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To: gore3000
In other words, knowing that 2+2=4 does not tell you what's for dinner.

2+2=4 doesn't tell you how to design a piece of good software either, but the proper application of mathematics can get you there. Just because you don't understand how something works doesn't mean that no one does, or that someone couldn't. For example, I can easily discern the fallacy of "argument from incredulity", but many people quite apparently cannot (hint). It doesn't mean that this fallacy doesn't exist or that it wasn't used.

And for the last time, mathematics is not bound by the same constraints as science, nor is "reason" if you qualify it appriopriately. Intermixing the two as though they are interchangeable is a hallmark of fundamental ignorance on the matter.

257 posted on 10/28/2002 11:05:39 PM PST by tortoise
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To: tortoise
2+2=4 doesn't tell you how to design a piece of good software either, but the proper application of mathematics can get you there.

You are turning my statements around to attack them. I did not say that mathematics cannot help in certain applications. What I said was that mathematics, logic and reason are useless and can tell us nothing new about reality if we have no facts about that reality. Such a mode of thinking, that you can deduce through math, logic or reason a lot from hardly any facts is in fact irrational. Reason not based on reality leads to insanity.

259 posted on 10/29/2002 6:11:32 AM PST by gore3000
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