Post #1823392

2026-04-23 21:32 UTC

@lindsey There should be a meta-law of mathematics that says when you think you found a dichotomy, it’s probably a ‘pick two of three’ but you forgot the third because it seems too trivial to consider

Replies (3)

@dpk@chaos.social 2026-04-23 21:36

@lindsey Like how in Arrow’s theorem you can totally have a voting system that satisfies Condorcet’s criterion and the independence of irrelevant alternatives … as long as that ‘voting system’ is just one guy making the decision alone

Open ##1823393
@yala@degrowth.social 2026-04-23 21:58

@dpk Ich kenne das als 'die Regel vom ungenannten Dritten', oder als 'das ungenannte Dritte. I know this as 'the rule of the unspoken third', or plainly as 'the unspoken third'. Peirce extends his trinary logic also with explicit closing rules for Inductive, Deductive and, thirdly, Abductive reasoning. Where the latter is the only way to create new knowledge, by finding new causes, according to Peirce. Note his Pragmaticism is nowhere near being mainstream philosophy. @lindsey

Open ##1823400
@delta_vee@cosocial.ca 2026-04-23 22:06

@dpk @lindsey Is there a corollary meta-law, where there exist two-of-three choices which are really binary, because one of the pairs isn't actually useful to consider? (See CAP, where CA isn't really a distributed system anymore)

Open ##1823401