MixedNuts comments on Rationality Quotes January 2013 - Less Wrong

6 Post author: katydee 02 January 2013 05:23PM

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Comment author: Kindly 07 January 2013 03:42:13AM 17 points [-]

Then for the first time it dawned on him that classing all drowthers together made no more sense than having a word for all animals that can't stand upright on two legs for more than a minute, or all animals with dry noses. What possible use could there be for such classifications? The word "drowther" didn't say anything about people except that they were not born in a Westil Family. "Drowther" meant "not us," and anything you said about drowthers beyond that was likely to be completely meaningless. They were not a "class" at all. They were just... people.

Orson Scott Card, The Lost Gate

Comment author: MixedNuts 16 January 2013 06:33:59PM 2 points [-]

As my math teacher always said,

The complement of a vector subspace is a repulsive object.

Comment author: [deleted] 16 January 2013 07:29:24PM 1 point [-]

Why is it repulsive...? I guess I don't get it. I mean sure, it's not a subspace... is that what they mean?

Comment author: MixedNuts 16 January 2013 09:09:16PM 0 points [-]

It's extremely inelegant, and finding yourself using one means you're running into a dead end.

Comment author: DanArmak 19 January 2013 12:07:16PM 1 point [-]

I don't see why a complement would be inelegant. It's just one extra bit of specification.

Now, non-definable non-computable numbers (or sets), they are inelegant :-)