An observation and some thoughts emerging from it:
Note how much discussion was generated by a simple unintentional error
in coding/terminology - an instance of differences in what was meant and
perceived by a proposition - in this case a type of instance not included in our
recent previous discussion (simple unintentional error in _expression_). Had the
proposer fully reviewed and revised the proposition, it would have sailed
smoothly through the discussion (compared to the actual result).
Note - I mean to cast no aspersions - I make plenty of such mistakes and am
the first to hope for them to be excused or treated with no negative judgment,
and furthermore for them to be corrected by myself or others before any negative
effects occur due to them. My purpose here is to point out another kind of
example that systems must take into account when dealing with categorizing or
handling propositions - their meaning may vary or be uncertain for
many reasons, including simple error in composition, as well as differences in
perspectives, perceptions, experience, etc.
In fact, one of the characteristics that could be considered to be in a
well-functioning system is that it can accommodate and correct such errors
through its functional processes, without causing "collateral damage" to the
fallible human person involved and that person's ability to contribute
constructively to the functioning of the system, and without negatively
affecting other aspects of the functioning of the system -- as, I might
point out, appears to have eventually happened here, as far as I can tell, to
this discussion's credit.
The stakes in such functionality depend on the functional purpose of the
system - for example if it's a medical system in which lives or health are at
stake, the importance of such robustness with respect to errors is obvious. In
other kinds of systems, the nature and importance of how they deal with error
may not be so obvious. In complex systems, small variations can have
surprisingly great and hard-to-predict effects (sometimes represented
by the "butterfly effect," in which a butterfly's wing-flapping
theoretically could result in a hurricane elsewhere in the world). Stories
abound about how small, understandable human errors have had disastrous results
in systems that were not robust enough to accommodate and correct them or
correct for their effects (including in high-stakes systems).
Ken
In a message dated 5/28/2007 2:13:09 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
Waclaw.Marcin.Kusnierczyk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
nothing
else, in fact; i would be surprised were it not that
definition.
but i am aware of the immenseness of my ignorance, and was
eager to
discover that there are other definitions one may coherently
use.
vQ
Christopher Menzel wrote:
> What did you
expect?
>
> On May 28, 2007, at 12:55 AM, Waclaw Kusnierczyk
wrote:
>
>> pretty standard.
>>
ok.
>>
>> vQ
>>
>> Christopher Menzel
wrote:
>>> On May 27, 2007, at 4:08 PM, Waclaw Kusnierczyk
wrote:
>>>> this was my guess, though i was wondering whether
you use a
>>>> different definition of
'asymmetric'.
>>> (if (R x y) (not (R y x))
>