Java’s Broken Booleans

  • Thread starter Lawrence D'Oliveiro
  • Start date
L

Lawrence D'Oliveiro

No, its a way of providing meaningful names for values and hence make the
program more readable ...

We already have the names and their meanings. The point of this thread was
about the way that Java restricts those meanings in a way that makes them
less useful than in many other languages, and more importantly, in commonly-
accepted mathematical practice.
 
M

Martin Gregorie

We already have the names and their meanings. The point of this thread
was about the way that Java restricts those meanings in a way that makes
them less useful than in many other languages, and more importantly, in
commonly- accepted mathematical practice.
So what? You misunderstood a COBOL language capability. I provided a
correction. End of story.
 
A

Arved Sandstrom

We already have the names and their meanings. The point of this thread was
about the way that Java restricts those meanings in a way that makes them
less useful than in many other languages, and more importantly, in commonly-
accepted mathematical practice.

"Commonly accepted mathematical practice"? Find me a mathematician who
states that truth values have to be numerical 0 and 1 and I'll eat my
shorts.

AHS
 
M

Michael Wojcik

Lawrence said:
That’s like saying that, just because the right-hand rule can be replaced
with a left-hand rule without introducing any inconsistencies, that there
shouldn’t be a right-hand rule.

No, it's like saying the right-hand rule can be replaced by a
left-hand rule, full stop. I didn't claim all languages should emulate
COBOL in this (or, indeed, any) regard.

You claimed that all programming languages aside from Java had a
certain attribute; I provided a counterexample.
 
L

Lawrence D'Oliveiro

"Commonly accepted mathematical practice"? Find me a mathematician who
states that truth values have to be numerical 0 and 1 and I'll eat my
shorts.

George Boole, for a start.

You want any ketchup with that?
 
A

Arved Sandstrom

George Boole, for a start.

You want any ketchup with that?

Boole is still alive and kicking to make that statement, is he?

While you're at it, why don't you read Chapters II and III of "An
Investigation of the Laws of Thought: by Boole? Reading Wikipedia may be
giving you a rather shallow and incorrect idea of what the man had to
say. In particular, Boole referred to 0 and 1 as Nothing and Universe,
and he makes clear and frequent distinctions between the systems of
Number and Logic. Also, for example, when you see him define 'x' as a
class, the expression 1-x, for Boole, sure as hell didn't mean to him
what it evidently means to Lawrence d'Oliveiro.

AHS
 
A

Andreas Leitgeb

Arved Sandstrom said:
In particular, Boole referred to 0 and 1 as Nothing and Universe,

Probably it's just me, but I see an even more obvious natural
ordering in {Nothing, Universe}, than even in {false, true}.
 
D

Daniele Futtorovic

Probably it's just me, but I see an even more obvious natural
ordering in {Nothing, Universe}, than even in {false, true}.

I don't think so. You see, while there is no Universe, Nothingness is
everything. This is obviously an epistemological problem. The Universe
has to be first for Nothingness to be.
 
M

Mike Schilling

Daniele Futtorovic said:
I don't think so. You see, while there is no Universe, Nothingness is
everything. This is obviously an epistemological problem. The Universe
has to be first for Nothingness to be.

The tricky one is {chicken, egg}.
 
L

Lew

Probably it's just me, but I see an even more obvious natural
ordering in {Nothing, Universe}, than even in {false, true}.

I see an equivalence relation.

But within the illusion of Maya, yes, I do, too: Nothing > Universe.

Free yourself from the ten thousand things.
 
L

Lew

Mike said:
Daniele Futtorovic wrote

Nothing cannot be, because nothing is the antithesis of being. So the
Universe has to be first in order for the Universe to be, and Nothing is not,
so it cannot be.

Mike said:
The tricky one is {chicken, egg}.

That one's easy: egg.

But really, it's {hen, rooster, egg}. Science hasn't solved the three-body
problem.

Here's the ordering I suggest for three-valued logic:
{rock, paper, scissors}.
 
D

Daniele Futtorovic

Nothing cannot be, because nothing is the antithesis of being. So the
Universe has to be first in order for the Universe to be, and Nothing is
not, so it cannot be.

Nothingness is the antithesis of Somethingness, yes. Therefore, it /is/:
an antithesis. Being an antithesis is a state of being, is it not?
That one's easy: egg.

Spot on.
But really, it's {hen, rooster, egg}. Science hasn't solved the
three-body problem.

That's solved with the one before. I just gives minds bereft of
dialectics a harder time.

Shoo-wa-shoo-wee-doo.
 
L

Lew

Nothingness is the antithesis of Somethingness, yes. Therefore, it /is/: an
antithesis. Being an antithesis is a state of being, is it not?

No, because if it is an antithesis, then it is not nothing.
 
J

James McCreedy

Here's the ordering I suggest for three-valued logic:
{rock, paper, scissors}.

That suggests a noncommutative operation, however -- or perhaps a >
relation that has a circularity and thus is not actually a partial order.
 
J

Jukka Lahtinen

Andreas Leitgeb said:
Probably it's just me, but I see an even more obvious natural
ordering in {Nothing, Universe}, than even in {false, true}.

Before Universe, there was Nothing.
And after Universe, there will again be Nothing.
So, clearly no obvious unambiguous natural ordering there.

The natural ordering for boolean values may be more of a matter of
taste.
 
M

Mike Schilling

Lew said:
Here's the ordering I suggest for three-valued logic:
{rock, paper, scissors}.

There's at least a partial solution to the more complex {{rock, paper,
scissors}, handGrenade}
 
L

Lawrence D'Oliveiro

Boole is still alive and kicking to make that statement, is he?

Is that the sound of the goalposts moving? You said “find me a mathematician
who statesâ€, and I did.
Also, for example, when you see him define 'x' as a class, the expression
1-x, for Boole, sure as hell didn't mean to him what it evidently means to
Lawrence d'Oliveiro.

So you deny that he was using 1 and 0 to represent true and false?

You want some fries as well?
 
A

Andreas Leitgeb

Lew said:
I see an equivalence relation.

I see another equivalence relation to {Foo, Bar}, FWIW. (namely nothing)
My statement was about a natural ordering in the set {Nothing, Universe}.
But within the illusion of Maya, yes, I do, too: Nothing > Universe.

It looks entirely natural to me, that you'd come up with the reverse
as being natural (no matter whether or not influenced by Mayan illusions).
Free yourself from the ten thousand things.

Why should I? I kinda like at least some of them...
 
A

Andreas Leitgeb

Jukka Lahtinen said:
Before Universe, there was Nothing.
Not even yet a timeline on which to place the Nothing.
And after Universe, there will again be Nothing.
No longer even a timeline on which to place the Nothing.

Btw., will the interval of Universe's existence in time be a
[closed] or ]open[ one? Or maybe ]semi]-[closed[?
So, clearly no obvious unambiguous natural ordering there.

Oh, and then, there surely isn't a natural ordering on natural numbers,
either, since when talking about rankings, obviously 1 becomes superior
to all the others...
 
A

Arved Sandstrom

Jukka Lahtinen said:
Before Universe, there was Nothing.
Not even yet a timeline on which to place the Nothing.
And after Universe, there will again be Nothing.
No longer even a timeline on which to place the Nothing.

Btw., will the interval of Universe's existence in time be a
[closed] or ]open[ one? Or maybe ]semi]-[closed[?
So, clearly no obvious unambiguous natural ordering there.

Oh, and then, there surely isn't a natural ordering on natural numbers,
either, since when talking about rankings, obviously 1 becomes superior
to all the others...
But there most definitely _are_ intuitive ordering*s* on natural
numbers, which is the point. Non-strict or strict, we've got <, <=, >
and >=.

Whereas with boolean any ordering must be completely artificial.

AHS
 

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