On Friday, 1 August 2014 at 23:11:17 UTC, Timon Gehr wrote:
( Source:
http://www.chris.com/ascii/index.php?art=objects/explosives )
On 08/02/2014 12:26 AM, Chris Cain wrote:
On Friday, 1 August 2014 at 22:17:15 UTC, Timon Gehr wrote:
"contradictory assertions"
"To what degree of certitude must the assertion be supported?"
etc.
I'll not go into more details because I actually intend not to
participate again in heated debate after already having shown
strong
evidence.
Frankly, I don't understand the point you're trying to make,
so it's not
really possible to rebut it.
If your point is that assertions need to have evidence to be
assertions,
an easy counterproof of this is in your own quote: "To what
degree of
certitude must the assertion be supported?" ... It wouldn't
have been
called an assertion in that sentence unless it's something
that is sure
that it had been supported sufficiently (it would have been
worded more
along the lines of "To what degree of certitude must the
assertion
*candidate* be supported?")
...
Look, this is a really poor piece of logical reasoning, and for
today I am expressedly fed up with arguing against obvious non
sequiturs and immediately summoning new ones. In any case, my
easy way out is to note that this is not my assertion.
I don't disagree that having to come up with an argument for you
is poor. However, by not stating what it is you have provided
"strong evidence" for, what does that leave me to do? I can
simply say nothing but "what are you saying" but I had said that
once already. It's a complete waste of time to argue with someone
who refuses to make a clear position.
Frankly, if you're going to criticize others for making a "poor
piece of logical reasoning", you should at least make something
beginning to resemble a piece of logical reasoning yourself.
No, before you say anything, presenting evidence for a position
you haven't stated isn't valid logical reasoning.
To be really clear: My assertion was:
It is not true that anyone who accepts the "assertion
definition" as the single conclusive way to give meaning to the
term 'assert' will be able to use it to distinguish the meaning
given to it by Walter and the other meaning under discussion,
given to it by other notable people, in such a way as to find
the former sensible and the latter nonsensical.
And by what evidence do you back that up with? I think the only
reasonable, logical thing to do when you state a fact to a
computer program is that it accepts it as a fact. So the
definition of assertion very much clarifies exactly the behavior
described of assert. The only thing that differs from the
definition is that the compiler will insert checks for your
assertion under certain circumstances, but by the definition it
would not be under obligation to do so (although, the fact that
it's checking your assertions when you're debugging is infinitely
useful, so it makes a lot of sense for it to go against the
definition slightly for pragmatism).
Sigh, I got involved again.
I think it's clear that the definition of assertion being
"statement of
fact or belief" is compatible with the usage in that wikipedia
article.
...
Yes. Please go back and read the relevant posts, find out what
they assert and agree with them or argue against an assertion
that was actually made. I have seen assertions such as: "the
definition of the word really makes it obvious what the feature
was originally intended to convey."
In particular, "contradictory 'statements of fact'"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact
I hope you don't think that "state a fact or belief confidently
and forcefully" and "fact" are necessarily the same thing. If it
were, then the better definition of assert would have simply been
"fact".
[...] actually make perfect sense.
Contradictory facts make perfect sense. Contradictory facts
make no sense at all. Those two assertions expressed facts,
unless this third assertion is wrong. The next assertion is
wrong. The preceding assertions are statements of fact.
Contradictory STATEMENTS makes perfect sense. Since assertions
are STATEMENTS of facts (or beliefs, to be clear), your entire
argument is broken because you've used strawman.
It makes perfect sense to make contradictory assertions. Of
course, your program failing to behave in a defined manner
because of it (since you're, in effect, god of your program and
the assertions you make will really be followed unlike people who
might question your assertions and demand evidence) should be
expected, just like if you wrote an incorrect if statement you
can expect your program to have buggy behavior.
In particular, you cannot really reasonably expect that a program
with incorrect statements (asserts, ifs, function call, whatever)
to behave correctly. Writing an incorrect assert will (not
surprisingly) result in a bug in a program just as if you wrote
the wrong if statements in a binary search algorithm.
