From: John K Clark (johnkclark@fastmail.fm)
Date: Sat Mar 07 2009 - 02:49:06 MST
On Sat, 07 Mar 2009 "Charles Hixson"
<charleshixsn@earthlink.net> said:
> Without a definition how will you know if
> you have what you were after?
By seeing if the thing that I just made is like that thing over there
that I am very interested in.
> But if you don't have a decent workable
> definition you might as well be working at random.
When you really get down to it, definitions are Bullshit. Every single
definition in the dictionary is made of words, and every one of those
words have their own definitions made of yet more words that are also in
the dictionary, and on and an it goes. The only thing that saves us from
this hideous infinite loop is examples, at some point we can say to hell
with the dictionary and point to a ASCII sequence and then to something
in the real world and say “this means that”.
And by the way, I maintain that it is imposable to define “define”
without sounding stupid.
John K Clark
-- John K Clark johnkclark@fastmail.fm -- http://www.fastmail.fm - I mean, what is it about a decent email service?
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