I've been following this guide for several months. It's made some excellent recommendations so far. Prospective type theorists, students of linear logic, etc. will have to venture beyond the reading list, but having a good grasp of the modern fundamentals of logic has made a big difference to me in how well I can follow texts like HoTT.
Teach Yourself Logic: A Study Guide [pdf]
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Re: Teach Yourself Logic: A Study Guide [pdf]
#12And for leisure, www.logicomix.com (a surprising graphical novel bio-"pic" of Russell and some episodes of the foundations saga).
Re: Teach Yourself Logic: A Study Guide [pdf]
#13Studying logic taught me one of the more important distinctions in life is identifying when things are always true vs sometimes true. We are taught to often group things that are mostly true into the always true category. This is effectively lossy compression that can introduce serious error into your line of reasoning.
Re: Teach Yourself Logic: A Study Guide [pdf]
#14Studying logic taught me one of the more important distinctions in life is identifying when things are always true vs sometimes true. We are taught to often group things that are mostly true into the always true category. This is effectively lossy compression that can introduce serious error into your line of reasoning.
That doesn't make sense to me
as in real life most of our reasoning comes from syllogisms for practical reasons. And if something is consistently demonstrated to be true, chances are it will continue to be so, so we take our chances with that. It isn't lossy anything, it is life.
Re: Teach Yourself Logic: A Study Guide [pdf]
#15Studying logic taught me one of the more important distinctions in life is identifying when things are always true vs sometimes true. We are taught to often group things that are mostly true into the always true category. This is effectively lossy compression that can introduce serious error into your line of reasoning.
That doesn't make sense to me as in real life most of our reasoning comes from syllogisms for practical reasons. And if something is consistently demonstrated to be true, chances are it will continue to be so, so we take our chances with that. It isn't lossy anything, it is life.
As a side note, it's always kind of funny to see hackers/computer types try and frame discussions in terms of things which are familiar to them, and these comments are often highly upvoted because of the explanation. In this instance, "lossy compression". But few people ever seem to question whether the domain of such categorisations is at all applicable to real human situations, and even if it's possible to make such categorisations. Is the method of the natural sciences or mathematics applicable identically to the social sciences? Often hackers assume this to be the case.
I think there's also an element that hackers want to feel as though using the concepts they've developed which are very powerful in computer science should therefore be key to understanding the world as a whole. It's partially being eager to apply one's knowledge and partly hubris and unwillingness to defer to philosophy, sociology or critical theory which they view as less rigorous (and therefore bad).
Re: Teach Yourself Logic: A Study Guide [pdf]
#16On pages 43-44, the author mentions a member of my school's faculty G. Toualakis. The criticisms are valid and his textbook is convoluted. I appreciate the recognition on unnecessary formalism and complexity.
For a 1000 level logic course that Software Engineers, Computer Engineers and Computer Science must take, it is extreme.
Overall, interesting to see!
Re: Teach Yourself Logic: A Study Guide [pdf]
#17Studying logic taught me one of the more important distinctions in life is identifying when things are always true vs sometimes true. We are taught to often group things that are mostly true into the always true category. This is effectively lossy compression that can introduce serious error into your line of reasoning.
Everything is mostly true except truth about truth.
Re: Teach Yourself Logic: A Study Guide [pdf]
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
That doesn't make sense to me as in real life most of our reasoning comes from syllogisms for practical reasons. And if something is consistently demonstrated to be true, chances are it will continue to be so, so we take our chances with that. It isn't lossy anything, it is life.
As a side note, it's always kind of funny to see hackers/computer types try and frame discussions in terms of things which are familiar to them, and these comments are often highly upvoted because of the explanation. In this instance, "lossy compression". But few people ever seem to question whether the domain of such categorisations is at all applicable to real human situations, and even if it's possible to make suc…
The universe is logic and life is engineering.
Re: Teach Yourself Logic: A Study Guide [pdf]
#19Studying logic taught me one of the more important distinctions in life is identifying when things are always true vs sometimes true. We are taught to often group things that are mostly true into the always true category. This is effectively lossy compression that can introduce serious error into your line of reasoning.
That doesn't make sense to me as in real life most of our reasoning comes from syllogisms for practical reasons. And if something is consistently demonstrated to be true, chances are it will continue to be so, so we take our chances with that. It isn't lossy anything, it is life.
There is the mathematical logic that is deduced from axioms which is considered universally true unless the axioms are false.
Our everyday "folk" logic is always contextual and ambiguous. The deductions are probabilistic instead of being deterministic. They are sometimes true.
Re: Teach Yourself Logic: A Study Guide [pdf]
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
That doesn't make sense to me as in real life most of our reasoning comes from syllogisms for practical reasons. And if something is consistently demonstrated to be true, chances are it will continue to be so, so we take our chances with that. It isn't lossy anything, it is life.
As a side note, it's always kind of funny to see hackers/computer types try and frame discussions in terms of things which are familiar to them, and these comments are often highly upvoted because of the explanation. In this instance, "lossy compression". But few people ever seem to question whether the domain of such categorisations is at all applicable to real human situations, and even if it's possible to make suc…
Is this phenomenon uniquely pronounced among hackers/computer types in your experience? In a sense, it kind of sounds like your comment could be summarized as "people often try to apply already-available concepts and reasoning to new problems areas". But it's uniquely funny when hackers do it.
On the flip side, how many philosophy, sociology and critical theory types reach for concepts from biology and physics? And how well do you think they grasp and employ those concept compared to specialists in those fields?
I think any specialist who believes their specialty will necessarily magically generalize is presuming too much.
FWIW, as a formerly deeply-invested philosophy/critical theory type for over a decade... I have to say I had to begrudgingly admit that math/hard science are unequivocally more rigorous than the soft ones. Each is suited to it's purpose, but it doesn't help to pretend that Zizek is as rigorous as Knuth.