I would assume this -
"I have made two basic arguments about post-9/11 airport security. One, we are not doing the right things. And two, the things we are doing are wrong."
There's also the moderator stating that Schneier won. The derrier handoff is not obvious at a glance. I think a more neutral title would be better; this is an important debate, not cheering for your favorite sports team.
The moderator was editorializing on the massive skew of votes in favor of Schneier. “Winning” this debate is determined by votes, so there's nothing wrong with that.
I wasn't aware that I was making that contentious a statement.
Was just meaning that the titles on a news site are effectively headlines and that the style of how they are written can massively effect how much attention they are given.
>massively effect how much attention they are given.
This is very true. And is also a massive problem with news sites. You didn't post a accurate, descriptive title, you posted an editorialized opinion.
Yes, you get lots of views if you distort the article (18% do NOT agree that he lost the debate), but catchy title does not good journalism make.
I think HN should shy away from this sort of thing. We'll all complain about Fox, MSNBC and the Drudge Report for their ridiculous headlines (This just in, Obama sacrificed a child! Click for story!!), lets apply the same set of critical standards here.
> I have made two basic arguments about post-9/11 airport security. One, we are not doing the right things. And two, the things we are doing are wrong.
Far from being an ass-handing, this seems redundant: those two are the same statement, and that one statement is a not particularly damning version of an already familiar refrain. (The argument itself, I am sure, is substantive, but that summary is not.)
> You can do nothing, and then only statement "you are not doing the right things" would be true.
The statement "the things we are doing are not the right things" would also be true in this case. (Statements about the empty set are usually called 'vacuously true'.)
> You can also do both the right things and the wrong things, and then only the statemtnt "you are doing the wrong things" would be true.
I agree that "you are doing the wrong things" would be true, but what Schneier said, which is "the things that we are doing are wrong", would not be, at least by my reading with an implicit universal quantifier: "[all] the things that we are doing are wrong". I would describe your situation instead as "some of the things that we are doing are wrong"; and even that is implied by, if not equivalent to, "we are not doing the right things".
1: "we are not doing the right things"
2: "the things we are doing are wrong"
You're right that literal logical interpretation of 2 would be true if we are doing nothing, my bad, I've read this like it had implicit "we are doing semething and " at the start, and I'm quite sure it was meant as such by Bruce, but let's ignore that, and speak logic instead :)
We have:
D - set of things we are doing
R - set of things that are right
W - set of things that are wrong
statement 1 is "intersection of D and R is empty set"
statement 2 is "D is subset of W"
You can only change "the things we are doing are wrong" into "the things we are doing are not right" if we assume every thing is either right or wrong. I think there are some possible things that TSA could be doing, that are neither right nor wrong.
When D is not subset of (sum of R and W), then 1 is not equivalent to 2.