Scoundrels should be oppressed.
Scoundrels should have justice coming to them, for the bad things they actually do, no more, no less. Doing more than that, because they're bad people who deserve being treated badly, is not justice, and it's not what the justice system is supposed do to, and it can get out of control quickly. That's not autoimmune disorder, that's leukemia.
As long as you're keeping to justice, punishing scoundrels for scoundreling, not for existing, honest people have little to fear. Once you cut down the law to get at scoundrels who "hide behind it" by abiding it, it doesn't protect honest people anymore either.
Another issue is that scoundrel can mean bad people, but it also can mean icky people. Lolicons are the latter.
Voyager
2yr ago
You can't define (or redefine) the meaning of a word in common language. It already has a meaning. What you might call a definition is a description of the meaning, and you measure it by how accurately it overlaps the usage.
Caplan notes that the "classic" description of feminism is inaccurate and offers a better one.
This shouldn't be surprising as a self-description of a political movement is unlikely to be optimized for accuracy or clarity. It's optimized for supporting a political goal, and that goal may well be furthered by deception and deliberate confusion.
(You can take a word, redefine it, and then use it throughout the scope of that definition (e.g. a book).
In math, this works fine, but in politics/political science, it takes exceeding intellectual rigor and honesty, because the words you use have connotations and it's hard to keep them out and use your definition straight.
And when you talk to other people, who don't subscribe to your definition, you have to redetermine all implications of the new concept, and that's not going to happen.)
Voyager
2yr ago
If a person says "Bob is as racist as Alice", and I show that Alice is not racist, then says, "OK. Bob is as racist as Mary", and I show Mary is not racist, "OK. Bob is as racist as Linda", Linda isn't racist. Wouldn't it make sense to doubt whether or not Bob is actually racist?
Okay, but if someone says "Bob is as racist as a KKK grand wizard", it would still make sense to doubt it. 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.
Compare this discussion. 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.
It contains the congruence class 4Z (= {...-8,-4,0,4,8...}) of which the number, more so the symbol, 4 is a valid representant.
The statement remains true.
Voyager
2yr ago
Wrong. Information by its very nature is limited. Nobody is "artificially" limiting the information that can fit in one bit, one bit can only fit one bit of information. Period.
That's a red herring. We're not talking about bits. We're talking about the information we have about your example, which was given in english.
No, we don't. You are assuming where the week starts.
Liar. The end of the week being sunday was included in your description of the example.
All information is incomplete.
Not all information is incomplete in the sense that reasoning from it leads to false conclusions. Stop defending your fallacious argument.
Absolutely not. The speaker knows what the statement means, what the symbols mean, in what structure we're operating. The rest is just basic arithmetic over the natural numbers.
Voyager
2yr ago
No? So nobody in mathematics doubts the Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory axiomatic system?
Doubt about axioms is basically mathematical philosophy.
Who said an engineer should doubt 1+1=2?
So you agree doubt about everything is not reasonable in every field?
Voyager
2yr ago
I literally said "it doesn't matter if Bertrand Russell personally doubted it or not".
No one doubted it, because it wasn't actually reasonable to doubt it. Russell wanted to formalize a foundation, he wanted to prove that arithmetics derived from logic, not that arithmetics was true.
Doubt is essential in all fields.
Not doubt about math or fundamental logic. That is only reasonable in philosophy. An engineer who doubts 1+1=2 will never build any bridges, and no bridges will crash because an engineer assumed 1+1=2.
If you doubt the fundamentals, you're doing philosophy. If you want to get anything done, you need to stop doing philosophy. You need to choose some axioms, build a knowledge base and then get to work on questions that are actually in doubt.
100% certainty is extremely dangerous. And I don't see you addressing this at all.
Because right now a fallacious argument is being made for too little certainty, not too much. I'm addressing the bad arguments that are actually on the table.
Voyager
2yr ago
If the speaker who brought up 2+2=4 is using standard symbols, he's unambiguously correct, so that can't be what we're talking about.
Voyager
2yr ago
In our case, informations isn't just limited, but artificially limited, i.e. omitted. The information is indeed still available, just by deriving it from context. We both know monday after sunday is next week.
You're making an argument based on information you know is incomplete, and the missing information invalidates it. Don't do that.
Voyager
2yr ago
Not really. I can guarantee you that Russell used 1+1=2 when calculating his daily expenses even before he formally proved it. Had he failed at his attempt to prove it, he would have gone on believing and using it. I can guarantee you he didn't scold any colleagues for using 1+1=2 without proof.
He wanted a formal proof for itself, not because one was needed.
Voyager
2yr ago
If you're omitting the information of which week it is because it's not relevant, you're omitting information, and that means you can't use the result to support your argument, because it's missing information.
Voyager
2yr ago
In general? Yes. In this example? Absolutely the speaker's fault. If you're using non-standard symbols, you need to denote that.
Voyager
2yr ago
But your clock would read 01:00.
We use this concept in programming all the time. If the week ends in Sunday we don't say that the day after that is Monday the next week, it's Monday
That's merely convention, omitting information that can be derived from context for brevity. If you want to make a formal argument, you need to include that information again. Everyone is aware monday is next week, that's why you don't spell it out if it isn't relevant, but if you're e.g. scheduling business on a weekly base, you might have to say "Tomorrow is monday, which is next calendar week".
Voyager
2yr ago
Do you think Bertrand Russell was "dishonest" for asking people to suspend their belief?
No, merely exceedingly rigorous. He set out to prove 1+1=2, then after a lot of tedious work, he indeed proved that 1+1=2 is in fact true, settling the debate confirming what everyone already knew. He didn't actually doubt it, he merely wanted to put it on a formal foundation, and he did.
He wasn't an engineer who was worried bridges would fall if everyone computed 1+1 incorrectly, he wasn't a politician who got challenged on his fiscal plan and needed to double-check his assumptions. He was a nerd who wanted clarity for its own sake, operating at the intersection between pure math and philosophy. That's the field where you would doubt 1+1=2, not because you actually doubt it, but because you expect insight from dispelling that doubt. It's the same level of abstraction as wondering whether you're actually a brain in a vat. In politics or engineering, you can't do that.
Voyager
2yr ago
But that is the point: most people make assumptions.
Assumptions about the meaning of symbols, namely that symbols carry their conventional meaning unless denoted otherwise.
This is a necessary prerequisite of communication, and messing with it is merely a failure to communicate.
Voyager
2yr ago
Using non-standard definitions without denoting them beforehand is a semantic trick.
And if you want to do math, you absolutely need to rigorously define things.
Voyager
2yr ago
I'm not, neither of us was talking about the modulo operation (I was using mod 4 to denote I'm operating in the congruence class ring).
And the article about modular arithmetic agrees with me. Choice quote:
Each residue class modulo n may be represented by any one of its members
Voyager
2yr ago
That's not how modular arithmetic works: 2+2=4 is still true, it's just that 4=0 mod 4, so 2+2=0 is also true.
Even if your example were true, that would just be notation confusion: The statement commonly meant by 2+2=4 is always true. So if I say 2+2=4 is always true, I'm correct, and if you say 2+2=? and the answer isn't 4 you're just communicating badly by omitting relevant information about the problem statement. In honest conversation this doesn't change anything.
Voyager
2yr ago
For what it's worth, as a horror story it's pretty good - it does a great job selling the mounting sense of dread as new information is presented.
Just that's not what The Motte is for.
Voyager
2yr ago
You're not forced to listen to RAID: SHADOW LEGENDS enthusiasm though: You can just skip it by forwarding the video.
I agree that there are absolute truths, but how sure are you that you have direct access to them? I agree that actual, better reason will always illuminate false prophets, but seeing a true proof and seeing a false proof look very similar.
Yes, my mind could be influenced in some way making me entirely incapable of applying reason - but following that line of thought only leads to intellectual capitulation. At some point I have to axiomatically assume that I'm in principle capable of understanding logic. So far it has worked out, and my ability to navigate the world I experience has consistently improved.
I think ultimately enlightenment, reason, and empiricism are mistake theory, and require some sort of shared assumptions or shared trust in order to work in practice. Once you step outside of the narrow scientific domain, and into the wider one of relations and conflict, is reason really all that important? Would you accept an argument from an enemy?
Yes, absolutely. I would, naturally, apply increased scepticism and scrutiny, double check their arguments and critically examine the sources for their factual claims. But in the end, being my enemy doesn't reliably prevent them from being right, so I can't dismiss their argument out of hand.
Reason is important because finding the truth is important. Conflict exists, which means some people don't work towards the truth - but this just makes it more important that I do. What else am I supposed to do? Even if I were to embrace conflict and work to maximising my own gain (which I don't want because it would make me a bad person) that mostly* doesn't tell me what policies would achieve that.
*Even many classic identity politics topics. For example, gender quotas in high positions: It seems my position would derive from my gender, but most men and women aren't actually directly affected by this, and there are arguments that a quota would benefit men (not sure how to steelman this, but it could still potentially be true), as well as harm women (by introducing stereotypes of "only got in by quota").
Voyager
2yr ago
Reason and logic aren't properties of our world: They are absolute. You could say they are necessary properties of any world, there is no possible world where 2+2=5. They aren't empirically derived, they are what empiricism itself is built on.
It's true that entities can attempt to push false reason to gain social power. The answer to this is actual, better reason.
I believe what you call social constructivism is to some degree such an attempt: Delegitimizing logic and replacing it with an inconsistent system that elevates the viewpoints of specific people.
No it isn't. You will never encounter it in most math fields. Philosophy mostly is what you do when you aren't busy with concrete problems.
What should an engineer do who needs to calculate 1+1 to design a bridge? I hold that anything but "answer 2 and move on" is wasting time that could be used to build a bridge.
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