The middle ground is not better than extreme viewpoints just because it's easier to get people to accept. A "subtle" argument is not a good thing. Arguments should, ideally, be glaringly obvious.
A statement is either true or false. If you can't decide on one of those two extremes, it means either your statement is ill-formed or your axioms aren't consistent.
The middle ground is not better than extreme viewpoints just because it's easier to get people to accept. A "subtle" argument is not a good thing. Arguments should, ideally, be glaringly obvious.
Better than an argument, how about a nuanced discussion of reality? How about we get people away from the marketing caricature of reality, and we have them discussing reality?
A statement is either true or false. If you can't decide on one of those two extremes, it means either your statement is ill-formed or your axioms aren't consistent.
Human language and human models of the world are ill-formed and inconsistent. This is why honest nuanced discussions that aren't arguments are the best.
Reality is boolean. Any "nuance" is a reflection of poor reasoning ability on the part of the humans involved. We only make a caricature of reality when we project our own uncertainty onto it.
We should strive to overcome the limits of language. Mathematics is, in general, neither ill-formed nor inconsistent, and we should try to imitate it in our arguments in other fields.
Reality is boolean. Any "nuance" is a reflection of poor reasoning ability on the part of the humans involved. We only make a caricature of reality when we project our own uncertainty onto it.
I'm 100% on board with this.
We should strive to overcome the limits of language. Mathematics is, in general, neither ill-formed nor inconsistent, and we should try to imitate it in our arguments in other fields.
Uh, maybe not so much. Trying to apply the logic of sets to geology and geography could result in arguing if a particular rock is in North America or South America or if a particular grain of sand is in the Cambrian or afterwards. These are nonsense arguments.
Furthermore, when you're discussing reality with humans, you're always doing it through the lens of an imprecisely constructed social model of reality that's been passed down and modified by everyone over time. Avoiding this model and its distortions entirely is going to be near impossible. You're going to have to buy an island and declare that everyone speaks in Lojban and engage in social engineering that makes The Great Leap Forward look like a meeting icebreaker.
That said, I love the precision of math and programming languages. But trying to get human society to run on it is going to be epically hard.
>Trying to apply the logic of sets to geology and geography could result in arguing if a particular rock is in North America or South America or if a particular grain of sand is in the Cambrian or afterwards. These are nonsense arguments.
Only if our definitions of geographical locations are ill-defined.
>Furthermore, when you're discussing reality with humans, you're always doing it through the lens of an imprecisely constructed social model of reality that's been passed down and modified by everyone over time
Maybe we should try our hardest to avoid doing that.
That way, we must explicitly state our axioms re. messy stuff like biology and morality.
Only if our definitions of geographical locations are ill-defined.
They are. They were invented by non mathematicians to facilitate communication about objects in the real world through human language -- in a non-mathematical field.
we must explicitly state our axioms re. messy stuff like biology and morality.
Sounds good, but it's kind of hard to do perfectly. Lots of geniuses have been at least peripherally aware of and have been wrestling with precisely this problem for millennia! But if you have it solved, please blog about it and show us the way! Also, don't be surprised when people start poking holes in what you write.
There are many statements we would agree to be neither true nor false; here are a couple:
1. The sun will rise tomorrow. 2. This statement is false.
Note that this is not the kind of information which is controversial in our society and germane to decision making. (Other than that we will assume the sun will rise tomorrow as a given, but we can't stop with that.)
If you're going be that pedantic, you rule out all statements of moral or value judgement, all statements pertaining to the future, and most things relating to abstract nouns. This makes it impossible to discuss anything political at all.
Then they're not valid for anyone else who doesn't have exactly the same set of axioms. You can only form sentences of the form "I believe it is wrong for me to ..." and not "I believe it is wrong for you to ..."
wyager either doesn't want to construct such a logical language system and is just pedant-trolling us, or he's too naive about the underlying inconsistency of human languages to bother talking to.
A statement is either true or false. If you can't decide on one of those two extremes, it means either your statement is ill-formed or your axioms aren't consistent.