Annotated 31-4
So recently I learned that there’s a new Scooby-Doo project coming out: an origin story for Velma. And while I’ve adored certain versions of the Scooby characters, I’m left wondering what kind of “origin story” you give someone like that. I’m most familiar with that term in a superhero context… rocketed to Earth, parents killed in alley, great power and great responsibility, died and came back to life with a demonic suit, inherited power from one seeking a worthy soul… but the development of a human identity, as opposed to a costumed one, is more holistic.
So what’s the moment where Velma became indelibly herself? First mystery solved, without the rest of the gang (it’s not like she really needs any of them, honestly)? First pair of glasses? First logic textbook, read at age nine?
Similarly, there’s a sense in which HR’s story begins here, before he’s even taken on his most familiar name, as he acquires a set of ideas that will inform his later goals. But we’ll have to check in with him at a later point or two before we can really say we know how he got where he is today. One thing’s for sure: that professor is not gonna be right about philosophy students having no future.
Huh, “Hal.” First time the name is mentioned?
Well he was right about the ramen.
I think Prof. Shaggy is making a logical error. Understanding philosophy (or, rather, the histories of the philosophers, which is what Hal is really demonstrating here) doesn’t preclude also understanding other stuff that might be more directly useful in a corporate environment. And, granted that you did have those other skills to get you in the door, philosophy might help you manipulate your way to the top.
Logic is a piss-poor method for finding out what’s going to happen.
Consider: Logical possibility is not equal to actual possibility.
Even logical impossibility is not equal to actual impossibility.
What matters, as Hume pointed out, is experience.
Logic is just a plaything, like a Rubik’s cube.
Neat but ultimately just a game.
Impressive. Everything you just said…was wrong.
That said, I don’t think the professor meant to imply “I genuinely believe that anyone who does well in this class is doomed to poverty,” just to complain about the lack of value society puts on his subject.
Oh, how droll, someone who doesn’t understand logic, being offended that it is being disparaged…
Let’s just say that mere contradiction doesn’t make an argument, and that you must show you’ve actually put two thoughts into this, ever, to even have standing to make one.
Of course teach is wrong.
People who do well in business very often do love the oversimplified and largely nonsensical arguments logic so easily produces.
Just look for videos titled “xxxxxxx DESTROYS yyyyyyy with LOGIC” to see more examples of “logical nonsense” than any reasonable person could possibly stomach. These far-right numpties absolutely love logic, most likely because logic is such a poor tool that it can be used to reach any conclusion one wants, especially ones that have nothing to do with reality.
As Hume pointed out, humans are BAD at logic, but Logic is also BAD at reality.
Right. Flat assertions of nonsense, declaring that anyone who wants to contradict you must first demonstrate “standing” to your satisfaction, using a philosopher’s name as a club in an argument from authority…
…I’m sure those never show up in videos made by far-right numpties!
I’m not interested in trying to convince you of anything, so, have fun with that.
Do you understand the implications of Montaigne’s carousel?
Do you know what Hume discovered, or why it made Kant so mad?
If you don’t, perhaps you should consider that you have an opportunity to learn something new, rather than lashing out at the unexpected?
I am fine either way.
Now, it’s very possible that I’ve been around this particular track a few too many times to be very patient with people who are angrily suprised when I say “Logic is pretty shit, actually”.
Do I say it like that to get a response? I probably do.
OTOH, it’s very very dangerous to go around thinking logic is infallible. As I said, the internet is filled to the gills with people eager to “prove” to you that their viewpoint is infallibly correct, because logic.
So I write it up as +1 -1 = 0 on my karmic accounting slip. A good deed wrapped in a douchy deed.
Oh, good lord. Does your superiority complex help you sleep at night? Has anyone named Dunning or Kruger ever reached out to you and asked for a photograph?
Logic is only as good as the data upon which it is based. This does not mean logic is inherently bad. It just means, be careful about your facts before you go off all half-cocked.
That’s good. I don’t know where people get that idea that deductive logic is somehow infallible… but as evidence above, people really do seem to think that.
The only problem with what you wrote is the word “data”.
Data is collated evidence, which is observations, which are experiences.
And the only method we have that can take in any of those is Induction.
Deduction, being exceedingly simplistic, can literally only take in assumptions.
And if the assumption is not True in the “exluding the middle” sense, then the argument is ultimately without value.
This is why Hume said “whatever it is we actually use to make sense of the world, it’s clearly not deduction”
That, Andreas, was finest Hollywood logic. Which is, indeed, only valid within Hollywood movies and therefore one of the poorest methods ever to find out what happens.
In the real world, the only scenarios where applying logic fails is when trying to predict human decisions, which requires the assumption that humans were making strictly logical decisions, which is, of course, only in very rare circumstances a little false. In all other cases it’s complete rubbish.
For any purpose concerning predictable outcomes, logic is strictly correct. In the same way that if someone writes a program and it doesn’t do what it should, that’s not because the computer is stupid but because the programmer accidentally made it do the wrong thing. Because humans suck at logic and just love to make false assumptions. But if they _do_ get it right, it’s right. Always.
Zak, you don’t know jack about this.
Logic fails ALL the time.
Just go scrounging for people making logical proofs for things that are incorrect : The internet is literally brimming with that shit.
Hint: If a tool lets you prove something that isn’t correct, then your tool is shit.
I absolutely love how you make an absurd claim about “the only times” logic fails, as if you had any actual experience with it. Really putting your ignorance on display there.
Now, you could ask how I know you don’t know jack about logic…
Fair enough, lemme tell you:
Logisticians actually know the limitiations of logic. They would certainly not make outrageously false claims like you did.
Logic even defeats itself: It is provable that no logical argument can ever be provably sound.
The proof for that is called Montaigne’s carousel, and it’s as simple as showing an infinite regression:
An argument is sound if its premises are sound.
So let’s prove the premises.
This involves more arguments (proofs), which if sound would show the original argument to be sound.
So let’s prove the proofs of the premises.
Oops, now we have even more arguments (2^n) which need proving, ad infinitum.
I love how people who defend logic invariably don’t understand the first thing about it.
Never stops them from voicing their unfounded opinions, for some strange reason.
This train of conversation has been interesting to me and it got me thinking: what CAN logic actually be used for? By which I mean, what are the things one would apply a tool to try to predict (or describe), and that tool would correctly be labeled “logic”? I could call a prediction of how an object will move “logic” (or based on “logic”) but it would be concepts of physics I would use to make and support that prediction.
The term “logic”, is it either an umbrella term (which would make it invariably seem to be a poor tool), or an often misapplied one – an actually specific tool used in an improper fashion (which would make it seem an often poor tool)? Or something else altogether I have not suggested?
In the context of reality, logic is simply a limited attempt at a description of causality – it is not a prescription governing causality. When applied to the past, it’s a historical record that may be flawed, that attempts to memorialize if not decipher past events; applied to the future, it’s a prediction that may also be flawed, because we will always have incomplete information, whether we are scientists, armchair theorists, or believers in some inaccessible metaphysics.
In the context of a simulation, however, the reverse is true – logic becomes a prescription governing the simulation’s causal tendencies, but does not serve as an interpretation of what occurs therein or a record thereof. (Respectively, these jobs are left to monitors to display said interpretation, and to debug logs to record information about past events.)
The mind is fertile ground for simulation – but in the end, all a simulation is capable of, whether in the mind or a computer, is to operate on the imperfect information it is created from.
Logic is therefore only as useful as the information you can use it with – this is not a flaw of logic as a tool, but rather a limitation imposed upon the thinker.
Logic does not need defending, because it cannot suffer from an attack. Only its practitioners can.
Hm, I think you may be referring to induction, there.
Any generalizing principle we have is inductive.
So is the brain function.
So is Deep Learning.
It’s a bit funny that our concept of deduction is actually an inductive brain emulating deduction.
Whereas our machine learning stuff is a deductive computer emulating a neuronic brain, thereby emulating induction.
Logic is extremely useful in mathematical proofs. It’s useful for designing algorithms. It’s the fundamental baseline of computers.
Yes. Logic is good in axiomatic systems.
There’s no carousel in axiomatic systems, because sooner or later you’re going to get to an axiom, which you (or we) have set as True By Definition.
Rock bottom.
But reality isn’t axiomatic, or at least we’ve no clue what the axioms would be.
Heya, Weatherbeard.
Typically, people refer by “logic” to deduction.
Deduction is governed by a set of axioms often called “the rules of thought” or “the laws of logic”.
These are “contradiction”, “excluded middle” and “identity” : Something can’t be true and false at the same time, any claim must be either true or false, and “a thing is identical to itself”.
By contrast, when Hume showed that deduction isn’t what we use to learn about the world, what we use instead came to be called “induction”.
Sometimes people talk about “inductive logic”, but since induction doesn’t follow the three laws, it’s not really clear why we should muddy the waters like that.
Later, someone declared a third kind, and called in Abductive logic, but that’s something akin to “an informed guess”.
But for some strange reason, despite the method of deductive being exceedingly fragile and exceedingly useful for self-deceit, many many people go around thinking it’s somehow infallible by definition.
And such people are usually very eager to knee-jerk in response to the unexpected opinion that deduction is pretty useless most of the time.
The triangle of logic systems:
Fully-specified. Complete. Non-trivial.
Pick at most two.
Where “fully-specified” means “we can actually write out all the rules involved without leaving any of them to “common sense” or “isn’t it obvious?” or otherwise leaving ambiguities in the system that different interpreters can (and do) disagree on”, and “complete” means “able to make provable judgements about every statement that can be made under the system”.
Even if you manage to get all your axioms right (which is absurdly difficult even without the human factor), and all your rules right (even harder), any logic system nontrivial enough to be useful can be used to prove that it can’t solve even all the statements it’s capable of representing, let alone bigger statements that it cannot adequately represent. To prove or disprove (“solve”) every possible statement a given logic system A can represent, you need to augment it with additional capabilities, yielding a greater (and more complicated) logic system B. To solve all the new statements that those augmentations make possible, you need a still greater logic system C, and on, and on . . .
If I understand Andreas’ original point correctly, he’s mostly pointing out that there are a lot of people that see the abstract concept of “logic” as a magic multitool that can do anything, ignoring the fact that it (provably) isn’t. Or rather, that any given concrete logic system is only a magic multitool that can do anything within the context of a system substantially simpler than itself.
Thanks, Spidergorilla!
You’re right. I’m mainly concerned that so many people have this … really really weird idea, that deductive inference is infallible.
Which is really dangerous, because it’s so easy to twist, whether for deceit or self-deceit.
It’s incredibly simple: The premises *dictate* the outcome.
And who choses the premises?
Whoever crafts the argument.
In other words, any deductive argument will conclude exactly what the poser wants it to conclude.
People talk so much about “invalid arguments”, when actually it’s the Unsound arguments that make up almost all of the danger, because it really doesn’t take much “massaging” to make unsound premises that sound sorta reasonable, while still producing the desired false conclusion.
People get very defensive about it, though.
Apparently as you get older, your glasses get opaque.
Hal shows us why he’s going to get it wrong later as well.
He’s just grasping for the easy answers, knowing teach will approve, because teach is a bitter little man.
Socrates was censured not because he taught “dangerous ideas”, but because he taught dangerous ideas to dangerous people, who then briefly usurped power in the city, and then disproved Socrates’ claims by being completely terrible, murderously terrible.
Similar to censuring Trump for the actions his tweets caused… which, you know, doesn’t sound like all that bad of an idea.
#30tyrants
And yes, I am aware that Socrates’ surviving students, one of whom may well have been an officer for the thirty, later published anecdotes to highlight the supposedly upright Socrates “standing up to” the thirty. However, since they stood to gain much by whitewashing their mentor, and since Socrates by all accounts was an all-round contrarian grouch, these anecdotes aren’t exactly worth a lot as evidence of any actual opposition or noble resistance.
I’m not extremely very well-read in these things (read: I just read up on his process and the rule of the 30 on Wikipedia.
So … one of the 30 was a less-known former student of Sokrates, as were a lot of other people. And after the rule of the 30 was ended, they were all given amnesty. So then why would Sokrates be sentenced to death? According to Wikipedia, the accusations were “corrupting the minds of the youth of Athens and impiety”, and it would seem that he was mostly politically very inconvenient, and politicians were tired of having to argue with him.
Socrates was not a friend of democracy as it was being implemented, since he thought (correctly) that lot of people can still be very wrong. But he would also have argued, even more so, against the theme of “might makes right”, which is pretty much the foundational motto of any authoritarian or fascist movement — that would make it unlikely that he actively help to bring about the rule of the 30 or approved of it.
…but then, that’s just based on the stuff on Wikipedia and the historians quoted there. Do you have other information that would paint this in a different light?
“Dangerous ideas” … I don’t think that ideas themselves can be dangerous.
“Dangerous ideas” … I don’t think that ideas themselves can be dangerous.
and that’s why you’ll never work in the SCP Memetics Division. or it might make you ideally suited to work there, honestly I don’t know and I’m afraid to find out…
You don’t believe ideas can be dangerous?
Like, eugenics?
Racism?
Fascism?
Nationalist supremacist ideas?
None of these, the least bit dangerous?
Or in the case of Socrates/Plato, the notion that tyranny by a caste of philosopher kings is the best form of rule?
“that’s why you’ll never work in the SCP Memetics Division” — I had no idea what that is, and after going to their website and reading for a few minutes … I still don’t. It kinda looks like a parody, or a group of conspiracy theorists, or a conspiracy, or people who are trolling conspiracy theorists. Or something.
Memetics treats ideas like infections — but that is merely a metaphor to model their spread. It does not mean that they were actually bad for people. Well … of course, if I did something /very bad/, and other people started getting ideas about investigating whether I did something /very bad/, then I might consider those ideas dangerous. Of course. But if I try to remove myself from the equation and regard society as a whole, then I would like people to have as many ideas as they can, discuss them, decide on the best ones and spread those as far as they can.
The only risk in that is with people not recognizing bad ideas, investing a lot into them and failing painfully. But that sort of failure should become _less_ likely the more openly ideas are discussed because it increases the likelihood of somebody spotting the mistake.
The worst (most dangerous if you want to call them that) ideas are the ones which one powerful person has, finds very good, never tells a soul about and ends up reaping massive benefits at the expense of their fellow humans. And that type of idea actually becomes less harmful if it does not stay secret.
Since no one refers to HR by his full name – or hardly ever, anyway – I have a hard time not filling in the rest of his name as being Giger. As in HR Giger, the guy who designed the Alien from the eponymous movies. Given what sepiaworld HR ends up as, I think that’s rather fitting.
Maybe R is his last initial?
Like … *shudder* Hal Rand or something :p
Going through all Plato’s talk about shadows has reminded me of Shanna’s opening dialogue, and her job being to “notice the shadows”. I’m curious how intentional that was. I quite missed it the first time through.