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Qiaochu_Yuan comments on Open thread, May 17-31 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion
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On Monday, it's impossible for anyone to force anyone to do anything. On Tuesday, it's not. What's the difference between Monday and Tuesday? What do you expect to see on Monday that you don't expect to see on Tuesday or vice versa?
Is this a riddle...Hmm, why would Tuesday be different?
It's not a riddle, it's a heuristic for encouraging specificity.
Oh. I don't think it will work with this. My whole problem is that I've arrived at a conclusion that can't be false under any circumstances, and this seems to me like a likely misunderstanding.
Alternatively, your conclusion is trivial - that is, it doesn't actually say much of anything. This seems to be the case here; you're evaluating the denotative meaning of the sentence (what it literally means). It -seems- non-trivial because then you're sneaking in the connotative meaning of the sentence - what it implies.
Could you explain this in specifics? What denotation and what connotation?
I assume you argue the imperious curse doesn't force somebody to do something because they're not really doing it (likewise with grabbing their hand and hitting them with it, provided you're sufficiently stronger to do so). Likewise, any kind of mechanism of forcing somebody to decide to do something still leaves them open to refuse. This is the denotative meaning.
The connotative meaning is pretty subjective, but could be that we're subverting somebody else's will. If you kidnap somebody's child and ransom them, sure they still, strictly speaking, have a choice in the matter, but in any realistic sense they don't.
Hm, that sounds like a good answer to me.