Sniffnoy comments on How not to be a Naïve Computationalist - Less Wrong

29 Post author: diegocaleiro 13 April 2011 07:45PM

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Comment author: Sniffnoy 19 April 2011 01:13:41AM 2 points [-]

"Do precisely one of A_1 through A_n". There's nothing wrong with writing things out longhand.

(Except, as Perplexed points out, I don't think that's really what you mean - would it really be such a problem to do more than one?)

Comment author: diegocaleiro 19 April 2011 05:22:28PM 0 points [-]

If the purpose is to be mininmal, yes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusive_or

"one or the other but not both." From Wikipedia.

I begin to think I was not that wrong......

Comment author: Sniffnoy 20 April 2011 06:18:40PM 1 point [-]

Your use may be technically correct but it is very misleading. If you simply say "do A or B", it's clear that doing one is sufficient so a person who wants to save effort will only do one. Specifying "xor" therefore suggests that there is some additional harm to doing both, beyond nonminimality.