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Viliam comments on Open Thread, January 4-10, 2016 - Less Wrong
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Two people were lamenting the state of affairs of the world.
A bystander said, "When I become 'King of the World' I will fix things."
One of the two said, "Can I trust you?"
The bystander said, "Of course not."
The retort was, "In that case, I trust you."
Is this a
par·a·dox/ˈperəˌdäks/ noun 1. a statement or proposition that, despite sound (or apparently sound) reasoning from acceptable premises, leads to a conclusion that seems senseless, logically unacceptable, or self-contradictory.
?
I think the word "paradox" is ill-defined, because "seems senseless, logically unacceptable, or self-contradictory" is a "2-place word" -- seems X to whom?
Thanks, it'll take me some time to digest this link. Can you suggest a better definition and would this anecdote be included or excluded? If excluded, how would you define this odd exchange?
I am not a linguist -- maybe there is a more appropriate label for this thing, but I don't know it.
The idea of the link is: you shouldn't say things like "the conclusion seems senseless" but rather "the conclusion doesn't make any sense to person X (but it could make sense to some other person Y)". Otherwise you get the implicit assumption that things make or don't make sense equally to all listeners; that is that "not making sense" is an inherent property of the conclusion, instead of a relation between the conclusion and the listener.