This Message Does Not Exist

Post by IIsi50MHz » Tue, Jun 04, 2024, 3:19 PM UTC

nuancebydefault wrote: post #269

HocusLocus wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [...] My car informing me that one of the tyres is low on pressure [...] Thank you for putting this in a larger philosophical prospective. For I have something on the next level, a car that tells me "a tire has low pressure", but does NOT tell me which tire it is. I did the best I could to understand why my beloved car would do this, but gave up and had to interpret it as a deliberately malicious act. My suspicions…

Weird that tires have pressure sensors. I really thought that the control unit's logic simply averages rpm values to identify low pressure tires. I'm glad my car informs me which tire it is convinced of to suffer from 'depression'. I already checked that it identified the correct one.

Post by gpvos » Wed, Jun 05, 2024, 7:53 PM UTC

fweimer wrote: post #205

gpvos wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Example: You are editing a table row with some application, but when you try to save the changes, the system discovered that the row has been deleted from the table. The business logic does not permit you to create rows arbitrarily, so a new row cannot be inserted instead of updating existing one. The behavior admittedly does not make sense for files (although I suppose you could rename or delete the directory that c…

Post by Joker_vD » Fri, Jun 07, 2024, 9:45 PM UTC

djur wrote: post #252

vsuperpower2020 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A paradox is just a statement that is self-contradictory. It doesn't mean a difficult or mind-bending problem as it is sometimes used colloquially.

    PARADOX, in philoſophy, a propoſition ſeemingly abſurd,
      as being contrary to to ſome received opinion, but yet true
      in fact.
        No ſcience abounds more with paradoxes than geome-
      try: thus, that a right line ſhould continually approach
      to the hyperbola, and yet never reach it, is a true para-
      dox; and in the ſame manner, a ſpiral may continually
      approach to the point, and yet not reach it, in any number
      of revolutions, however great.

                                 Encyclopaedia Brittanica, 1771,
                                                  Vol. 3, p. 455

Post by smaudet » Fri, Jun 07, 2024, 10:24 PM UTC

femto wrote: post #96

mkl wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how do you explain to a non-technical user that their data has been deleted on the server, but that their client still has a cached copy that they might want to try to salvage somehow? How about: "This message has been deleted from the mail server, but Outlook still has it in its temporary cache on this device. You can copy the message contents, or discard it from the cache, at which point it will be permanently de…

A typical person's head will explode at the mention of the words "cache" and "server". They will then go into a blind panic that their data is going to be "permanently deleted".