TimS comments on Proofs, Implications, and Models - Less Wrong

58 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 30 October 2012 01:02PM

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Comment author: TsviBT 30 October 2012 01:09:30AM 4 points [-]

Ok, fair enough. My philosophy professors were the logically-rudest adults I've spoken to. Actually, that's not even true. Rather, my philosophy professors were the people I most hoped would have less than the standard rudeness, but did not at all.

An anecdote: spring quarter last year, I tried to convince my philosophy professor that logic preserves certainty, but that we could (probably) never be absolutely certain that we had witnessed a correct derivation. He dodged, and instead sermonized about the history of logic. At one point I mentioned GEB, and he said, I quote, "Hofstadter is something of a one trick pony". Here, "one trick" refers to "self-reference". I was too flabbergasted to respond politely.

Comment author: TimS 30 October 2012 01:18:43AM 1 point [-]

To be fair to the professor, conflating deductive and inductive reasoning is a basic error that's easy to pattern match.

Comment author: wedrifid 30 October 2012 02:24:03AM 3 points [-]

To be fair to the professor, conflating deductive and inductive reasoning is a basic error that's easy to pattern match.

To be fair to TsviBT it is pattern matching to the nearest possible stupid thing that is perhaps the most annoying logical rude tactics there is (whether employed deliberately or instinctively according to social drives).