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Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#191

Post by bravetraveler »

skyechurch wrote: post #190
tempodox wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is ludicrous. Failure to distinguish the person (“I”) from their recorded voice does not make a philosophical problem. It's pure and unadulterated stupidity.

Alternatively: placing finger on the peak of Olympus Mons on Martian map "I am not here now". I'm not seeing the problem. There are a lot of philosophy 'problems' like this, which leads me to think philosophers lead blessed, problem-free lives.

> leads me to think philosophers lead blessed, problem-free lives.

I agree, perhaps with the qualification of 'eventually', having been both of these people:

    1) someone born dirt poor who had to spend every waking moment to feed myself
    2) someone who can pontificate in comment sections
As my life became more blessed I could afford more philosophy.

Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach wander philosophically.

Playing with ourselves. Man plans, god laughs. Everyone has a plan until they get hit in the mouth. I could go on.

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#192

Post by goatlover »

skyechurch wrote: post #190
tempodox wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is ludicrous. Failure to distinguish the person (“I”) from their recorded voice does not make a philosophical problem. It's pure and unadulterated stupidity.

Alternatively: placing finger on the peak of Olympus Mons on Martian map "I am not here now". I'm not seeing the problem. There are a lot of philosophy 'problems' like this, which leads me to think philosophers lead blessed, problem-free lives.

You probably haven't thought deeply about the problems. Usually they expose some issue with our concepts or assumptions. Things we take to be obvious and simple aren't always on careful reflection.

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#193

Post by [deleted] »

m463 wrote: post #61
cortesoft wrote: post #36

Oh, finally a chance to put my Philosophy degree to use! The error says the "message" does not exist, but the message is not the same as the text. The message is an object that can be saved or discarded, and it contains text. The text still exists and can be copied, but the message is gone and can't be saved anymore.

if the message never achieved a physical form such as printing, does the message exist? if the message stopped existing, but nobody was there, did it make the trash-can sound?

[deleted]

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#194

Post by OmarShehata »

chii wrote: post #146
OmarShehata wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is the only correct answer. "a non-technical user has no idea what a server or cache is" sure, but they can learn. The average person is much smarter than you think they are (when it comes to matters that actually affect their day to day life). If they don't get your explanation, it's almost always because (1) they don't care, they don't see why it matters to them (it often doesn't) (2) you're not explaining it…

> but they can learn. though do they want to? If they can learn, they would've. And then cease being a non-technical user.

> And then cease being a non-technical user

I'm glad you said this because Feynman has a beautiful response to it: basically, there is no such thing as a "non-technical user". Almost everyone is adept at navigating _some_ complex system in their life. I agree with you that they probably don't want to learn.

but the reason they don't want to learn is because they don't think there is any value on it, they believe it is a waste of time. For the same reason I (used to) believe it's a waste of time for me to play puzzle games (I'm bad at it, I don't enjoy it, what's the point). Or learn to manage people, or learn to understand politics, etc.

I'm asking you (and everyone reading this) to suspend disbelief and pretend that these users DO have capacity to learn, and they just don't see any value in it, and it's on us to clearly (and concisely) communicate the value without gatekeeping and without dumbing it down. I have been surprised at how people's capacity to learn was much greater than I expected, and I hope the same will be true for you.

I see this attitude a lot of, "well, if you want to understand how this system works, we have to start from scratch" (and they start to lecture for hours about some fundamental things). I think this is a failure mode: an inability to figure out _what_ fundamental pieces actually matter to understanding the current system.

Apologies for the rant, I feel strongly about this because I think there's a lot of low hanging fruit here that everyone can benefit from, but I'm still trying to refine my thoughts.

i tried to write about this here: https://omarshehata.substack.com/p/my-favorite-1980s-canadia...

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#195

Post by adammarples »

goatlover wrote: post #192
skyechurch wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively: placing finger on the peak of Olympus Mons on Martian map "I am not here now". I'm not seeing the problem. There are a lot of philosophy 'problems' like this, which leads me to think philosophers lead blessed, problem-free lives.

You probably haven't thought deeply about the problems. Usually they expose some issue with our concepts or assumptions. Things we take to be obvious and simple aren't always on careful reflection.

They normally expose some problem with our language, and nothing deeper than that. This is a perfect example.

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#196

Post by xorcist »

hollander wrote: post #189

This is typical Microsoft logic. And 'logic' should be quoted, because Microsoft has the most stupid texts in their products. They make translation errors, grammatical errors, use incomprehensible and stupid comments.

Didn't Jobs say something along the lines of that the problem with Microsoft is that they don't care about their products?

Things like this shows how literally that is true. Make a product, sell a product, what could possibly be the problem with that?

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#197

Post by [deleted] »

tempodox wrote: post #166
dfabulich wrote: post #151

I think this is an example of the "answering machine paradox," which philosophers have been writing about since the 1970's. https://philpapers.org/rec/SIDTAM > According to an intuitive semantics for 'I,' 'here' and 'now,' 'I am not here now' should always be false when uttered. But occurrences of 'I am not here now' on an answering machine seem to be true (when the speaker is not home). (If you're interested, you ca…

This is ludicrous. Failure to distinguish the person (“I”) from their recorded voice does not make a philosophical problem. It's pure and unadulterated stupidity.

[deleted]

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#198

Post by jcparkyn »

IsTom wrote: post #176
gpvos wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question remains: how can something that does not exist contain anything?

The sane will tell you that Necronomicon doesn't exist in our world, yet we have a vague idea of what it contains and we're sure that it contains only the most repulsive of things.

Well somebody had better discard it now, lest it start existing at some point in the future.

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#199

Post by vsuperpower2020 »

goatlover wrote: post #192
skyechurch wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively: placing finger on the peak of Olympus Mons on Martian map "I am not here now". I'm not seeing the problem. There are a lot of philosophy 'problems' like this, which leads me to think philosophers lead blessed, problem-free lives.

You probably haven't thought deeply about the problems. Usually they expose some issue with our concepts or assumptions. Things we take to be obvious and simple aren't always on careful reflection.

This may be true, but if it is the canadian journal of philosophy is doing their reputation no favors by publishing the "answering machine paradox". Paradox. Paradox. That's a funny word, isn't it? Paradox.
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