[Haifux] Fwd: A Parody on Aristotle's Organum

[Shlomi Fish]

Here's a post I made to Usenet about a Joke I came up with. It's
blasphemy, but it illustrates an interesting point. Did anybody came up
with it before me?

You may remember me from some time ago when I sent you a message. Since
then I discovered a philosophical system called Neo-Tech, which is kind of
like the extrapolation of the thesis you put forth in Innumeracy. It's
much more than that, IMO, but I'll leave it at that.

Check: http://www.neo-tech.com/. It's really cool.

Inspired by Neo-Tech and Objectivism, I wrote two humorous stories which
you can find on my homepage. (link below). They are both available in
English. 

Now, I have a relatively ambitious project called "Humanity" which aims to
be a parody about (you guessed it) Humanity and modern life in particular.
I am also toying with the idea of preparing it in a Bazaar way of doing
things, in case you are familiar with Eric S. Raymond's "The Cathedral and
the Bazaar".

As a side note I might add that I forgot to mention a very important and
clear instance of innumeracy, which I encountered in my previous letter. I
can detail it here. I also came up with the term Inperlability, which
signifies how people's lack of knowledge of Perl (Python/Ruby/etc.) makes
them work twice as hard for their homework, or come to the conclusion that
some things are not possible.

Best regards,

        Shlomi Fish



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Shlomi Fish        [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Home Page:         http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 05:10:57 -0700
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [Haifux] A Parody on Aristotle's Organum

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Shlomi Fish)
Newsgroups: humanities.philosophy.objectivism,alt.neo-tech
Subject: [Haifux] A Parody on Aristotle's Organum
NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.139.197.27
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

If:
1. A is A.
2. A is not not-A.
does it imply that:
1. B is B.
2. B is not not-B
?

(take a moment to think about it).
(continuation below)












While this is a complete blasphemy, it illustrates an important point.
Sometimes, subtle switches between induction and deduction are used in
a mystical manner, either deliberatly or while being careless.

In any case, if you want to learn more about the mathematical and
logical nature of many jokes, I can wholeheartedly recommend to read
John Allen Paulos' book "Mathematics and Humor".

Best regards,

     Shlomi Fish


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