Palindrome Day 20200202 • Hacker News Board

Re: Palindrome Day 20200202

#121

Post by iso947 » Sun, Feb 02, 2020, 3:42 PM UTC

School-Cotton wrote: post #106

elif wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, you're using an idiosyncratic American "usual manner of speech" to justify an idiosyncratic American format.

Idiosyncratic? Of course. People in different countries speak differently. Every natural language is totally arbitrary and “idiosyncratic”. What is your point?

The assertion that most people and most countries in spoken language say “day [of] month”, which I find anecdotally accurate, although that’s mainly in European countries and languages

This matches why almost every country in the world uses “d/m/y” in normal usage.

Re: Palindrome Day 20200202

#122

Post by CrazyStat » Sun, Feb 02, 2020, 3:47 PM UTC

eganist wrote: post #117

CrazyStat wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An actual, living, breathing human being is not invented by the author. Do you also complain about novelists misgendering their fictional characters?

That's a novel perversion of the assertion. An author inventing a character can create any character they want. But if you're going to make a remark about a hypothetical person who could exist, don't bound the gender. The two are completely incomparable. We could keep going down this rabbit hole. Up to you.

Of course the two are comparable. In both cases an author is inventing a person and situations and narrating their invention. Calling them incomparable is a transparent attempt to shoot down the argument without actually engaging with it.

The joke described a hypothetical person who was born and died on certain dates, and then fleshed that out with additional invented details: gender and use of diapers at both the beginning and end of his life. If you're going to complain about the author of the joke assigning their fictional character a gender you might as well also complain about them assigning him to use adult diapers, since many real actual people would also be deeply offended by such a mis-diapering. If you're going to complain about the author of a short humorous anecdote assigning their character a gender you might as well also complain about the author of a novel assigning their character a gender.

I'm happy to have a serious discussion here but I'm not going to bother if you continue to try to dismiss my arguments without engaging.

Re: Palindrome Day 20200202

#123

Post by marcosdumay » Sun, Feb 02, 2020, 3:49 PM UTC

TylerE wrote: post #33

Retric wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no largest or smallest real number. Therefore a set without a largest or smallest member is not necessarily empty. Alternatively, being the smallest in the set of uninteresting numbers does not make a number interesting, at best it is unique like every other number and therefore uninteresting.

Not true of dates though, since you can set hard bounds at the big bang (or whatever) and the heat death of the universe.

You don't need both bounds anyway. A countable set without a lower bound in any representation is already a paradox.

Re: Palindrome Day 20200202

#124

Post by School-Cotton » Sun, Feb 02, 2020, 3:52 PM UTC

iso947 wrote: post #121

School-Cotton wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idiosyncratic? Of course. People in different countries speak differently. Every natural language is totally arbitrary and “idiosyncratic”. What is your point?

The assertion that most people and most countries in spoken language say “day [of] month”, which I find anecdotally accurate, although that’s mainly in European countries and languages This matches why almost every country in the world uses “d/m/y” in normal usage.

If you were aware of the mind-boggling diversity of human language you would not make claims like “typical languages do X so one that doesn’t is idiosyncratic” (unless backed by serious research spanning the thousands of known languages). You would also not think experience with a few languages from the Indo-European family is generalizable.

Standard Chinese for example uses Y/M/D and I’m sure you can find many examples of other formats.

Re: Palindrome Day 20200202

#125

Post by stevekemp » Sun, Feb 02, 2020, 3:57 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #47

rags2riches wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the Fourth of July then?

What about it? It's the name of a holiday. 12/25 is often called Christmas, and yet 9/29 is never called Michaelmas. Same thing.

The parent was making the point that generally Americans refer to dates such as "May 2nd", "April 14th".

But one of their biggest holidays is explicitly called "4th of July", changing the ordering.

Re: Palindrome Day 20200202

#126

Post by eganist » Sun, Feb 02, 2020, 4:02 PM UTC

CrazyStat wrote: post #122

eganist wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a novel perversion of the assertion. An author inventing a character can create any character they want. But if you're going to make a remark about a hypothetical person who could exist, don't bound the gender. The two are completely incomparable. We could keep going down this rabbit hole. Up to you.

Of course the two are comparable. In both cases an author is inventing a person and situations and narrating their invention. Calling them incomparable is a transparent attempt to shoot down the argument without actually engaging with it. The joke described a hypothetical person who was born and died on certain dates, and then fleshed that out with additional invented details: gender and use of diapers at both the be…

The difference between a hypothetical person and a fictional character is that the former can exist and the latter cannot.

Your argument was not dismissed, it was deliberately engaged. The person could exist with a nontrivial degree of probability, and therefore, gendering the person is inappropriate.

Re: Palindrome Day 20200202

#127

Post by Retric » Sun, Feb 02, 2020, 4:03 PM UTC

datanerd wrote: post #115

Retric wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was meant to be humorous, however dates are not natural numbers.

It is obvious that dates are not natural numbers. What is your point? A set of dates obviously has an earliest date. The humour here is that an earliest date within the set of uninteresting dates is itself an interesting date by virtue of being the earliest such date in that set.

> A set of dates obviously has an earliest date.

Uhh, no you’re thinking in terms of a finite set. From the set of all dates, what’s the latest possible date, or conversely the earliest possible date. The temptation is to say infinite BC is the earliest possible date, but infinity is not a number.

Re: Palindrome Day 20200202

#128

Post by syndacks » Sun, Feb 02, 2020, 4:04 PM UTC

whoopdedo wrote: post #37

lostlogin wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hope this is pointed out to kids in classrooms all over the world. For at least some of them it’s the summer holidays and they are heat addled and doing something completely mindless with no idea of the day or date. I’m rather jealous.

Also, it's Sunday.

Superbowl* Sunday

Re: Palindrome Day 20200202

#129

Post by eganist » Sun, Feb 02, 2020, 4:05 PM UTC

iso947 wrote: post #118

eganist wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a novel perversion of the assertion. An author inventing a character can create any character they want. But if you're going to make a remark about a hypothetical person who could exist, don't bound the gender. The two are completely incomparable. We could keep going down this rabbit hole. Up to you.

The author of the post invented a character born today and who will live for 1010 years. The author’s character was described as “he”. You seem to think that this is wrong despite it not being your character.

101* and they're a hypothetical person who could exist, not a fictional character who could not exist.

And really, this whole thing misses the point: if you're describing someone who could exist, you shouldn't put bounds on who the person could be.

Re: Palindrome Day 20200202

#130

Post by CrazyStat » Sun, Feb 02, 2020, 4:12 PM UTC

eganist wrote: post #126

CrazyStat wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course the two are comparable. In both cases an author is inventing a person and situations and narrating their invention. Calling them incomparable is a transparent attempt to shoot down the argument without actually engaging with it. The joke described a hypothetical person who was born and died on certain dates, and then fleshed that out with additional invented details: gender and use of diapers at both the be…

The difference between a hypothetical person and a fictional character is that the former can exist and the latter cannot. Your argument was not dismissed, it was deliberately engaged. The person could exist with a nontrivial degree of probability, and therefore, gendering the person is inappropriate.

Plenty of lengthier literary works describe characters who could exist with a nontrivial degree of probability--indeed, with probability approaching one. All it takes is a minor character with minimal identifying information, which happens all the time. A store clerk who the main character briefly interacts with, for example. Should these characters not be gendered?

Also you're ignoring the mis-diapering issue.