such a way, and without such evidence, there is no choice but to make assumptions of terms ordinarily having their plain meanings, to avoid an infinite regress of definitions used to clarify definitions.
Having no evidence is no excuse. Having no evidence of black swans doesn't imply that black swans cannot exist, nor is it a valid reason to assume that all swans are white.
You do have a choice: don't make assumptions.
Symbols do not have a single meaning. If I say "run a marathon" you may think about participating in a marathon, but it could be managing one. Nobody sees the word "run" and assume a single meaning, the meaning always depends on the context. Intelligent beings must consider different meanings, and this is precisely the reason computers are not considered very intelligent: they can't consider multiple meanings the way a human does. If language was as simple as you paint it, computers would have had no problem solving it decades ago.
It's not that linear and simple, you do have the choice to consider multiple meanings of the word "run".
Indeed, how do you know that your interlocutors are "100% certain" that they know what you mean by "2 + 2"?
Because they use it as a clear example of something unequivocally true.
felipec
unbelief
2yr ago
It's not really that clever, that's what I am saying.
Who says it has to be clever?
felipec
unbelief
2yr ago
Conversely, if they say "Bob is as racist as Alice, because he's the author of the bobracial supremacy manifesto", pointing out Alice isn't racist just distracts from the point at hand. Yes, it's a bad metaphor, but the point stands.
Yes, but the premise of this line of thought is precisely the opposite: it's not easy to prove Bob isn't racist, other other hand it's extremely easy to prove Alice isn't racist.
I have refuted your argument that 2+2=4 is not unequivocally true, but I'm still willing to discuss the point you were trying to make without forcing you to come up with a new example.
But discussing is not accepting. You are arguing that Bob is a racist, but you are nowhere near accepting the possibility that he might not be.
You are not willing to accept that Alice might not be a racist, and Bob even less. Which proves my point.
felipec
unbelief
2yr ago
I am not 100% certain it's impossible for someone (including myself) to be mistaken about the definitions or meanings of commonly used words or mathematical symbols.
That was not my claim. Please read my claim and then answer my question.
felipec
unbelief
2yr ago
We're talking about the information we have about your example, which was given in english.
The information in English is limited too. Information is always limited.
"Tomorrow is Monday" has limited information.
Liar. The end of the week being sunday was included in your description of the example.
This was my example:
If the week ends in Sunday we don't say that the day after that is Monday the next week, it's Monday (this doesn't change if the week ends in Saturday)
The case where the week ends in Saturday is included. If today is Sunday we say:
-
Tomorrow is Monday (if the week ends in Sunday)
-
Tomorrow is Monday (if the week ends in Saturday)
My example was crystal clear in explaining that the day the week ends does not matter in describing what day comes after Sunday. This information is not available from the phrase "tomorrow is Monday".
You claim the information is available because if the week ends in Sunday "we both know" when the week ends. No, we don't, because I don't. If you want to claim you know when the week ends from the phrase "tomorrow is Monday" go ahead, I do not know.
And it doesn't seem to me you are engaging with my argument.
felipec
unbelief
2yr ago
This can be less than one bit
Yes, but it cannot be more. The point here is that information is not being "omitted", there's always limits to how much information can be transmitted, stored, processed, etc.
And in general programmers try to not use more information than necessary, this is not unique to this field, it's just easier to see because the information can be precisely measured.
felipec
unbelief
2yr ago
It does matter what you call it
I did not say it doesn't matter what I call it, I said it doesn't matter what you call it.
And it seems pretty clear to me you are being intentionally obtuse. The purpose of me communicating to you is that you understand what I mean, it doesn't matter how. For any given idea I have there's a set of words I could use to transmit that idea, and any word I use has multiple meanings, but as long as you pick the meaning that correctly match the idea I want to transmit, we are communicating effectively. The "most common meaning" is completely irrelevant. The most common meaning of the word "get" is "to gain possession of", but if I say "do you get what I mean", I'm not using the most common meaning, and I don't have to.
I used multiple words, terms, and an explanation for you to understand what I meant, and if you understand it, I don't personally care what word you use to name that idea.
To assume(everyday) something means approximately to act as if that something were true, without feeling the need to personally verify it for oneself.
To assume(logic) something means to accept it as an axiom of your system (although potentially a provisional one) such that it can be used to construct further statements and the idea of "verifying" it doesn't make much sense.
I don't see the any difference. If you "assume X" it means you hold X as true without any justification, evidence, verification, or inference.
In other words, even though he didn't assume(logic) that 1+1=2, his assumption(everyday) that 1+1=2 would be so strong as to reverse all the logical implication he had been working on
I disagree. Every day he saw evidence that 1+1=2, so it would be reasonable to believe (not assume) that this was always true. Additionally he saw no way it could not be true, but he was rational enough to know this was not a good reason to assume it was true, as this would have been an argument from incredulity fallacy.
Maybe he did assume that 1+1=2 in everyday life, but you cannot know that unless you could read his mind.
This is a converse error fallacy. If I assume a chair is sound, I would sit down without checking it, but if I sit down without checking it doesn't necessarily mean I assumed it was sound.
In general rationalists try to not assume anything.
If I'm wrong about any of those I will be happy to be corrected.
I know helloworld is a nearly useless program in the vast majority of contexts, but not all, and I know that people frequently practice new programming languages by writing programs in them with little regard for the practical use of those programs, but not all people who write helloworld programs are practicing new programming languages.
You are assuming the general case. I can easily imagine somebody in the 1970s developing for a new hardware architecture for which there are no other compilers available trying to test that any software runs, in fact, I can even imagine somebody today doing that for a new hardware architecture like RISC-V.
And once again the point of these examples is not to "deliberately wasting people's time", it's to show they are making assumptions even if they can't possibly see how they could be making an assumption.
Every time I tell somebody that they are making an assumption they disagree, and every time I point to them the assumption they were making they come with a rationalization, like "you tricked me", or "that's very unlikely", or "everyone would have assumed the same". It's never "actually you are right, I didn't think about that".
felipec
unbelief
2yr ago
Do you have any source for that? All the sources I've found say the elements of the underlying set of integers modulo 4 are integers.
So
2+2=4=0="not what you think". Therefore the claim of my post is true.More options
Context Copy link