Notices by RustyBertrand (rustybertrand@social.vivaldi.net)

US backed MASSACRE: ‘Nothing justifies what we have witnessed here’: the doctors returning home from #Gaza

"It is apocalyptic"

British doctors Mohammed Tahir and Omar El-Taji thought they were mentally prepared to help treat people in Rafah. But what they and other foreign volunteers faced was beyond anything they could imagine.

#GENOCIDEJOE #USTerror #JoeBiden #massacre #vote #massmurder

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/article/2024/may/27/nothing-justifies-what-we-have-witnessed-here-the-doctors-returning-home-from-gaza

@apenkop
Russell and Wittgenstein had a little teacher/student competition going.

Russell thought Wittgenstein was smarter than himself, but describes his as we would now describe an autistic.

So. Russell was a bit baffled by his non linear thinking. I think they got into it a bit and learned from each other.

Admiration, but also a bit of rivalry. Which is great for #science

@apenkop

Oh that everyone would argue over invisible barbers, teapots and reference libraries.

Wirhout killing anyone.

1/5

Did fellow philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein dispose of Bertrand Russell's paradox? ”... and that disposes of Russell's paradox.” In mathematical logic, Russell's paradox attempts to illustrate that every set theory that contains an unrestricted comprehension principle leads to contradictions. In 1923, Ludwig Wittgenstein proposed to ”dispose” of Russell's paradox as follows:

”The reason why a function cannot be its own argument is that the sign for a function already contains the prototype of its argument, and it cannot contain itself. For let us suppose that the function F(fx) could be its own argument: in that case there would be a proposition 'F(F(fx))', in which the outer function F and the inner function F must have different meanings, since the inner one has the form O(f(x)) and the outer one has the form Y(O(fx)). Only the letter 'F' is common to the two functions, but the letter by itself signifies nothing. This immediately becomes clear if instead of 'F(Fu)' we write '(do) : F(Ou) . Ou = Fu'.

... and that disposes of Russell's paradox.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 3.333

4/5

An easy refutation of the ”layman's versions” such as the barber paradox seems to be that no such barber exists, or that the barber has alopecia, or is a woman, and in the latter two cases the barber doesn't shave, and so can exist without paradox. The whole point of Russell's paradox is that the answer ”such a set does not exist” means the definition of the notion of set within a given theory is unsatisfactory. Note the difference between the statements ”such a set does not exist” and ”it is an empty set”. It is like the difference between saying "There is no bucket" and saying ”The bucket is empty”.

A notable exception to the above may be the Grelling–Nelson paradox, in which words and meaning are the elements of the scenario rather than people and hair-cutting. Though it is easy to refute the barber's paradox by saying that such a barber does not (and cannot) exist, it is impossible to say something similar about a meaningfully defined word. In 2001 A Centenary International Conference celebrating the first hundred years of Russell's paradox was held in Munich and its proceedings have been published.

3/5
Kurt Gödel (1906 – 1978) an Austrian logician, mathematician, and philosopher in 1930–31 proved that while the logic of much of Principia Mathematica, now known as first-order logic, is complete, Peano arithmetic/axioms is necessarily incomplete if it is consistent. This is very widely—though not universally—regarded as having shown the logicist program of Frege to be impossible to complete. In mathematical logic, the Peano axioms, also known as the Dedekind–Peano axioms or the Peano postulates, are axioms for the natural numbers presented by the 19th-century Italian mathematician Giuseppe Peano. These axioms have been used nearly unchanged in a number of metamathematical investigations, including research into fundamental questions of whether number theory is consistent and complete.

• Easier explanations?

There are some versions of Russell's paradox that are closer to real-life situations and may be easier to understand for non-logicians. For example, the barber paradox supposes a barber who shaves all men who do not shave themselves and only men who do not shave themselves. When one thinks about whether the barber should shave himself or not, the paradox begins to emerge.

2/5

Background: Russell's paradox

Between 1910 and 1913, Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947), a British mathematician and philosopher best known for his work in mathematical logic and the philosophy of science, published their three-volume Principia Mathematica (often abbreviated PM). Russell and Whitehead hoped to achieve what Gottlob Frege could not. Gottlob Frege (1848 – 1925) was a German philosopher, logician, and mathematician, understood by many to be the father of analytic philosophy. Frege is widely considered to be the greatest logician since Aristotle, and one of the most profound philosophers of mathematics.

Russell and Whitehead sought to banish the paradoxes of naive set theory by employing a theory of types they devised for this purpose. While they succeeded in grounding arithmetic in a fashion, it is not at all evident that they did so by purely logical means. While Principia Mathematica avoided the known paradoxes and allows the derivation of a great deal of mathematics, its system gave rise to new problems.

5/5

Informal presentation:

Let R be the set of all sets that are not members of themselves. If R is not a member of itself, then its definition dictates that it must contain itself, and if it contains itself, then it contradicts its own definition as the set of all sets that are not members of themselves. This contradiction is Russell's paradox.

Mood

Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet. Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.”

-Napoleon Bonaparte

The Three Sisters, Glencoe, Scotland.

Stewart McKay photography

I'll let this one pass.

Because it sounds like an orca wrote it.

"Recognize that your struggle and your suffering is the same as everyone else’s, I think that’s the beginning of a responsible life. Otherwise, we are in a continual savage battle with each other with no possible solution, political, social, or spiritual."

-Leonard Cohen

Art: Erica Lennard

The big idea: the simple trick that can sabotage your critical thinking

Influencers and politicians use snappy cliches to get you on side – but you can fight fire with fire

#cultspeak Use your own words. Some people just repeat keywords and catchphrases, and it's annoying.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/may/20/the-big-idea-the-simple-trick-that-can-sabotage-your-critical-thinking

"There's something of my disquiet in the endless drizzle, then shower, then drizzle, then shower, through which the day's sorrow uselessly pours itself out over the earth. It rains and keeps raining.”

— Fernando Pessoa

Biden administration signals it will support push to sanction #ICC

-FT

#Biden sides with #genocide over the #Hague

Imagine sanctioning the International Criminal Court in The Hague, who prosecutes those accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

To protect Netanyahu.

Sad Max

#HashTagGames
#RelaxABookShowOrMovie

I need to get out of this house. For #photography reasons.

So unfair. Do I set up a gofundme for an ebike? A recumbent bike? Its been 3 years, I'm not getting better.

The Hunting of Billie Holiday & the Roots of the U.S. War on Drugs

https://www.democracynow.org/2015/4/7/johann_harri_the_hunting_of_billie?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2wrTmDImQrabVQ-vKS02V7Fz-NAZ-TwoKMvIaH4blt-48hAfPVMv4RWE0_aem_AXbvW5mK1niPdnFHhMAHOPYVwkJ4SwuBldoIOQmwcjtliEpmORSoGxAB_HULUPUu_ddzFsfynXVmPdBSfoqcQ6OQ

@spots1000 @clive

At this point I'd need a recumbent bike, it would be so nice to go out and do photography again.

Price, $2k
About the same for an Ebike in Iceland.

This country is nuts. Do not put tarrifs on Chinese goods. You'll end up like us.