On Sun, 13 Aug 2017 at 1:01 am, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 11, 2017 at 9:43 PM, Stathis Papaioannou <stath...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > > >> Before the duplication SP bet that "I will see W". >> > > And that's the problem right there. The above is about the "I" BEFORE > the duplication but AFTER the duplication 2 people can make a equally > strong case that they and they alone are deserving of the grand title Mr. > I. So who is the real Mr. I? > You call yourself "I" and I call myself "I", simultaneously, and we don't fight over who deserves the title, because that is how pronouns work. After the duplication both are identical and, presuming one city doesn't > have a special magic the other city lacks, we can logically > > conclude that > > either both are Mr. I or neither are Mr. I. If both are then "I" will see > W *AND* M. If neither are then "I" will not see any cities at all. In NO > case will the "I" before the duplication see one city but not the other, so > W *OR *M can never be the correct answer. We can always find a "I" that > remembers being I before the duplication that is in W, and we > can > always find a "I" that remembers being I before the duplication that is in > M. > > Of course untangling the above would be completely unnecessary if personal > pronouns were ditched and only the proper noun the pronouns are suposed to > refer to were used, but the complicated tangle is not a bug it's a feature, > it's a great place to hide fuzzy thinking. Hence the refusal of Bruno to > stop using personal pronouns. > > >> > >> After the duplication SP1 sees W >> > > And what is the one and only one definition of "SP1"? SP1 is the SP > that will see W. And who will see W? > > SP1. > And round and round we go > . > > >> > >> and SP2 sees M. >> > > And what is the one and only one definition of "SP2"? SP2 is the SP that > will see M. And who will see M? > > SP2. And round and round we go. > > >> > >> Everyone agrees that this is fair >> > > And everyone also agrees it's silly to make a bet on something that is > possible to predict with 100% accuracy. It's actually even worse than > that, it's not only > possible > to make such a prediction it's EASY. And that explains the title of > this thread. > If the bet is that "SP1 will see W" then this will happen as a matter of definition, and it isn't an interesting bet. If the bet is that "I will see W" it may look like a similar bet but it is in fact different because of the nature of personal pronouns, which can be correctly used to refer to multiple different people at the same time. So one copy wins the bet and the other loses, and everyone agrees on this. The fact that everyone can understand it well enough to agree on who wins is not consistent with the bet being "gibberish". > -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
