Living with the surveillance state

Posted Oct 30, 2013 18:20 UTC (Wed) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389)
In reply to: Living with the surveillance state by PaXTeam
Parent article: Living with the surveillance state

Disagreeing with a universally qualified statement does not mean one disagrees with the existentially qualified variant…

Living with the surveillance state

Posted Oct 30, 2013 22:14 UTC (Wed) by PaXTeam (guest, #24616) [Link] (4 responses)

it's a logical contradiction to state that a subset doesn't have the properties of the set. you probably want to try this one again ;).

Living with the surveillance state

Posted Oct 30, 2013 22:24 UTC (Wed) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link] (3 responses)

Well, I skimmed over the "usually" in the source quote actually, but I can say that *some* of a set has some property while also saying that *all* of a set does not (which is how I read it) without making a contradiction.

And in the general case, your statement is wrong since a subset of all numbers (uncountably infinite) can be countably infinite (integers) or finite (integers uniquely representable by a single Arabic digit).

Living with the surveillance state

Posted Oct 30, 2013 22:41 UTC (Wed) by PaXTeam (guest, #24616) [Link] (2 responses)

you don't even understand what you said ;). going with your numbers example, you said that a subset of numbers is not a number. IOW, we're talking about the property that defines the set which obviously means that members of any subset must have that same property as well. cardinality of subsets doesn't even come into play.

Living with the surveillance state

Posted Oct 31, 2013 1:21 UTC (Thu) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link] (1 responses)

I feel like there's some language barrier here (possibly me being pedantic and too literal).

> state that a subset doesn't have the properties of the set

Did you mean to talk about *members* of the sets in question here?

What I was originally replying to is that ¬∀x.p(x) is not the same as ¬∃x.p(x). This is the conclusion you seem to have made given your reply here:

> > > Usually, a technical solution is superior to any social solution.
> > Woah, strongly disagree.
> do you carry a key chain and lock doors? if you don't then please post your home and office addresses along with where you park your car. you should not have a problem with this since you must have a social solution to this problem already ;).

Living with the surveillance state

Posted Nov 1, 2013 22:35 UTC (Fri) by PaXTeam (guest, #24616) [Link]

> > state that a subset doesn't have the properties of the set

> Did you mean to talk about *members* of the sets in question here?

yes i was being sloppy but thought it would be clear from the context, sorry if that made you misunderstand me. as for what i pointed out, it's really not hard: if you disagree with the elements of a set, you also disagree with the elements of any subsets of the set, unlike what you stated.