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derbOac12/09/20241 replyview on HN

For me, this is one of those types of examples that illustrates the problem with logics allowing vacuous truth.

It amounts to an assumption of an implied conditional ("If I have hats...") which is not always warranted. The "gotcha" here says more about the vacuous truth assumption than it does someone who falls for it.


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mewpmewp212/09/2024

I think it is very logical to allow for vacuous truths. Doing otherwise would not be logical. The actual key insight is to accept that in a lot of cases everyday communication itself is not logical, because it is more efficient to communicate skipping always being logically correct. This builds social intuition that goes against the logic. It is interesting to observe and point out those cases, which this puzzle does.

Because for efficiency reasons you make a lot of assumptions constantly that may or may not be true, and 99% cases it would work for your favour.

Sometimes assumptions need to be challenged or we need to be reminded of that it can be good to challenge assumptions in certain cases, it can allow us to discover some new things.

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