this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2024
40 points (82.3% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35393 readers
3 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 98 points 10 months ago (7 children)

No. It is equal to "if not B, then not A." You're welcome for doing your logic 101 homework for you.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 10 months ago

First thing I thought lmao. Somebody is taking logic

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Honestly what the homework is probably looking for is that it's equivalent to "B or not A." But yeah.

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 48 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

An example of why this is incorrrect.

If a card is the ace of spades, it is black.

A card is black if and only if it is the ace of spades.

There are other conditions under which B (a card is black) can happen, so the second statement is not true.

A conclusion that would be correct is "If a card is not black, it is not the ace of spades.". The condition is that if A is true B will also always be true, so if B is false we can be sure that A is false as well - i.e. "If not B, not A".

[–] [email protected] 22 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (5 children)

If Nazi, then fascist = true

Fascist, if and only Nazi = not true

If car, then vehicle = true

Vehicle if and only if car = not true

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I used the bananas are fruits analog but your one works well too!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I just figured with Lemmy’s interest in politics it seemed like an obvious example. I threw in the car because I didn’t want to be that guy who makes everything about nazis…

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yeah careful with that, the logic example Nazis will be all over you if you don't mix it up some.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

Not everything is about Nazis, Boinkage, geez…

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago (17 children)
load more comments (17 replies)
[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You've have some examples, but in case they are not clear enough:

If [you have AIDS] then [you are unwell]

[You are unwell] if and only if [you have AIDS]

The first one is not the same as the second. Why? There are plenty of ways to be unwell, without necessary developing AIDS.

The first statement only defines one possible path to B, not all of them.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Not just HIV, but full blown AIDS?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Actually a good example:

  • If you have AIDs (A) then you have HIV (B). True
  • You have HIV (B) if, and only if, you have AIDS (A). Not true
  • If you don't have HIV (B), then you don't have AIDs (A). True, and the actual inverse of "If A then B"; which is "If not B, then not A"
[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

It's important to stress the "full blown" modifier in any example.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago
[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago

If A, then B

If Not B, then Not A

If it's raining then the grass is wet, but you can't tell if it's raining if the grass is wet, because of say, a hose or sprinkler.

All that you can tell is that if the grass is dry, then it is not raining, and I that's called a contrapositive.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

if youre doing homework, i recommend writing out truth tables for the statements and comparing, gives you a bit more insight into the statement truth conditions

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

if I brake, my Car will stop.

will my Car only stop if i brake?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

shhhhhhh. Nobody saw, nobody knows.

Also It's 00:30 over here, cut me some Slack.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

“If X is cat, then X is mammal” =?> “X is mammal if and only if X is cat”

Obviously doesn’t hold: What if X doge?

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (3 children)

I just saw a video on all the logical fallacies that exist, and this was one of them but my shit-ass memory can't recall what the name of the fallacy was.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

It's Cunningham's Fallacy.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

I think it's affirming the consequent

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Can you send me the video?

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

Nope. The first statement doesn’t exclude any paths to B

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

A => B is not the same as B <=> A

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

No.

B iff A is defined as "If B then A and if A then B".

If that doesn't make it clear enough for you, then try writing out the truth table for both statements.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I think I understand now, but what has left me scratching my nose (metaphorically):

Why is it called "B if and only if A", if what it really means is "B only if A and vice versa"? (Am I correct in thinking that's what it means?)

I just don't understand how that translates grammatically. To me, "B if and only if A" sounds the same as "B only if A". I can accept that they mean different things in the context of logic, just like I can assign any meaning to any label, like I could say that "dog" now means "kite" in a certain context. But it seems unintuitive and doesn't really make sense to me. Does that make sense?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

"B if and only if A" is a shorthand way to write "B if A and B only if A". It's like how "He is young and thin" means "He is young and he is thin". We could write it the second way without trouble, but the first way is shorter, we agree that they mean the same thing, and we prefer to conserve energy when writing.

The form "if and only if" is merely a convenient shorthand. Shorthand is usually more convenient for the writer than for the reader. 🤷‍♂️

Imagine these natural language sentences and analyze how they are different:

  • I'll go outside if it's not snowing
  • I'll go outside only if it's not snowing

Hint: what do you do in each case when it's snowing?

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)
load more comments
view more: next ›