I have been subscribed to "Fortunes of the Dialectic" for years.
Oh, I don't think anyone understands all of it; but if you look close I'm not saying that Unfogged is the Petrograd Soviet (more like the River Rouge cafeteria). I would be curious to know, though, whether the shora was totally absent from Ogged's mind in shaping the way the thing has developed.
In Soviet Union, comment blogs you!
I personally believe that Unfogged should start a collective to raise hogs, but not everyone here agrees.
totally absent from Ogged's mind
I think one can safely say that the Unfogged commenters, like the British Empire, were acquired in a fit of absence of mind.
I-a don' know, first-a tell me who's still on-a the ship.
When the beach hits your ship like a big pizza porra, that's a-shora.
You'll notice that in this diagram there are no statements on the left side of the arrow for two of the sequents.
Actually what I noticed is that in that diagram there are no statements on the right side of the arrow for two of the sequents.
I also noticed that the explanation of resolution is incomprehensible. In particular, this sentence: In (something resembling) English, the resolution rule collects together all the logically consistent "atoms" of a set of clauses by establishing that set of statements that have as a consequence a disjunct of a disjunction can replace that disjunct.
is nonsense—the first clause is right; what follows is only "something resembling" English.
However! This is comprehensible.
I just accidently searched for "Rabindranath Tagore unfogged" on Google, and Unfogged does not appear in any of the hits. I think this mean that collectively we have failed.
"Cervix Couch"
This sounds like a plausible art piece.
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Newsflash!
"How many times have I wished I were a man ... When Sheikh Ayman al-Zawahri said there are no women in al-Qaida, he saddened and hurt me," wrote "Companion of Weapons," who said she listened to the speech 10 times. "I felt that my heart was about to explode in my chest...I am powerless."
I refuse to support al Qaeda any further until they rectify this injustice. Opportunity must be equal for all.
Via Thoreau
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5: Personally I thought it was a bit more like an incurable STD. One night of passion, years of suffering.
Also: thanks, Bob, and thanks to everyone who held their tongue.
Ben, I'm glad your perceptual apparatus is functioning normally and you can see what I obviously intended to write. As for the "incomprehensible" part, it's just a word-for-word translation of the diagram for a resolution rule for propositional logic, which is a TeX reconstruction of a diagram in Troelstra and Schwichtenberg; more simply, if you have gamma or A and delta "implies" A, you can have gamma or delta.
i don't understand what's so funny or witty about comparing your fellow commenters with an std
my first impression of Unfogged was that of the site of the White Supremacists, not of a soviet or even progressive blog, and i started to read on the principle like know your enemy something
if the linked post's author means 'soviet' as reaching almost 100% agreement of the opinions, then it's boring and nothing to be flattered about
I thought 14 was funny and witty. And seriously read, have you checked out real White Supremacist websites? There is a wildly different vibe going on. It does sometimes feel like you are determined to validate your initially negative impression of us.
16 was my opinion and i told about my first impression
i think i do not need to agree with you or others on every topic
Stormfront =/= Unfogged
but maybe if history had operated differently... there could have been a website called Stormfogged.... and Stormf could have stopped posting shortly after the blog became popular... then would it have continued to be a white supremacist blog?
16: my first impression of Unfogged was that of the site of the White Supremacists
First time in a long while that I've read a comment by read and said "... wha?" Perhaps the glib discussion of soviets is something of a sore spot.
i think i do not need to agree with you or others on every topic
Neither do I. I was just sharing my opinion.
it's just a word-for-word translation of the diagram for a resolution rule for propositional logic, which is a TeX reconstruction of a diagram in Troelstra and Schwichtenberg; more simply, if you have gamma or A and delta "implies" A, you can have gamma or delta.
The "more simply" part is actually intelligible, you see.
Let's look at the relevant part of the sentence again: the resolution rule collects together all the logically consistent "atoms" of a set of clauses by establishing that set of statements that have as a consequence a disjunct of a disjunction can replace that disjunct
What's going on with the first "that"? Or, what is the subject of "can"?
There are two possibilities for the object of "establishing". It can be that the resolution rule collects together all the logically consistent atoms of a set of clauses by establishing that p, in which case, everything following the first "that" should amount to a proposition in its own right, which "set of statements that have as a consequence a disjunct of a disjunction can replace that disjunct" is not. Or "establishing" could be working like "constructing", along the lines of "... establishing that counterexample which is most efficient", or something. In that case, though, you could say at most "that set of statements that have as a consequence a disjunct of a disjunction"; the "can" is misplaced.
Consequently, I infer that, if you really have rendered the meaning of the diagram, word-for-word (? that's an odd way to render a diagram, certainly), then the diagram itself is nonsense.
Another factor of the discussion of the diagram's being confusing is that, while you explain what Γ \Rightarrow p means, you never explain what Γ \Rightarrow means. Does it just mean ... the set is consistent? Then I would expect something like Γ \deduc \top (or Γ \neg \deduc \bot, I dunno, I'm not a logician).
Anyway, it's confusing, as (as mentioned) the pdf in 10 is not.
Thanks for mentioning the source of the diagram, though; it helps establish your cred.
17: i think i do not need to agree with you or others on every topic
You know who else wouldn't have agreed with Heebie? Hitler, that's who. QED.
Uh, where \deduc = \vdash, I guess. And \neg = \not.
Stormfront =/= Unfogged
It is rumored that originally the site was called Clogged, and Oggled and Cl were big old hippies dedicated to patchouli and crystals.
Read is our only regular non-Western commenter, to my knowledge (Ogged doesn't count!), and even some of our European commenters (by whom I mean Dsquared) sometimes note our hip provincial Americanism. I don't believe that she's saying that we are a white supremacist site, only that that was her first impression. Someone who started off reading one of our more aggressively un-PC thread might not disentangle the whimsy, irony, and parody the way we'd hope.
Don't want to get too serious about this or anything.
...I meant to italicize website called Stormfogged as the lead-off...
Someone who started off reading one of our more aggressively un-PC thread might not disentangle the whimsy, irony, and parody the way we'd hope.
I don't think this is just about a lack of untangling of irony; it's quite common that we run into situations here in which certain people find some subjects not acceptable for joking. Some of that is cultural, some of it's personal, some of it's political. And race-joking is probably the thing that's most openly done here without much apology, because, generally, we tend to assume most people here don't take race lightly at all in a political sense. It's commonly asserted that this is a misogynistic site. Well, it sort of is, in that I think it's fairly reasonable to assume that a lot of people here have, at least in the past, taken gender and sexism really lightly in a political sense. I think the accusation of white supremacist joking says read doesn't really have any evidence that people here aren't actually racist. Which, yeah, she probably doesn't.
Ben, the "that" you are worrying over is David Kaplan style, i.e. a demonstrative picking out the Greek letter, which as I said designates a set of sentences in the sequent calculus. (I'm trying to introduce my regular readers, who are left-wing amateur logic and "theory" nerds like me, to sequents.) I guess it's a bit misworded, since there is not one unique collection which has A as logical consequence (the meaning of the big arrow, or sometimes a turnstile, in SC); anything with A as a succedent will do.
Similarly, the "can" is intended to emphasize the non-obligatory character of drawing inferences using the rule: P and NP is something I run my mouth about sometimes (can you imagine?), so I didn't want people to automatically think deterministically about reduction, to equate it with Prolog tout court. The diagram is not nonsense; if you think about it a little, I think you'll see that it's just another way of rendering the more typical resolution rule using negation (as included in the PDF you linked to, for example).
My cred is nonexistent (this was the very first thing I ever did in TeX, for example), my good will is rather limitless, and my expository abilities somewhere in between.
30: Well, it sort of is, in that I think it's fairly reasonable to assume that a lot of people here have, at least in the past, taken gender and sexism really lightly in a political sense.
Or more likely, in a "personal is political" sense, which some people are inclined to confuse with a political sense.
(Trying to start a flamewar? Why, yes! Yes, I am. Or maybe I'm just trying to divert attention from the blatant Mongolophobia that saturates my posts.)
No, you're not getting my problem with the sentence. What is the subject of "can"? It doesn't have one.
I don't actually think the diagram is nonsense, though I do think you owe your readers an interpretation of the arrow with nothing on the right. As it stands, you just point out that sometimes there's nothing on the right (well, left, but), without saying what that's supposed to mean. If you're really introducing them ...
the point of this exercise is not to become riled by anyone's assessment of unfogged. this is not complacency but an observation that one may alternatively leave or attempt to alter it.
thank you.
So far, only ben w-lfs-n is capable of even coming close to comprehending anything at the linked site. But it's good that he's doing his part!
Ben, my Germanic dependent clause is messing you up. That set of statements can replace the disjunct, and it surely can.
35: It's perhaps more that only ben finds anything at the linked post worth talking about. (Meaning no offense to Jeff, who seems like a really nice guy and the rest of whose blog looks pretty interesting.)
And as for there being nothing on the right: as you probably know (maybe the same way I do) there's no reason sequents have to be two-sided, you can do all the work on one side or another. I was going to put something in about how successful Prolog computations conclude in [] and connect it to that, but I'm thinking out loud as much as I'm conveying anything to anyone.
Then you ought to write "the resolution rule collects together all the logically consistent "atoms" of a set of clauses by establishing that that set of statements that have as a consequence a disjunct of a disjunction can replace that disjunct".
34: the point of this exercise is not to become riled by anyone's assessment of unfogged.
Did "blatant Mongolophobia" sound riled? I was aiming for whimsy and irony. Shit.
I'll make it "that a" rather than "that that".
Actually, I only knew that you could say both "p |- q" or "|- p -> q" (likewise for models), but not "p |-"; that's what I thought top was for. (Nor have I encountered => in this context—you can think of me, in fact, as a total amateur here.) Anyway, if you feel the need to explain that "=>" is read as "has as a logical consequence", then, since that reading is obviously applicable to "Δ => A", and only slightly less obviously applicable to "=> Δ -> A", but rather mysterious when it comes to "&Gamma, A =>", it seems as if it would be appropriate to say what it comes to in the last case.
40: No, no, always remember that my comments are (probably) time-lagged, because I fail to preview, because then I'd have to edit whatever I wrote, and I'd never be done. It was an overall remark about viewing unfogged as an STD or what have you.
42: Only 'gainst the Hordes. And the Dutch.
"that a" works too, of course; the point is only that if the "that" serves to introduce an independent clause, then something's missing from in front of "set of statements" (it needs an article or a "that" or the like), and if the "that" is serving to individuate the set of statements, then you havne't got anyhting for the "can" to apply to.
Let me try another tack: "That Ben w-lfs-n can sure write a shaggy dog story." "That Ben w-lfs-n who is bothering me about my grammar can sure write a shaggy dog story." There's nothing ungrammatical about the second one, you're just parsing my similar sentence wrong because you want to read it as a clause. But we're going to have to get a hotel if we keep this up.
I would be curious to know, though, whether the shora was totally absent from Ogged's mind in shaping the way the thing has developed
Dude, if I ever start another blog, it sure won't have comments.
No fair, that uses a proper name.
"That author sure can write a shaggy dog story": Ok!
"That author who is bothering me about my grammar sure can write a shaggy dog story": ok too. [nb this is a restrictive clause now, as it isn't in your second case: we're saying "of all the authors there are, the one who is bothering me about my grammar now..."]
But:
"He established that author sure can write a shaggy dog story": Not ok!
Of course, "He established that ben w-lfs-n sure can write a shaggy dog story" would be fine, but that's because "ben w-lfs-n sure can write a shaggy dog story" is fine. "Author sure can write a shaggy dog story" is not fine.
BUT:
"He established:
(a) that author sure can write a shaggy dog story
(b) pi is exactly equal to 22/7
(c) many other things besides."
Also ok! Thus we infer:
"He established: that author sure can write a shaggy dog story": ok as well. But the colon is necessary!
It's up to you to disambiguate sentences so they come out grammatical, and to my demotically-tuned ear it doesn't sound too bad. But your objection is noted.
Or "he established that that author sure can write a shaggy dog story". Orally, intonation could disambiguate, but in writing it's just wrong.
and i defended Mandela! and was defending Unfogged as a not soviet blog
but seriously, i think racial discussions get really too much attention everywhere here, not only blogs of course, the US i mean
that tape, can't Michelle Obama just explain what rally it was and apologize if necessary and that would resolve all, not all this 'time bomb' thing and agiotage
52: While I agree with you about pretty much all of that, "agiotage" isn't an English word. I think you want "agitation", although even that would be not perfectly idiomatic.
(Do please say if you want people to stop correcting you -- I'm doing it because you asked, but I feel terribly rude.)
Every time I start to read a comment by w-lfs-n or this Jeff dude, in this thread, their words morph into alien characters I find indecipherable. The closest I've come to comprehension is that in that guy's equation diagram thing there are little arrows that look like highly stylized cocks.
53: Actually I was thinking that agiotage was a great coinage, kind of a variant of agitprop. But turns out the money guys have already gotten there.
Agiotage:
The moneychanging business; also, stock-jobbing or speculating in securities.
Stormcock, you know, like the Roy Harper album.
56: Does that make Dsquared an agiot?
I was thinking Stormcrowfleet, like the Skepticism album.
i meant that word as agitation of public, something artificial, a news sensation or what
so the word can't be used in that sense, got it
61: Yeah, it was clear what you were aiming for, there just isn't a form of 'agitate' that fits it nicely. "Rabble-rousing", maybe?
Agitatio: Rabble-rousing by word of mouth.
In Soviet Russia, grammar corrects YOU!
My superjingoistic agitatio powers will ROUSE A NEW FASCIST REVOLUTION.
my first impression of Unfogged was that of the site of the White Supremacists, not of a soviet or even progressive blog, and i started to read on the principle like know your enemy something
Sweet christ if there's justice this will be the mouseover text.
Benson and Rhubarb's dialogue in this thread will, if there's the aforementioned justice, be subjected to a similarly inconsequential round of meta-Theoretical analysis on some kind of blog about interpreting blog posts about posts interpreting comments on posts on blogs. Which round will, along with the yet aforementioned comments, collapse on themselves and exist as a supermassive incomprehensibility singularity someplace far, far away from my brain.
65: I gotcher rousing facist revolution right here!
Does that soldier have a soul patch?
45: Event he Dutch know you should never trust the Dutch, the fuckers.
"He established that author sure can write a shaggy dog story": Not ok!
Of course, "He established that ben w-lfs-n sure can write a shaggy dog story" would be fine, but that's because "ben w-lfs-n sure can write a shaggy dog story" is fine. "Author sure can write a shaggy dog story" is not fine.
No, but "That author sure can write a shaggy dog story": not a problem.
I'm glad other people had difficulty with that Jeff's post. There are many posts there I enjoy reading, even if I only understand 10 percent of them.
I am also interested in the intersection, or lack thereof, of the more radical or specialized parts of the blogosphere with the mainstream blogosphere. I note that Kotsko doesn't come round much anymore, tho I think he is busy. Some of the leftier sites like Lenin's Tomb, the theorysphere, heterodox economic blogs, the feministsphere, overseas blogs...there just doesn't seem to be enough communication.
And even if I lack context to comment or comprehend those blogs, it feels like they have the more interesting and vital ideas and conversations. But moving into something like the anarchist world would feel like withdrawing into irrelevance.
What a wonderful collection of words! I'm sure that, with careful organisation and pruning, an argument of great clarity and coherence could be put forth.
I once spent a half day poking around 4chan, the birthplace of every Internet meme ever. The non-threaded discussion style was interesting, and I think more conducive to "cocktail party" style conversation where you can just flit from one thread to another. Of course it wouldn't be appropriate for the weighty and important discussion that takes place at Unfogged.
Can't you get to the text of disputed grammaticality by doing a that-deletion (or whatever linguists call it) on the bolded "that" in comment 39? As in: "But we've established that that set of statements is inconsistent" goes to "But we've established that set of statements is inconsistent".
If I think of "established" in the post-deletion sentence (whether in this shorter example or in Jeff Rubard's original post) as being uttered in a heightened tone of voice and the rest of the sentence as being uttered quickly, the post-deletion sentence in question reads to me as grammatical albeit strained, for whatever that's worth.
When I originally read the disputed text, incidentally, my brain read it as including "that a", and hence as grammatical, where in fact there was no article - it took me a while to be able to see that it wasn't actually there.
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Yesterday I made a fresh strawberry-rhubarb cobbler with ginger biscuit topping. The cobbler was consumed, still warm from the oven, with a scoop of vanilla icecream while we were seated around a picnic table, just as the heat of the day receded before the evening breeze. Such a moment to savour!
Also, I was drunk.
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"Rubard" is actually an archaic spelling of "rhubarb", and having heard it literally tens of thousands of times I basically roll with it. I am also a participant in verbal scuffles, a lamenter of tragedies, and a cartoon dog; but sometimes I worry that due to all of this people are not going to take my theory of work supermodels seriously.
On second thought, leave out the heightening in the case of Jeff Rubard's sentence.
And insert a momentary pause instead, something like the spoken equivalent of a colon.
We always take supermodels seriously. But only those who abstain from work.
Well, I think Hegel would agree there's a certain amount of work involved in being a supermodel of the world; Marx would say that all labor is a supermodel of the world itself, and a postmodernist social theorist would draw our attention to cultural "supermodels" that determine our status in work interactions. I would probably say something about intensional logic, but that's just me.
74:
Is there anything more beautiful than a beautiful, beautiful
flamingo, flying across in front of a beautiful sunset? And he's
carrying a beautiful rose in his beak, and also he's carrying a
very beautiful painting with his feet. And also, you're drunk.
Hegel and Marx could have had but little exposure to supermodels, given the relatively undeveloped of mass media in their time. Take their opinions with a pinch of salt. I'd say something about coke and champagne, but that's just the media stereotype presented to me.
I'd say something about coke and champagne...
You're snorting coke and drinking champagne this early in the day? What line of work are you in again?
70: Martin, did you read my comment? "That author sure can write ... " was in there.
73, 76, 77: it's as if you, too, did not read my comments.
Work? You're missing the point of the dialectic.
74: I would like to hear move about the ginger biscuits. Sounds awesome.
I had a banana split, sitting in the sun with my family as my 11 month old had ice cream for the first time. Oh, the tiny belligerence of a new mind insisting "Give me that again, right now" in a near frenzy--so adorable.
Just one scoop for the entire cobbler, Knecht? Times are tight or something?
58: Stormcock, stealer of . . .
Oh, forget it.
65: Bravo!
Sorry, Ben - I missed reading comment 49 earlier. I'd imagine, however, that intuitions would differ, depending on region, as to whether the colon (however helpful) is strictly necessary.
"We've already established that author sure can write a shaggy dog story"
reads OK to me if I think of it as
"We've already established that author sure c'n write a shaggy dog story".
Okay, this is quite enough. Let's have Isaac Disraeli weigh in (Curiosities of Literature, 1824):
"It was then that he established that scourge of Europe, THE INQUISITION: for having considered that though all might be compelled to submit by arms, numbers might remain who would profess particular dogmas, he established this sanguinary tribunal solely to inspect into all families, and INQUIRE concerning all persons who they imagined were unfriendly to the interests of Rome."
It's a big language. Deal.
Uh, Jeff? That is a perfectly innocuous sentence by my lights, and doesn't parallel the sentence of yours to which I objected. "That scourge of Europe" and "this sanguinary tribunal" are the direct objects of the two "established"s, respectively, and neither "established" introduces a new independent clause.
Ben, you have "On Saying That" on your brain. I am not (was not, since this has been long emended in line with reader response) introducing a new "that-clause"; it's exactly like Disraeli's sentence, only a logical fact is being established rather than the Spanish Inquisition. You were being a lazy reader, and compounding it by being supercilious about nonexistent grammar rules (as opposed to readability concerns which might well apply to something dashed off in half an hour).
I've never read "On Saying That", actually.
Your sentence and Disraeli's are not alike, but there's obviously little to be gained by continuing this conversation.
