jimrandomh comments on The Useful Idea of Truth - Less Wrong

77 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 02 October 2012 06:16PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (513)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: jimrandomh 02 October 2012 07:30:48AM 13 points [-]

You seem to be pattern-matching "non-repeatable" with "ought to be repeatable but isn't", a common tell that reveals liars. But consider something more mundane. I have a six-sided die here. First, I'm going to name it "Rolie", so that it won't be interchangeable with other dice. Now I'm going to roll it once, and note the number that came up. Finally, I'm going to throw it in the trash, so that this is a non-repeatable, one-time occurrence.

Now here's a sentence: Rolie rolled 2. Is this true, false, unknown, or incapable of being either true or false?

Some sentences are past-tense, some sentences are present-tense, some sentences are future-tense, and some sentences are timeless. All of them can be true or false.

Comment author: [deleted] 02 October 2012 06:48:39PM *  5 points [-]

My favourite example of that is “the sperm cell Dante Alighieri was conceived with originated in his father's left testicle” (vaguely inspired by an idea in a thought experiment by Douglas Hofstadter).

Comment author: Clippy 03 October 2012 04:30:21AM -2 points [-]

I thought it was his father's right testicle?