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Genies hate this one simple trick (lemmy.world)
submitted 6 months ago by to c/memes@lemmy.world
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[–] 156 points 6 months ago (22 children)

You find you can no longer lie.

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  • [–] 13 points 6 months ago (3 children)

    Reason #2801 why vacuous truths are awesome.

    "When I first met you, you promised to give me all your money" is a true statement because I have never actually met you.

    Just be careful not to test this in court.

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  • [–] 8 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    That depends on whether you interpret "when" + past tense in English to also assert the reality of the temporal clause. The interpretation which allows the vacuous truth is, in my opinion, not even technically correct (by correct I mean aligns with actual spoken usage). It would amount to formalizing the sentence as

    For all meetings between us, if said meeting is at a past time and it's the first meeting (i.e. before all other meetings), you promised at that time to give me all your money.

    Which is indeed vacuously true, if there have been no past meetings, or even if the meetings aren't well-ordered in time :). On the surface this is a perfectly good interpretation, but it doesn't really align with real usage (though I would love to see an example of "when" + past tense being used this way, e.g. in a legal document).

    On the other hand, most people would interpret "when" + past to assert that the event actually happened, which in this context means

    I have met you before, a "first meeting" can be identified, and at that first meeting, you promised to give me all your money.

    Or even more formally

    There exist meetings between us at a past time, there exists such a unique meeting which is first, and, for all meetings, if said meeting is indeed the first, you promised me at that time to give me all your money.

    And this can be reduced to

    There exists a unique past meeting between us such that [it's first, and you promised to give me all your money at that time].

    I think this interpretation is most closely aligned with how "when" is actually used in practice. "If" feels different, though. It can act as simple logical implication, logical equivalence, or anything in between, so it may be more interesting to study. Also note that all of this doesn't apply to "when" + simple present, which acts very similarly to "if".

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago

    Damn it, I was trying to go for the "When" + simple present to check whether my statement worked.

    I thought:

    "When 1 equals 2, blablabla" is always true, therefore [my statement above] works as well.

    But I should've thought "When 1 equaled 2, ..." which doesn't sound true anymore.

    That is to say: Fuck grammatical tenses!

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  • [–] 25 points 6 months ago (16 children)

    But can you still be incorrect?

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  • [–] 63 points 6 months ago (15 children)

    No, because you are always right.

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  • [–] 63 points 6 months ago (14 children)

    Massive silver lining then. Having found a way to determine objective truth sounds pretty powerful and useful, even if it's not what you originally wished for.

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  • [–] 5 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    Predicting lottery numbers, proving mathematic formula, coming up with options with for ftl and cold fusion if there are any

    Always being right without knowledge on your end could lead humanity forward a lot if you can prove your standing

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago

    Predicting lottery numbers, proving mathematic formula, coming up with options with for ftl and cold fusion if there are any

    Most of these assume that the power will correct what you are thinking/going to say rather than preventing you from thinking /saying it. It's still busted, but in its weakest form you want to be using it to make choices/giving advice.

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  • [–] 5 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    Or whatever they say is right instead. Atomics are fake? No nuclear power. Oops there goes the sun because fissions gone.

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  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago

    Can you imagine? A modern day oracle. Scientists would be lining up to ask questions about how the world worked and everything you said would be true.

    It would be great for just confirming things that science suspected were true. Like, all the rare particles they're trying to find with the Large Hadron Collider. They could just ask the oracle and learn all the particles they were missing, along with all the important data about them.

    Best of all, if you couldn't lie, and couldn't be wrong (even if you didn't know the answer) it could be used to "discover" things without ever having to go down blind alleys, or waste time with research that won't bear fruit. For example, you could ask "is it possible for something like a spaceship to move faster than the speed of light?" If the answer is no, then you can write off working on that forever. If it's yes, you could progressively ask questions to learn the theory you'd need to know to build a FTL ship. It could also finally put to bed whether time travel is possible, and how the paradoxes involved are resolved.

    If FTL travel is possible, you could just ask the oracle where all the various aliens are, making it really easy to contact them (plus the oracle can tell you if it's unsafe to contact them).

    Also, since it was obviously possible to transform someone into an oracle, it should be possible to do that again. You can just ask the oracle the right questions needed to create a second, third, tenth, 1000th oracle. That way the one oracle isn't always so busy, and if the first oracle dies, there are still many more.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    You might only be speaking in math, though.

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