Owston '19 what are you bringing

[Nick]

https://www.empteezy.co.uk/products/b5a ... AYQAvD_BwE

[Ali Tait]

Sounds like a debate for the Friday Night Seminar.

[Ali Tait]

Unnecessary indeterminate, all it means is your state of witchness is at that point unknowable to observers on the bank.

do you mean he's a quantum witch or just unknowable in Schrodinger terms?
yeah, come on, which is it?

swidt

Neither, for that to be the case him being a witch would have to be the result of some quantum event, its not, he either is or isn't. The reason the cat in the box is both alive and dead is not because its in a box, its because its in a box with poison that may or may not be released by the decay of a radioactive source.

Of course his witchness is only unknowable to those on the bank if it was unknown before he entered the water. Otherwise, they would know.

Wasn’t that the point of ducking though, to find out?

If you drowned you weren’t.

[ed]

Neither, for that to be the case him being a witch would have to be the result of some quantum event, its not, he either is or isn't. The reason the cat in the box is both alive and dead is not because its in a box, its because its in a box with poison that may or may not be released by the decay of a radioactive source.

Of course his witchness is only unknowable to those on the bank if it was unknown before he entered the water. Otherwise, they would know.

I've a nagging little itch about this...your assertion

The reason the cat in the box is both alive and dead is not because its in a box

is causing me second thoughts.

From the predicate, the reason the cat in the box is both alive and dead is because it is plainly in the box. If it were not in the box we would know if it were alive or dead.

and further....if the water were icy cold and the witch suffered a heart attack going in then she would be pulled out dead, ergo not a witch, which she was(a witch) when she went in. I'm of the strong opinion that this test is fallible.

[Ali Tait]

Do witches have heart attacks?

[Nick]

From the predicate, the reason the cat in the box is both alive and dead is because it is plainly in the box. If it were not in the box we would know if it were alive or dead.

Well, no, the reason we don't know if its alive or dead is because we can't observe it. The reason its both alive and dead at the same time is because of the decay or not of the radioactive source. The cat could be next door, in a train toilet, or we could be in the box and the cat outside. All it takes to be both alive and dead is a quantum event and lack of observation.

[Nick]

ergo not a witch

Again no, the test is if he/she drowns or not, not if he/she happens to die while in the water. It seems that while witches can die, they can't die of drowning. So in fact that if the test resulted in a death, then we would not be certain if the death was due to drowning (is not a witch) or some other cause (may or may not be a witch). So a truth table will show that all the immersion is water can show for certain is that he/she is a witch, it can't show with certainty not a witch.

[Dave the bass]

All of you's, pfffffffffffftttttttttttttt! I reckon you're all making this up as you go along and not taking this at all seriously.

Look, let analyse this properly OK Ali's wet, I've got a dry pen.

[ed]

ok, I'll concede that Ali is wet, I don't have aproblem with that....but I'm still cogitating about Nick's statement that the reason the cat is both alive and dead is not because it's in a box....I think it is......the predicate logic dictates that it must be in the box AND sharing the box with the poison..cant have one without the other and the logic doesn't hold if you take the box out of the statement. It's moving the goal posts if you want to replace the box with next door or a train toilet...that's just how Dr Who get's out of all his scrapes.......

I need more Greene King Abbot to get on top of this one philosophically....

As I won't make the Friday night seminar can I ask that if there's a spare 5 minutes the team consider the tree in the forest, and let me know the answer on Saturday.

[Ali Tait]

That’ll have been cut down to make the ducking stool.

[Nick]

.the predicate logic dictates that it must be in the box AND sharing the box with the poison.

That's just (a manifestation of the language the logic is expressed in) and (the lack of brackets). We can change the set-up. Radioactive source and detector in Japan in a tin can. Cable from the detector to poison dispenser goes via the internet to a closed room with the poison and the cat. As long as the state of the poison dispenser or the signal driving it is not observed then the cat is both alive and dead. Its just about equivalent to quantum key distribution.

[Nick]

the tree in the forest

But which one? A forest suggests more than one tree.

[jack]

the tree in the forest

But which one? A forest suggests more than one tree.

Not so. When does a forest stop being a forest - reducto and absurdum suggests that if you remove trees, each time you remove a tree you still have a forest. There are over 800 definitions of what constitutes a "forest". Wikipedia suggests:

"Although a forest is usually defined by the presence of trees, under many definitions an area completely lacking trees may still be considered a forest if it grew trees in the past, will grow trees in the future,[9] or was legally designated as a forest regardless of vegetation type"

So a forest may be defined as an area with "n" trees, where n varies between 0 and ∞.

e.g. Kelp forests have no trees, only algae.

[Ali Tait]

When does a forest become a wood?

[Dave the bass]

When does a forest become a wood?

A forest becomes wood when its in B+Q.