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This Message Does Not Exist

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Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#241

Post by b112 »

tadala wrote: post #236
b112 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your case was "that made up 'science' is real, and you can't say no because you haven't studied it for years". I don't need to study astrology for years, to know it's nonsense in about 10 minutes. Yet I've hear a lot more philosophical blather than that, and so yes, I have enough data to make a determination. There's an inner logic to tarot cards, books and books on it, but that doesn't make it useful or valuable.

Shocking comment. Do you think the scientific method is inbuilt in our DNA or something? Where do you think it all comes from?

You think it comes from philosophy? This is like claiming our democracy comes from God, because he edictorially spoke through ancient kings!

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#242

Post by Ma8ee »

b112 wrote: post #238
Ma8ee wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You very clearly illustrate andybak’s point by showing that you just don’t even know what philosophy is.

So your argument, is that one must spend years studying nonsense, to have an opinion on its worth? I've already clarified why this is not so. Thus, your main, true disagreement is that you do not agree with my assessment.

No, my argument is that you lack even a rudimentary understanding what it is all about. You only need some curiosity and an open mind to get that. I’m certain there are something in Wikipedia that can help.

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#243

Post by djur »

ryukoposting wrote: post #229
andybak wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that the joy many commenters here have in both denigrating philosophys and at the same time proudly demonstrating no interest in knowing anything about it to be one of the more embarrassing things regularly on display.

I wouldn't call myself a philosphy expert by any means (love me some Epicurus) but I think the previous commenter is right. As far as philosophical dilemmas go, the answering machine problem is contrived at best. It relies on a pretty obvious mischaracterization of the situation at hand - there isn't a person saying "I am not here" at all, it's a machine playing a recording. With the necessary context, the dilemma be…

"Paradox" and "dilemma" and even "problem" don't have as strong a meaning in philosophy as they do in colloquial English. In this context, the claim is essentially that a particular system of analyzing the truth of statements will incorrectly analyze this particular type of statement. The "paradox" is in the system, not in reality. The paper linked offers a solution for modifying one particular system so that it will correctly resolve the paradox.

The programming analogy would be that processing a particular type of data will often have hidden pitfalls for the most intuitive approach. It might be easy to avoid those pitfalls by modifying your program, but someone had to notice and document the problem and the workaround.

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#244

Post by djur »

b112 wrote: post #241
tadala wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shocking comment. Do you think the scientific method is inbuilt in our DNA or something? Where do you think it all comes from?

You think it comes from philosophy? This is like claiming our democracy comes from God, because he edictorially spoke through ancient kings!

The term "scientific method" is itself a philosophical term (as is "method" in this context). Read, or even skim, this and notice how many of the important figures listed were philosophers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_scientific_method

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#245

Post by alehlopeh »

lisper wrote: post #85

Everyone is snickering at this and talking about philosophy, but there is actually a legitimate point being made here, albeit obliquely: 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? I submit that this is a nontrivial problem worthy of serious consideration.

Why delete the copy on the client at all?

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#246

Post by dsign »

pavlov wrote: post #188

Computers can stop time because they don’t have to execute instructions. In a sense this is an example of what that affords. Think of a physical message on a piece of paper. The paper is on fire. You can still see the text, but it’s too late to put out the fire. If you have good memory, you can figuratively stop time at that instant and memorize the contents of the paper. With a computer, the message is already “burn…

It used to be so during the golden age of personal computers or if you run Linux and have tweaked it so. But modern-day operating systems will bend the nature of reality itself if they have to, in order to restart and install updates, or to force you to change your password which is already 120 seconds old, or to log you out for security reasons if you stop moving the mouse. You better save that message promptly.

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#247

Post by slackr »

Reminds me of a joke where a Jewish kid asks his dad “what’s the holy trinity?” And the dad replies, “there’s only one God and in this house we don’t believe in him.”

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#248

Post by lupire »

skyechurch wrote: post #209
goatlover wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was being glib, of course. Presumably there's some legitimate technical philosophical issue, and actual philosophers are capable of using answering machines and even landline telephones without having all their assumptions about reality collapse around them like a PKD novel (those born prior to 1980, anyway). But, like Jay Z, I've got problems of a more pressing nature, and legitimately don't see how this matters.…

If you have problems of a more pressing nature, why are you faffing about on HN?

It smells like you are just mocking people for being interested in thinking about things. Why?

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#249

Post by djur »

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.

Do you think that mathematicians are drama queens because "2a = 4, solve for a" is a "math problem"? Just because something is intuitively simple doesn't mean that you don't have to account for it in a formal system. The intuitive solution for a lot of simple questions is incorrect in some cases. (How do you determine the length of a word?)

In your example, "here" is semantically different from the "here" in the answering machine case and doesn't result in a paradox.

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#250

Post by lupire »

nuancebydefault wrote: post #239
galaxyLogic wrote: post #116

The problem is that the message does not speak the truth. If you can read a message it clearly must exist because you cannot read non-existent messages, can you? Can anyone? CAN ANYONE HERE READ NON-EXISTENT MESSAGES? The message should have said "This message is not saved on the server. If you close this window without copying and saving its text you cannot retrieve it from the server ever again.

You might argue that 'not existing' in general does not even exist. It reminds me of the ted ex talk where a man states that the universe does not exist because it is everything and if we would make a list of everything, the list would not be included as a topic of the list.

That's Russell's Paradox.
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