fubarobfusco comments on Local Ordinances of Fun - Less Wrong

18 Post author: Alicorn 18 June 2012 03:07AM

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Comment author: Zack_M_Davis 24 June 2012 07:10:00AM 7 points [-]

(I was scooped by Wedrifid, but here's my phrasing.)

The opposite of happiness is sadness [...] Anyone who says otherwise fails at opposites, and should probably retake the first grade.

I say otherwise. Specifically, it seems to me that the opposite of happiness is a type error; not everything has to have an opposite, and most things don't. The purest examples of what we call opposites have a duality to them, a one-dimensional-ness: it makes sense to speak of hot and cold as opposites because temperature has an order relationship to it; if the temperature is changing, it's either getting hotter or it's getting colder, but not both or neither. Similar remarks could be made about left and right, or the boolean values true and false. But most useful concepts are way too complicated for this kind of duality to apply: what's the opposite of blogging? What's the opposite of graphite? What's the opposite of Vernor Vinge? These questions simply have no sensible answer.

Oftentimes we like to contrast two different things, but this should really be kept conceptually distinct from those things being opposites. I would expect your star first grader, when queried about the opposite of cat, to unhesitatingly reply, "Dog!" (I haven't actually run this experiment, but in any case I certainly wouldn't expect her to say, "Your question is confused; I cannot answer it as stated.") I share the intuitions that make this response seem compelling, but from the standpoint of understanding reality, it's laughably, egregiously wrong. Cats and dogs are just two species that happen to have been domesticated by humans and commonly kept as pets in certain cultures; if people in those cultures have made a habit of contrasting them, it's a historical accident of no inherent significance whatsoever.

Some might readily concede this point with respect to such non-opposites as cats and dogs or salt and pepper, but object that happiness and sadness are different. And, to be fair, it is true that if we were to metaphorically project the configuration space of human emotions onto the one-dimensional subspace measuring the extent to which humans will try to seek or avoid those feelings, then, yes, happiness and sadness would be on opposite ends of that line. But they're still ultimately just these different massively complicated, historically contingent (on an evolutionary timescale) neurological phenomena. Other humans will know what you mean if you call them "opposites," but that doesn't mean it actually makes sense to do so.

Comment author: fubarobfusco 24 June 2012 05:00:26PM *  8 points [-]

The opposite of cat is clearly not dog, but rather cow.

After all, we don't eat dogs or cats, but we do eat cows.

And you can keep a dog or a cat in an apartment, but you can't keep a cow. Also, cows have horns; dogs and cats don't.

Also, they revered cats in ancient Egypt and they revere cows in modern India; ancient and modern are opposites; and Egypt and India are on opposite sides of the navel of the world.

Wow, I think we've invented a new version of the Rationalization Game.

Comment author: prase 25 June 2012 08:07:18PM 4 points [-]

Once I have spent a train commute with my former colleague discussing what was the opposite of "cow". I don't remember what answer we finally agreed upon, but it certainly wasn't "cat".

(However I can't rule out it was "vodka" or "to be".)