wedrifid comments on Sorting Pebbles Into Correct Heaps - Less Wrong

75 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 10 August 2008 01:00AM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 02 March 2013 10:47:28AM 4 points [-]

Sorry, I usually do try to avoid that, but in this case I didn't see how to form that sentence without using the word "should" because it's traditional in "as well X should". Keep in mind that according to C++ namespacing conventions, something inside a namespace has literally nothing to do with its meaning in any other namespace.

Comment author: wedrifid 02 March 2013 12:15:06PM *  0 points [-]

Keep in mind that according to C++ namespacing conventions, something inside a namespace has literally nothing to do with its meaning in any other namespace.

Using this reasoning advocate a style of word usage strikes me as dubious reasoning even though the usage and real reason for using it happen to be be sensible. It screams out against my instincts for how to use words. In this kind of case if there wasn't a clear relationship between the two functions you (hopefully) just would not even have considered using the same word.

I also note that in C++ the following also have literally nothing to do with each other, apart from the suggestive name, so C++ (and English, for that matter) are just as comfortable with "As well they should have".

Action should(Human aHumans);
Action should(PebbleSorter aPebbleGuy);