Of course I need to watch the video to make a responsible reply, and don’t have time to do that right now…
But Frank’s common-languaging of axiom as assumption seems good to me, in the sense that it makes a much better point than one generally _can_ make with loose common-language terms such as “fact” or “truth”. It calls out axioms as the foundation-blocks for building up artificial model-worlds. So it would be like declaring the environment variables for running some collection of programs. That seems like a good operational characterization to me, of what one does with axioms. The words “fact” and “truth” are ones I would avoid, myself, unless I had time for a very long conversation, and an interlocutor whom I didn’t know with certainty would make me regret entering it. But there are less troublesome words such as “empirically valid” (which still requires a long conversation, but maybe not as long because it acknowledges a certain rough-and-ready and habit-accepting regime of behavior), or “logically entailed”, which acknowledges that one has moved over into the operations of some specific artificial world (kind of gone into some container). If I had to give a common-language-ethnography on connotations associated with “fact” as a term, I would probably appeal to latin roots having to do with “something done” (like e fatto in Italian today), but I would look for cognates with terms such as “faith” — which are probably wrong; someday I will look up all these etymologies — having to do with what one is willing to put weight on, hoping that the “fact” will carry such weight. On the grounds that _anything_ one does is a choice, whether to accept something or not to accept it, then life is full of these little irreversible commitments, just by the fact that ongoing moments of existence get buried into the inaccessible past, and by dint of that, one _has_ chosen something, and something, and something. Like Seth Lloyd’s Computing the Universe (though I could have left Lloyd out of it and this paragraph would have had exactly the same content). So the notion of what one has “de facto” chosen is a kind of notion that begs for some term if we are to reflect on practical life, and it doesn’t surprise me that the term that accretes around it is polysemous and something of a placeholder. But of course, I should watch the video before replying…. Eric > On Jun 30, 2026, at 6:07, glen <[email protected]> wrote: > > That's not a very useful contribution. Are you *begging* me to ask: Then > what, in your opinion, are better regarded as facts? If that's what you're > begging me to ask, then why not go ahead and put that in your response? Why > make me ask it? > > Like "level", the word "fact" should be stricken from any sane vocabulary. > But we are not sane, are we? > > On 6/29/26 2:00 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote: >> Axiom are better regarded as assumptions in my opinion. >> Frank Wimberly >> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz >> Santa Fe, NM 87505 >> 505 670-9918 >> Research: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2 >> <https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2> >> On Mon, Jun 29, 2026, 2:47 PM glen <[email protected] >> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >> Never mind that Folley's linearity, here, disallows the exceptions where >> fallacious arguments are *good* arguments ... maybe even [gasp] made good >> *because* they're fallacious. But because some of my AI slop has recently >> been labeled "factually incorrect" 8^D, his use of the phrase starting just >> after the 2:36 mark triggered me. >> The 7 Levels of Logical Thinking >> https://youtu.be/yrimaWOQtfM?si=QL8-wj68gqj67ltu&t=156 >> <https://youtu.be/yrimaWOQtfM?si=QL8-wj68gqj67ltu&t=156> >> "There are awful people throughout history who have still been factually >> correct about some things. And there are incredibly moral people who have >> been factually incorrect about some things." >> Grrr. In addition to the assumption of linearity, let's put aside the >> violation of Hume's guillotine. What I'd like to focus on is nickname >> "fact". What is fact in such argumentation? I suppose we could allow that >> axioms are "brute" facts and, if the inference is truth-preserving, >> subsequent sentences may be facts but not brute. But these punctuation >> marks, the well-formed sentences are distinct from the transformations that >> operate on them. Are the transformations properly called "facts", just like >> the sentences they operate on? My guess is that they're more akin to axioms >> than derived outcomes. So the transformations are also brute, if they're >> facts at all. >> And if we promote primitive transformations to "facts", then do we also >> promote compositions of transformations to "facts"? Would the compositions >> be analogous to the derived sentences? So composite tranforms are mere facts >> but primitive transformations are brute facts? >> Worse yet, although the rest of what he says in the rest of the video is >> fine, just fine, w.r.t. to what can be called or understood as "fact", are >> metalogical classificiations of logics somehow *more* factual? I mean, if >> some property holds for a class of logics, then there's a bit of wiggle room >> in which logic you choose for some task addressable by any in the class. So >> that metalogical fact is a more robust fact than a persnickety fact upheld >> by a smaller set of logics. By this progressive promotion, we might say that >> "brute facts" of axioms or primitive transforms in a particular logic are >> not even facts, whereas metalogical true sentences are facts, flipping the >> whole "factuality calculus" on its head. Could "it is blue" be less factual >> than "there exist things that are blue"? >> Or even more radical, is it possible that AI hallucinations, having been >> derived from more data than God, are more factual than any particular >> validated output? >> Is gaslighting more entheogenic than psilocybin? Where are the >> representative Scientologists when you need one? > > > -- > 8647 ⊥ ɐןןǝdoɹ ǝ uǝןƃ > ὅτε oi μὲν ἄλλοι κύνες τοὺς ἐχϑροὺς δάκνουσιν, ἐγὰ δὲ τοὺς φίλους, ἵνα σώσω. > > > .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ... > --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom > https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fbit.ly%2fvirtualfriam&c=E,1,c5smyH-ig1RSuY4z--9_i87_BtLD8mWroUlQKGaCLSiajP4aR7MLUwTThtYCnKdlgAKfMcHOvV0OPYh1Mlz8VteGTHtPIJa4TZ9jV6K-KuEsuJxcR2S9-TDmkQ,,&typo=1 > to (un)subscribe > https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fmailman%2flistinfo%2ffriam_redfish.com&c=E,1,FCgpaXl7vih7G1lDLn_KICs-4JeS1AhziKIU8VllT9o1EPb5PxHnV-S1Cku0sLC96NfxV-r7MGSH_FvDHisd4BcIgjigKRq5TENYmC0L8ICtcVL81A,,&typo=1 > FRIAM-COMIC > https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2ffriam-comic.blogspot.com%2f&c=E,1,CyGa_UBlJMVkOG0ckSHtJHt8EVhi6VQ8IqL5HOA_a0FQCWRvsg1kw-E0Ou9kQMmu_xIw-RYWncBlpEaamWnJXkx-C9xMYalT_akYhXXTJghB5HovTQ,,&typo=1 > archives: 5/2017 thru present > https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fpipermail%2ffriam_redfish.com%2f&c=E,1,hKNu-JIiJzyP1jALnBdzDKRR4RWfeoyhCtzWENv67-T93XDLj3RFtCo8GH66X5GcORAs_xWJiOtsCqAP_lIjHnvwy7LrTPLrKSJ8hCIH3MrWdIEvEq7NEV-j&typo=1 > 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom https://bit.ly/virtualfriam to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: 5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
