Program logic bugs vs input/environmental errors

Nick Sabalausky via Digitalmars-d digitalmars-d at puremagic.com
Tue Oct 7 01:19:14 PDT 2014


On 10/06/2014 07:06 PM, "Ola Fosheim =?UTF-8?B?R3LDuHN0YWQi?= 
<ola.fosheim.grostad+dlang at gmail.com>" wrote:
> On Sunday, 5 October 2014 at 20:37:18 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>> statement on unions in general, BTW) and the complete and total lack
>> of "logic" being part of the curriculum *they* were taught as kids
>> (which is still inexcusably absent from modern curriculums).
>
> "logic" is theory. Theory does not belong in schools. Too difficult. You
> are only supposed to learn things that you don't have to figure out,
> otherwise finding qualified teachers will become impossible.
>

Math is theory too.

But regardless: Yes, there *is* a theoretical side to logic, but logic 
is also *extremely* applicable to ordinary everyday life. Even moreso 
than math, I would argue.

Now, I don't necessarily mean things like formal symbolic logic, lambda 
calculus. Although, my 9th grade math class *did* have a very heavy 
focus on formal proofs - and it wasn't even remotely one of the hardest 
math classes I'd taken, even just up to that point. Students can handle 
theory just fine as long as it isn't the more advanced/complex 
stuff...Although college students should be *expected* to be capable of 
handling even that. Now, *cutting edge* theory? Sure, leave that for 
grad students and independent study.

Anyway, when I say "teach logic in schools" I just mean (at the very 
least) the basic things: Like recognizing and identifying the basic 
logical fallacies (no need necessarily to dive into the actual latin 
names - the names aren't nearly as crucial as understanding the concepts 
themselves), recognizing ambiguity, understanding *why* the fallacies 
and ambiguity are flaws, and the problems and absurdities that can occur 
when such things aren't noticed and avoided.

This is VERY simple, and crucial, stuff. And yet I see SOOO many grown 
adults, even ones with advanced graduate degrees, consistently fail 
completely and uttery at basic logical reasoning in everyday life (and 
we're talking very, very obvious and basic fallacies), that it's 
genuinely disturbing.

>
> I am personally looking forward to Beijing hosting the winter olympics
> 2022. I am sure they will mange to fake a smile after the politicians
> have demolished their homes to make space for the ski-jumping event.
>

Don't know whether this has always been the case and just never got 
noticed until recent years, but between the last winter olympics and the 
recent soccer/football match, and what you're saying about 2022, I'm 
noticing a rather bad trend with these big international sporting 
events. I get the feeling this'll be something that'll get bigger and 
bigger until either A. the right people get together and do something 
about it, or B. things come to a head and the shit *really* starts to 
hit the fan. (Yes, I like outdated slang ;) ) Nothing good can come from 
the current trajectory.

>
> Was this off-topic?

It was off-topic several posts up. :)



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