Luke_A_Somers comments on Logical Pinpointing - Less Wrong

62 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 02 November 2012 03:33PM

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

Comments (338)

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

Comment author: Luke_A_Somers 06 November 2012 09:48:31PM *  -2 points [-]

Water does behave like very large integers.

Comment author: [deleted] 06 November 2012 10:09:01PM *  0 points [-]

So does electricity. (And it does so exactly, whereas water contains different isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen...)

Anyway, I seem to recall seeing a Wikipedia article about some obscure language where the word for 'water' is grammatically plural, and thinking 'who knows if they've coined a backformed singular for "water molecule", at least informally or jocularly'.

(Note also that natural languages don't seem to have fixed rules for whether nouns like "rice" or "oats" --i.e. collections of small objects you could count but you would never normally bother to-- are mass nouns or plural nouns.)

Comment author: Luke_A_Somers 07 November 2012 02:32:28AM 2 points [-]

If you're going to insist that different isotopes disrupt the whole number quality of water, then fractional-charge quasiparticles would like a word with your allegation that electricity can be completely and exactly modeled using integers.

Comment author: [deleted] 07 November 2012 04:43:32AM 0 points [-]

Touché.