Qiaochu_Yuan comments on Rationality Quotes March 2013 - Less Wrong

9 Post author: Jayson_Virissimo 02 March 2013 10:45AM

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

Comments (341)

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

Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 01 March 2013 08:42:52PM *  8 points [-]

I should clarify. I'm not exactly worried that people will mix up the colloquial meaning of logic with the mathematical meaning of mathematical logic. I just want people to taboo "logic" because I think it is frequently used to label a particular style of bad argument in order to mask certain kinds of weaknesses that such arguments have. Studying mathematical logic is one way to recognize that there's something off about how people colloquially use the word "logic," but I suppose it's not the only way.

Comment author: [deleted] 02 March 2013 12:06:35PM 4 points [-]

Would the quote sound as bad to you if “logic” was replaced with “reasoning”?

As per Postel's law, if a word has both a colloquial meaning and a technical meaning, the latter is not what I want, and there's a decent synonym for the former, I personally use the synonym instead (e.g. “usefulness” instead of “utility”, “substantial” or “sizeable” instead of “significant”, etc.), but as per Postel's law I don't demand that other people do the same, especially if the colloquial meaning is way more widespread overall.