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Comparative Illusion

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Re: Comparative Illusion

#11

Post by albert_e »

rwoerz wrote: post #5

"Nachts ist kälter als draußen." Not sure if this really works in English: "At night is colder than outdoors."

I wonder if there is an element of implied location (wherever the speaker is usually present physically "at night" -- presumably at home) and time (usually day time for "outdoors") that might make the sentence meaningful and good enough for every day communication?

Re: Comparative Illusion

#14

Post by [deleted] »

wizzzzzy wrote: post #9
josephcsible wrote: post #6

I don't understand how "In Michigan and Minnesota, more people found Mr Bush's ads negative than they did Mr Kerry's." is an example of this. To me, that unambiguously parses like this: peopleInMichiganAndMinnesota.filter(foundMrBushsAdsNegative).length() > peopleInMichiganAndMinnesota.filter(foundMrKerrysAdsNegative).length()

'More people' needs to be compared to a differenet group but the use of 'they' means the 'more people' are being compared to themselves.

[deleted]

Re: Comparative Illusion

#16

Post by dalmo3 »

deltaonefour wrote: post #12
galaxyLogic wrote: post #8

Similarly in computer programming some code just seems like it should work, but it does not compute

However if you think about it, a lot of this type of code has errors and yet still ends up not being able to run at all.

What if the program runs perfectly but the errors don't?

Re: Comparative Illusion

#17

Post by BoardsOfCanada »

I don't see how "More people have been to Russia than I have" can initially seem acceptable. I assume it's being parsed as something that makes sense, but what is that? "Many people have been to Russia, but I haven't" or what?

Re: Comparative Illusion

#19

Post by IIAOPSW »

BoardsOfCanada wrote: post #17

I don't see how "More people have been to Russia than I have" can initially seem acceptable. I assume it's being parsed as something that makes sense, but what is that? "Many people have been to Russia, but I haven't" or what?

"Number of people who have been to Russia" is an integer. "I have been to Russia" is a boolean. Is 5 > True? Depends on what language you work in. Is it useful to overload "greater than" to apply to numerical and booleans like this? Sure. It is not I alone who has been to Russia. There's a great multitude of people who have been to Russia and could tell you more than I could. More people have been to Russia than I have.

Re: Comparative Illusion

#20

Post by tux3 »

BoardsOfCanada wrote: post #17

I don't see how "More people have been to Russia than I have" can initially seem acceptable. I assume it's being parsed as something that makes sense, but what is that? "Many people have been to Russia, but I haven't" or what?

My initial parsing is "than I have" -> number of times I've been to russia, so this'd be comparing the number of people who went to Russia with how many times I did.

Nonsensical, but that's my initial intuitive parse

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