• powerstruggle@sh.itjust.works
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    14 hours ago

    Sorry, I can’t help you when you’re being willfully obtuse. I’ll try one last analogy, which I’ve been resisting since it can often confuse, but I really don’t know how else to get through to you. Don’t bother say “Oho! Here’s where the analogy fails!”. I already know that, thanks.

    Consider a computer program in which its “sex” is determined by the first bit it outputs, either 1 or 0. You run it and the program doesn’t output anything. Oh no! What sex is it? You examine the program and find a “output_zero_bit” function that was never called. The program has no other way of writing a bit. There is no code that will output a 1, and it is impossible for the program to do so. That program would be “sexed” as a “0” because although it didn’t output a 0, it has the code to output a zero and doesn’t have the code to output a 1. If, at some point, we found programs that had no code to output anything at all, and had no concept of outputting either a zero or a one, we’d called those programs sexless. Those programs would be organized around producing nothing. But nothing like that has been found, and it’s extremely unlikely that we ever would.

    Again, don’t bother responding if you’re going to say “humans aren’t 1’s and 0’s!”. Already aware, thanks. I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere if you’re going to respond with an “Oho!”, but if anyone else reading this is actually curious, that analogy may help clarify the situation.

    • Lumidaub@feddit.org
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      12 hours ago

      You start that “analogy” with the binary assumption. That’s where it falls apart.

                • Lumidaub@feddit.org
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                  7 hours ago

                  Yeah, I read that. I still reserve the right to reject your analogy because I don’t accept it as relevant or analogue to anything. You can’t go “don’t say these things that disagree with me” and expect me to shrug my shoulders and go along.