White Knight's Song Gotcha

{CODE(wrap="1]]jbocre: 20:31 <rlpowell> Now, get rid of gismu places that require sets: *fuck* yes. But only the requirement, not the places.

jbocre: 20:33 <Melvar> Do the places make sense without sets?

jbocre: 20:33 <rlpowell> vensa: Also, I *do* try to listen, and respect people's objections and stuff.  :) Just be nice, and I'll be nice back.

jbocre: 20:34 <rlpowell> Melvar: They make sense with any distributive group.

jbocre: 20:34 <Melvar> Exactly.

jbocre: 20:34 <rlpowell> Which isn't just sets.

jbocre: 20:34 <Melvar> What then?

jbocre: 20:35 <rlpowell> In fact, most of them make *way* more sense with loi than lo'i

jbocre: 20:35 <Melvar> Huh? Masses, distributive?

jbocre: 20:35 <rlpowell> Example: kampu: x1 (property - ka) is common/general/universal among members of set x2 (complete set)

jbocre: 20:36 <rlpowell> Erm, yes? That's their entire purpose?

jbocre: 20:36 <rlpowell> Masses are for "the students surrounded the building". Use that example as your analogical case and you can't really go wrong.  :)

jbocre: 20:36 <rlpowell> No one student is doing the surrounding. The *set* of students certainly doesn't surround anything, because sets only have membership and cardinality.

jbocre: 20:37 <rlpowell> Lojban calls the non-distributive plural "masses".

jbocre: 20:38 == Sxem jbocre: ~sky@pool-71-178-129-174.washdc.east.verizon.net has quit jbocre: Ping timeout: 255 seconds

jbocre: 20:38 <rlpowell> vensa: ^^ and that's why sets are kind of pointless.

jbocre: 20:38 <Melvar> Have you contradicted yourself or am I not understanding something important?

jbocre: 20:39 <rlpowell> The *only* attributes sets have are membership and cardinality. This makes them almost useless to say anything with outside of math.

jbocre: 20:39 <rlpowell> Melvar: As far as I know everything I said makes sense; what doesn't make sense to you?

jbocre: 20:40 == kpreid jbocre: ~kpreid@128.153.22.154 has quit jbocre: Quit: Offline

jbocre: 20:40 <Melvar> It seems to me that once you called masses distributive, and another time nondistributive, or else I misassigned a response …

jbocre: 20:41 <rlpowell> You're absolutely right.

jbocre: 20:41 <rlpowell> < rlpowell> Melvar: They make sense with any distributive group. -- I meant non-distributive.

jbocre: 20:42 == jey jbocre: jey@69.59.129.28 has joined #lojban

jbocre: 20:42 == jeyk jbocre: jey@69.59.129.28 has quit Remote host closed the connection

jbocre: 20:45 <paldanyli> Why does kampu make more sense with masses than sets?

jbocre: 20:46 <rlpowell> paldanyli: Because sets only have cardinality and membership.

jbocre: 20:46 <rlpowell> They have no other properties.

jbocre: 20:47 <rlpowell> The only thing that's "common" to a set is, I dunno, the most frequent member or something? It doesn't even really make sense.

jbocre: 20:48 <Melvar> The way I thought of it is that the concept of membership makes a set act as a distributive.

jbocre: 20:49 <paldanyli> It makes sense to me. We're talking about the members, no?

jbocre: 20:49 <rlpowell> Distributiveness is exactly not-helpful here; that's why you can't do "kampu mi .e do", because that distributes to "kampu mi" and "kampu do"

jbocre: 20:49 <rlpowell> Yeah, the idea is it's supposed to be "common among the members of the set", but "among the members of the mass" works just fine too.

jbocre: 20:49 <rlpowell> And "common to the mass" also.

jbocre: 20:50 <paldanyli> That doesn't make much sense to me. How could something be common in a mass? Perhaps I think of masses differently than everyone else.

jbocre: 20:51 <Melvar> Masses don’t have members, do they?

jbocre: 20:51 <rlpowell> How could they not?

jbocre: 20:51 <Melvar> ∈ is not defined on them.

jbocre: 20:51 <rlpowell> I mean, if sets have members, I don't see how a mass could possibly not; they're both plural abstractions.

jbocre: 20:51 <rlpowell> Umm. Nothing mathematical is defined on masses; we made them up.

jbocre: 20:52 <paldanyli> Wouldn't be much use if masses didn't have members. But if the purpose is to aggregate their properties, using them to get at their members properties seems strange.

jbocre: 20:53 <rlpowell> That's true for sets, too. :)

jbocre: 20:53 <paldanyli> Not to aggregate their properties. Just to indicate the membership.

jbocre: 20:54 <rlpowell> To me, a mass of something has all of the properties of its members, in proportion to their frequency. So the mass of rats is mostly X inches long, but somewhat Y inches long.

jbocre: 20:54 <rlpowell> That view is probably idiosyncratic, though.

jbocre: 20:54 == v1d jbocre: ~v1d@brsg-4dbbbef9.pool.mediaWays.net has quit jbocre: Quit: leaving

jbocre: 20:54 == kpreid jbocre: ~kpreid@128.153.178.199 has joined #lojban

jbocre: 20:54 == mode/#lojban +o kpreid by ChanServ

jbocre: 20:54 <paldanyli> That was my view as well. Which is why kampu on masses confuses me.

jbocre: 20:55 <rlpowell> Well, something that is common to all of them is clearly a major part of the mass, yeah?

jbocre: 20:55 <Melvar> kampu: p ↦ A ↦ ∀a∈A:p(a)

jbocre: 20:55 <rlpowell> I can't see most of that, sorry.

jbocre: 20:56 <Melvar> Wait a sec.

jbocre: 20:56 <paldanyli> I don't think there's any reason that masses couldn't serve as sets, but it's not what I think of their purpose as being. It's confusing to me to make a set then "break it apart".

jbocre: 20:56 <paldanyli> Make a mass, rather.

jbocre: 20:56 <rlpowell> Right, but whether you use a set or a mass there, you're asking about the members, not the set or the mass.

jbocre: 20:56 <rlpowell> So I don't see that it matters much.

jbocre: 20:57 <paldanyli> Probably not. I can't think of a property of sets that wouldn't apply to masses.

jbocre: 20:58 <rlpowell> And this all is why I wouldn't suggest getting rid of sets; if it's this easy to argue about, it's not clear cut. :D

jbocre: 20:58 <Melvar> $kampu: p \mapsto { A \mapsto \forall a \in A : p(a) }$ approximately.

jbocre: 21:01 == bbyever jbocre: c9672f14@gateway/web/freenode/ip.201.103.47.20 has joined #lojban

jbocre: 21:01 <paldanyli> I suppose the cardinality of a mass of masses would be in question.

jbocre: 21:02 <paldanyli> Likewise its membership?

jbocre: 21:03 == zugzwang1d jbocre: ~zugz@193.52.24.4 has joined #lojban

jbocre: 21:03 <rlpowell> Hadn't thought about it.

jbocre: 21:04 == tom jbocre: ~tom@cpc1-linl7-2-0-cust44.sgyl.cable.virginmedia.com has joined #lojban

jbocre: 21:05 == tom has changed nick to _wtw_

jbocre: 21:05 == rossi jbocre: ~rossi@HSI-KBW-109-193-128-041.hsi7.kabel-badenwuerttemberg.de has joined #lojban

jbocre: 21:08 <Melvar> You could say I see sets as enumerable, but not masses.

jbocre: 21:10 <rlpowell> Which I think is a valid POV.

jbocre: 21:10 <rlpowell> I just don't know if that's how the language works.  :)

jbocre: 21:10 == lindar jbocre: ~lindarthe@32.174.46.157 has joined #lojban

jbocre: 21:11 <rlpowell> I'd love it if you could summarize all this to the appropriate BPFK page, btw. Perhaps the gadri one.

{CODE}