Posted on 05/18/2004 2:02:33 PM PDT by LibWhacker
I think your discussion hits the mark. Our means of communication already is prejudiced towards 'not', 'and', and 'or'. We use a conjunction of two to describe the sufficient operators, not or = nor, not and = nand. Mendelson in "Introduction to Mathematical logic" calls them 'joint denial' and 'alternative denial'.
I have this fight constantly (really intermittently but often) with language design; computer design; etc. people. I want ease of writing and reading, not minimalist proofs of correctness. (The proofs have their place, just not in expository text.) The book "The Psychology of Everyday Things" (can't recall the author) is rather useful. The author did come up with the comment about architecture: "If it won a prize, it's probably useless."
Gee, I hope mankind doesn't meet any highly advanced extraterrestrials in the next couple of centuries! They will surely try to exterminate us because this stuff, nanotech, etc., will be an unacceptable danger to them.
I've heard it said only two people understand Principia Mathematica, and both of them are dead. :-)
Actually there are three. One's dead; one's me; and the other is Cole Thornton.
I took them a long time. They were very wordy. The problem was partly their notation and partly (though not know at the time) that their project was impossible. They wanted to reduce all mathematics to logic but Goedel (and Post before him but unpublished) showed that this is impossible.
One problem was that they spent lots of time just defining a number. Then they worried about Russell's paradox and others. To get around these paradoxes (paradice is probably the Greek plural), they introduce a theory of types. Unfortunately, determining the type of a set isn't always possible.
There are better books (more readable) available. You might (if your are interested) check reviews at Amazon or other review sites.
I'm confused now -- and curious, too -- Doc. I always assumed from your screen name that your specialty was stochastic processes or something like that. But is it mathematical logic instead? I think we have at least one other Freeper who has a doctorate in mathematical logic.
And nearly 100 years ago, Upton Sinclair alerted the world to the horrors of the meat packing industry...an industry based quite literally upon the blood, sweat and flesh of its employees. Let us hope we will not recreate, or even exceed, the nightmare.
I'll take whatever you give me.
Ok. I stand corrected. Technology can always be harnassed for evil. I guess I was trying to break the shackles of tautology, but I yield. Those shackles can't be broken.
Technology is one of the things people do. Evil is another one of the things people do. People are always capable of evil. Therefore, technology can always be harnassed for evil.
Tautology accepted.
Yawn.
Actually, my speciality is Monte Carlo computations. Lately though I've been doing just some statistics and numerical analysis.
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