RobinZ comments on Sequence Exercise: "Extensions and Intensions" from "A Human's Guide to Words" - Less Wrong

12 Post author: Normal_Anomaly 17 April 2011 08:22PM

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Comment author: RobinZ 19 April 2011 10:41:18PM 0 points [-]

For purposes of this post, I choose a single definition for each word and use it in both sections.

Intensional Definitions

  1. Shoe: A piece of clothing enclosing and protecting the foot, designed to be worn while walking.

  2. Hope: Confidence that a favorable outcome may be reached in circumstances when good rational reasons exist to expect an unfavorable one.

  3. Wire: A long, thin piece of drawn metal.

  4. Green: Light that tends to activate gamma cones in human eyes more strongly than beta or rho cones, where gamma cones have a peak wavelength of 534-555 nm, beta 420-440 nm, and rho 564-580 nm.

  5. Politician: An individual who negotiates policy decisions in a decision-making body by making promises and agreements with those who have influence over that group.

  6. Apple: An approximately fist-sized fruit with a thin peel, whose flesh has a crisp mouthfeel and tart flavor, and whose flesh tends to turn brown when exposed to air.

Order of subjective difficulty (least to most): wire, green, hope, shoe, apple, politician.

Extensional/Ostensive Definitions

  1. Shoe: The most common type of object pictured in a Google search on the term 'shoe'.

  2. Hope: The emotion opposing that of despair in people who find themselves in dire straits.

  3. Wire: The stuff used to make coathangers, and the conductive part of electrical cables.

  4. Green: The reflective color of chlorophyll, Granny Smith apples, and unripe oranges; the emissive color of the flame when doing flame tests of molybdenum oxides and sulfides, barium carbonates and sulfates, thallium, and antimony.

  5. Politician: Most people who run for public office in the United States.

  6. Apple: The fruit traditionally used to represent the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the Biblical story of the Garden of Eden.

Order of subjective difficulty (least to most): wire, green, apple, politician, shoe, hope.

Comment author: RobinZ 21 March 2015 02:45:56PM *  0 points [-]

Belatedly: some more vivid examples of "hope":