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by gus_massa 2363 days ago
I think it's perfectly fine to ask "How many bottles of milk are in the fridge?" even if there is no milk. I admit that most sane people will not answer "Zero".

If someone ask "How many elephants are in the fridge?" it would be weird.

I don't think that it is unnatural to answer "zero" in the first question, it is probably a social convention. For the second question I agree that is unnatural.
1 comments
stakhanov 2363 days ago
You reflected the example wrong though. Asking "How many blue cats are bouncing?" makes the presupposition that blue cats exist. "How many bottles of milk are in the fridge?" makes no presupposition of any kind. To demonstrate my point using your example: You ask: "How many of the milk bottles in the fridge are rancid?" I go to the fridge and see that there is no milk in the fridge. I now can't answer with any number at all, not even zero. Because if I say "None!" or "Zero!" then I will just have said: "I confirm that there is milk in the fridge, and state that none of it is rancid." which contradicts what I have just learned to be the truth.

This is not po-tay-to po-tah-to, people. It's a real thing.

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SkyPuncher 2363 days ago
> It's a real thing.

Most people aren't arguing this. Most people are discussing colloquial understanding of language and discussion. The differences you are arguing are important in a highly specialized area of math and science.

It feels like you're arguing whether an object is a Boeing 737 or an Airbus A320 when the important point is an airplane is not a car.

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guerrilla 2362 days ago
> The differences you are arguing are important in a highly specialized area of math and science.

Actually, I think they're arguing that it would be useful if more people understood this. In addition, the point of the game was to teach logic, not a colloquial understanding of language, which every child gets growing up anyway.

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alisey 2363 days ago
This reminds me of vacuous truth (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuous_truth).

I was recently writing a function that returns early if all items in a list meet a certain condition. It was interesting to think about what should happen if that list is empty.

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