X-Envelope-to: politics@ohstvma.bitnet
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Newsgroups: bit.listserv.politics
Date:         Wed, 22 Jul 1992 22:07:00 EDT
From:         "push the button, frank!" <SWEDE@DRYCAS.BITNET>
Subject:      pavlov's dog vs. schrodinger's cat

>Well, first of all, the statement is true, as any knowledgeable high
>school geometry teacher will tell you.  Second, you never showed why
>the two sides of the equation must necessarily involve different units.
>In fact, they don't.  I never mentioned scads in my equation.

Hurm.  Perhaps I was too subtle.  I had thought that putting "now prove
this proof is a load of crapola" at the end would tip you off that I had
a different point in mind than simply hopping through hoops of logic.

What I was attempting to illustrate was the idea that, even if the first
statement, A, is false, the statement can still be shown as false by
applying a test of internal consistency.  Towards this end, I redefined
the units involved on each side of the equation (or, to be more accurate,
defined them to my advantage, since you left it open) in such a way that
the first statement was true, so that I could examine if the statements
A and B were internally consistent.  While this may not be cricket as far
as knowledgable high school geometry teachers are concerned, it's still
logic, just of a different sort.

>Exactly.  If A is false, the statement cannot be proven false or true,
>therefore it is true.  If A is true and B is true, the statement is pro-
>ven true.  If A is true and B is false, then the statement is proven
>false, and is therefore, obviously, false.  Therefore, a statement must
>be able to be proven false before it is considered false.  Therefore,
>a statement that cannot be proven false is true.

The key assumption here is that all statements can have either two values,
true or false.  Boolean logic is certainly useful in computers, but is
rather limited in facing questions of a more complex causal structure, such
as political and social questions (hey, look! i just made this relevant to
the list!).  While abstract logicians and knowledgable high school geometry
teachers can get away with this in the fields of abstract logic and high
school geometry, respectively, it is, at best, only a starting point in
trying to figure out the 'truth' in questions like 'should pre-marital sex
be banned' or 'what did those rascally founding fathers really mean when
they wrote the Constitution?'.

Consider the paradox of Schrodinger's Cat.  A cat is in a locked room where
it will be killed eventually by a poison gas pellet activated by a quantum
decay process.  After an interval, t, is the cat dead or alive?  The
theoretical physicist cannot go into a laboratory and try this experiment
(which only gives the result in one case, anyway).  He calculates, by
quantum mechanics, what has happened after interval t.  He finds that the
equation yields a minimum of two solutions.  One shows that the cat is
alive after interval t, the other shows the cat is dead as a doornail.
Both solutions are accurate.  So is the cat alive or dead, according to
boolean/geometric logic?

While you're busy working that one out, let me assure you that I'm not
advocating scrapping boolean logic.  It's the foundation of western
critical thought, not to mention the foundation of computer operations and
hence the foundation of my job :).  However, any appreciation of something
should carry with it an understanding of it's limits, both in mathematical
applications and "real life", as well.

So *this* is what being didactic is like, huh?  Could be worse...:)

>-Travis

Gary W. Olson                      "Turn the tables with our unity,    -L7,
SWEDE@DRYCAS.CLUB.CC.CMU.EDU       they're not a moral nor majority.  "Pretend
"We demand rigidly defined         Wake up and smell the coffee,       We're
 areas of doubt and uncertainty!"  or just say no to individualty."    Dead"
-Vroomfondel the philosopher,
 from Douglas Adams "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
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