From: John Clark (jonkc@worldnet.att.net)
Date: Sat Nov 06 1999 - 22:50:34 MST
>>Me:
>> If ALL people have this property, being a sinner, then there is no contrast.
>> If there is no contrast then the statement has exactly the same meaning
>> as "all people are saints", and that is no meaning at all.
>Eliezer S. Yudkowsky <sentience@pobox.com>
> Oh, give me a break. Are you saying the statements "All people are made
> of atoms" or "All atoms obey the laws of physics" are not meaningful?
> [...] all tangerines are not sinners, so "sin" is less general than "atomic substrate".
There is a difference, all atoms are not in people and not all the laws of physics
involve atoms; I was assuming (it's not implicit in the original post I admit) that
not only are all people sinners but all sinners are people. But now that I come to
think about it, that's equivalent to "all non sinners are non people" so your example
of a virtuous tangerine is a little bit of evidence helping to prove the proposition
that all people are indeed sinners. Perhaps the original poster was right after all.
>I think you're objecting to the fact that "sin" lacks a clear definition,
No, that's not the problem, nearly all the really important things in life
have no clear definition. My objection is that the idea is pointless.
John K Clark jonkc@att.net
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