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Assume v. Presume

Mike0001 said:
I like this one, though, because so many people are convinced that it is physically impossible for the pirate to place his treasure in the first chest.
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Do you mean logically impossible?
Unless the treasure is too heavy, the pirate can physically put the treasure where the hell he/she likes.
 
Quite. To believe that the inscriptions in any way dictate where the treasure is, or could be, by mathematical or lexical analysis, is the fallacy. The inscriptions are paradoxical, and so are the human reactions to them. If the inscriptions were in a foreign language the reader did not understand, they would no longer result in a paradox.

Mike0001 said:
Self referential statements are excluded from logic.
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I think you mean that your system of logic is incapable of handling self-referential sentences.

I had this kind of argument with a Sudoku setter, who claimed any Sudoku puzzle that could not be solved by pure logic was somehow "improper". What he meant was the set of solving rules he knew (or possibly anybody knows) can't solve all solvable grids, necessitating trial-and-error (which he regarded as improper) - but if a grid of this type still has one unique solution, it is still valid and there may be some undiscovered steps of logic that could solve it.

I regard trial-and-error as valid - it's the equivalent of reductio ad absurdum. The trials are not random: one starts with a cell that only has two possibilities, choose one possibility and follow its logical consequences until it reaches a contradiction (hopefully before the logical chain comes to the impasse of another bifurcation), or the solution.
 
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Allowing self referential entities into logic makes logical deduction impossible.

This sentence is false.

The set of all sets that are not elements of themselves. Is it an element of itself?

No amountof ad hoc arguments will decide whether these are true or false, they just don't have a truth value, nor can they have one.

Of course, this excludes some self referential entities that most would agree do have a truth value.

This sentence consists of six words.
 
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Mike0001 said:
No amount if a box arguments will decide whether these are truce or false, they just don't have a truth value, nor can they have one.
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Yep, it's like quantum superposition. Just because you can't conceive of developments in mathematics or whatever that might resolve connundrums such as this, doesn't mean there aren't and will never be.
 
Apparently, Cheltenham Racecourse aims to have 0% landfill waste by (some date in the future), and is already "up to 60%".
 
Black Hole said:
Yep, it's like quantum superposition. Just because you can't conceive of developments in mathematics or whatever that might resolve connundrums such as this, doesn't mean there aren't and will never be.
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The problem never arises in maths. The nearest to it is the halting problem, and that is well known to be non computable.
 
Amazon is selling envelopes it describes as "peal and seal."

Triplast co-extruded mailing bags, made from fully opaque film. These mailing bags are perfect for sending items when sold online and are weatherproof. Complete with a 'Peal and Seal' self adhesive strip to keep packing time to a minimum.

So let us hope the pinniped is not trained to react to campanology.
 
I'm sure I have spotted the same in Tesco, but I can't find the reference.

Weather forecast this morning, list of current temperature in various places: "Merthry Tydfil"
 
Listening to an old Elements programme from the World Service (part of Business Daily, all available for download and very interesting), the programme discussing nitrogen was at a sewage plant in the States interviewing somebody about the processing they do there. In the filter banks "a media" collects solids, and then "a bacteria" breaks them down. Tsk.
 
You're expecting Americans to work out whether a Latin or Greek word is singular or plural.
Interesting that even providers of the facilities get sewage treatment plant and sewerage treatment plant mixed up. (I confess, so did I - which is why I looked it up, thinking BH might have made a mistake - drat!)
 
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